Digg launches Newsrooms

(CBS) - Before we tweeted or liked an article, we "buried" or "dugg" a link. If Digg.com has its way, we'll be taking a trip back to the future.

The social bookmarking site announced Digg Newsroom Tuesday on the Digg blog. CEO Matt Williams explained how the new feature would work.

"When you visit a Newsroom you'll find the best news for a given topic as measured by popular opinion and ranked by top contributors on Digg. Topics as broad as technology or as specific as Lady Gaga. We've built a three-step algorithm to help the most meaningful stories rise to the top - leveraging our greatest asset, the Digg community," said Williams. The goal is to sort out and feature relevant news.

Here's how Williams explained Digg Newsroom:

- Sourcing: We locate great content for each topic and display in a real-time feed called "Newswire."

- Signals: Stories are ranked automatically by an algorithm that looks at recency and popularity including Likes on Facebook, Tweets and LinkedIn sharing, to name a few.

- Curation: The news is then filtered by the Diggs and Comments of passionate users who have gained reputation as top influencers in each Newsroom topic.

There will also be new features like badges. "Ace reporter (First story promoted to that Newsroom Front Page) or 'Trendsetter' (25 stories or more), you are making a difference in what people read," said Williams.

Another thing to note is that "all your reading, Digging, and Burying activity is shown transparently in a real-time activity feed within each Newsroom." It almost sounds like Digg is taking a step toward Facebook's news feed.

Once, a dominating force in social media and news aggregation, Digg's popularity and importance declined after a disastrous redesign in August 2010 and many of its users fled to Reddit. With Facebook, Google+ and Twitter in the game, Digg has been fighting for its life.

Digg Newsrooms is currently available by invitation only.