Social news site Digg is headed for a major overhaul on Wednesday. As promised multiple times by founder Kevin Rose, the site is launching social networking features that will make the site a lot more personal: complete "MySpace"-style social networking profiles with a comment section, and the ability to share stories with a group of friends, rather than banking on a homepage hit.
The move puts the site in competition with a range of link-sharing sites, including Twitter and Rose's own project Pownce. The picture section isn't part of the relaunch: that's still coming in October, as promised. The recommendations feature, where stories are suggested based on your reading history, is also not part of this revision. The move is partly to snag some of the site's passive readers, but it also seems like a move towards ad targeting: with more information about them, they can begin to categorize users more effectively.
As the gameplan stands, we can expect the picture section in a month or less, and personalization by the end of 2007.