Option Bars: The Future of the Internet?

Less than three weeks ago Digg.com unveiled a new concept in Internet browsing. The site introduced a option bar that tags along at the top of your web browser with every story you view through Digg. The option bar contains a few functional options related to the basic usage of Digg. This includes options to:

• Digg or Bury a story on site
• View statistics such as diggs, views, and the original URL of the story
• View related stories or random stories (if you're feeling wild)
• Instantly send a tweet or update your Facebook status about the story including the URL

Probably the neatest thing about the option bar is that is masks the story's original URL and replaces it with a shorter URL (like tinyurl.com and is.gd) starting with Digg.com.

I think that we will see a lot more of these option bars in the future. They seem to be an effective way of rerouting traffic back to the original site by always having a presence on your Internet navigation. Digg isn't the only one jumping on this train, however. Facebook recently released their own options bar with their new interface design. I am just wondering what effect this will have on Internet browsing after this idea becomes more widespread.


-- Chad Waite, The Daily Derbi

P.S. If you know of any other websites that use option bars like this, please let me know. Also, the option bars all have an option to be deactivated too. Just hit the X in the corner.

iTV (Just ignore this)