Kevin Rose to shock users with a upgrade of Digg.com. Photo credit: Stewart Butterfield

The upcoming major overhaul of popular social news service site, Digg, is, according to designers, going to shock current users. “When you see the new design, you’re going to go, ‘Wow, this is not the same site’,” founder Kevin Rose told The Telegraph.

Rose announced today that Digg.com is making some drastic changes, and stressed that the changes are vital to helping the site keep up with the rapidly changing web culture. He told The Telegraph, “People are going to be shocked at some of the directions we’re taking.”

Digg, which launched in 2004, attracts more than 35 million users per month and allow users to find and share content on the web. Users submit links to articles they find interesting on the web, and the Digg community can vote on how interesting they think the story is, by either “digging” it, or “burying” it. Many major news websites feature a Digg button, so users easily can link and share content on the site.

However, with the new direction they are taking, Digg will seek to adapt to “better embrace the real-time web,” The Telegraph reported. The site’s appearance will also not be the only modification. Ambitiously, Rose wants to embrace all the social networking forums, such as, Facebook, Twitter, Instant Messaging and email, and also grasp all channels on the web where people are “touching” content. Rose said that the new Digg will focus much more on real-time information and recommended content than before.

The new upgraded version of Digg will be launched in the next few months and Rose has great hopes that Digg will operate as a “cyber reservoir” of information and that people will think: “’I'm going to take a look at Digg because it provides me insight into what’s trending, what’s popular, what’s hot from all over these different places where people exchange information,’” he told The Telegraph.