DIGG FOR THE IPHONE
What are iPhone applications going to look and feel like? We saw yesterday a simple shopping list application, and here's another one bound to be a big hit: Digg for the iPhone. — This "app," like others to come, is really just a Web site designed for the JavaScript in Safari …
Context & Ripple Effects
A month after weathering the user revolt over the '09 F9' HD DVD key — an episode that tested how far Digg's community moderation model could bend — the company is putting its voting engine on Apple's not-yet-shipped phone. The iPhone "app" is not native software: it is Digg rebuilt as a JavaScript-driven page for Safari, arriving a day after a similar shopping-list demo showed what the format could do.
The move extends a run of surface expansion at Digg, which spent late 2006 adding tools and pushing beyond its geek core, and lands amid a first wave of Webware-style coverage (picked up by Cult of Mac as "First iPhone Web Apps Available") treating Safari-tuned sites as the de facto application platform for the device.
First-order effects
- Digg gets first-mover placement on the iPhone's home screen-as-bookmark, giving its digg/bury loop a touch-formatted front door before most major Web brands have one.
- Every iPhone owner's news-consumption habit becomes contestable through the browser, since these JavaScript pages — not packaged software — are the only application form available.
Second-order effects
- Other social-news and content sites face pressure to ship their own Safari-optimized versions or cede mobile reading time to whoever moved first, turning Web design for one phone into a competitive requirement.
- Traffic patterns shift toward whatever surfaces load fastest on a constrained mobile connection, rewarding lightweight, single-purpose rebuilds over full desktop portals.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the browser-plus-JavaScript layer becomes the industry's interim answer to 'what is an app,' positioning companies like Digg as case studies in whether Web-native distribution can match native feel — a question that shapes how Apple and developers approach the platform next.
- Aggregation services that live on community voting gain a structural advantage on mobile: the same digg/bury mechanic that survived the May 2007 moderation controversy now travels in the user's pocket, tightening the loop between crowd behavior and what gets read.
The trend: Web brands are rebuilding their core products as JavaScript applications tuned for the iPhone's browser, making Safari the launch platform for mobile services ahead of any native ecosystem.