Mixx.com started 2 months ago, and is said to be the new competitor of Digg.com (Techcrunch reports). There are several site that was said to be compete to Digg.com, but there seems no success and Digg.com is still as popular as it was. I tried Mixx.com and Digg.com to review which one works better. Will Digg.com seriously affected by Mixx.com?

1. Front page design: Mixx.com looks more attractive

Except the advertisement, you can only found few colourful images from Digg.com front page. Mixx.com puts popular photos on the front page and with those crystal-like design, it also puts popular photos so that it looks more colourful. I know Digg.com has a lot of categories and stories, it seems not practical to put it like Mixx.com. Ah. First impression: Mixx.com looks really better.

2. Registration : Both are easy

You can browse the stories of Digg.com and Mixx.com without registration. But, if you want to vote for the stories, you need registration. Both of them takes only few minutes and you are done.

3. Submit links for user: Digg.com comes better

No doubt Digg.com has a long history and there are many browser plugin and stuff related. Like we described “SmartDigg Button” for firefox is a great tool for anyone. Mixx.com do have “The Kitchen” which have java bookmarklet, buttons and badges. But take buttons as an example, Digg.com can actually shows the current digg right inside the button. This is much easier for users.

In addition, Digg.com can search the entire site to make sure there is no similar stories to be posted. It somehow prevents spam to Digg.com.

4. Search function: Mixx.com searches more

Both of the search function is not as good as you can imagine. They sometimes can’t search the stories with keywords correctly. I posted this story both on Digg.com and Mixx.com, and than try the search function. And yes, Mixx.com can find it out quickly while Digg.com retrieves no result. Luckily, we have something called Google Custom Search for Digg so things still fine.

Digg:

Mixx:

5. Profile and control panel: Digg.com is more friendly

Both of them have a very good control panel that shows what you have been submitted on the site and what you have done. But, I think Digg.com is more friendly as it show clearly about the recent activity using a filter option. It is also great to have search function in history panel which Mixx.com doesn’t have.

Digg:

Mixx.com:

6. Additional score: Digg.com have diggnation weekly show!

Diggnation is a great tool for Digg.com to promote its website. You may say “I know Digg.com first, than I know diggnation”. It may be for some people. But as Diggnation weekly show can be searched through iTunes. It’s not surprising that some people know digg.com through iTunes. We love to watch these 2 crazy (rich, right?) guy bullshit on the show tell us what’s new on Digg.com everyweek, do we?

Conclusion:

No doubt Mixx.com cannot defeat a long history and well developed social news website at this moment, but, Digg.com always need to add more distinct and unique features in their site. Mixx.com is a good site and I look forward to seeing its future development is as good as Digg.com. I really think that Mixx.com looks more attractive than Digg.com (may be I dugg too much…), and it surely makes me stay for quite a long period of time. The key to make Mixx.com should be “people”. When it becomes more popular, people will use it. It needs promotion.