Original Signal outdoes Digg — with Digg’s own content

I like the meta-aggregators ("metagators," if you will) PopURLs and Original Signal so much that I’ve dramatically reduced the time I spend using standard RSS readers. But in a weird turn of events, the people behind the first Original Signal metagator site, which collates Web 2.0 blog headlines from more than a dozens sources, have released a new page that metagates (well, why not?) Digg exclusively: digg.originalsignal.com.

In many ways it’s a better Digg front page than Digg itself. It displays more content than Digg’s own site, and also has sections for top headlines from different time periods (recent, today, and the week).

What’s unclear is whether this is good or bad for Digg, and if the Digg team will support it, turn a blind eye, or make an effort to shut it down and reclaim the traffic that Original Signal might be stealing from the site’s front page. I think it’s potentially good for Digg’s overall traffic, but not so much for its front page traffic or branding; Digg’s reaction to the site will depend on what they think is more important.

There’s also another new view of Digg, this one from Digg itself, and created for small-screen mobile devices. Point your cellphone or Treo at diggriver.com.