A new Digg redesign was launched a few hours ago and my initial thought beside not liking the way Digg’s look seems to be heading (‘child-like’ and ‘cute’ spring to mind), is to wonder how long until videos and pictures (coming in October) completely dominate the main page of Digg?

Yes, Digg (taking a page from Google) has now included dugg videos on the all-important main page of the site, and will soon include pictures as well.

Maybe Digg has already thought of a potentially video-dominated front-page and has something built in to their algorithm to prevent it from happening, but if not I expect to see a rapid rise in front page content of the visual variety. After all, who wants to read an entire long story when you can just click on and watch a video? Dugg.

Also noteworthy in the redesign is the prominance of ‘Friend’s Activity’. Digg certainly wants to play up its social aspects (maybe for advertisers, future buyers?), but am I the only one who really doesn’t find the friends activity information all that useful? I don’t know about you, but my friends’ interests are all over the place and their diggs reflect that. I don’t digg the exact same things they do, nor would I want to, and vice versa.

Good to see Digg’s deal with Microsoft already paying off for them as well: A huge Zune ad overpowers every story.

[UPDATE]: I also just noticed while clicking around that you no longer need to give a reason for burying a story. You can simply click the new ‘X’ icon and bury to your heart’s content. Sure, you can give a reason for the bury if you want to, but with no one seeing it, who really cares?

The buried story is no longer just grayed too, but instead disappears from your page entirely using what looks exactly like the Script.aculo.us fade.

Digg continues to be on a slippery slope here with anonymous burying (but credited digging) – and it may have just gotten slipperyer (is that a word?).