We were about to head towards the Bigg Digg Shindigg at SXSWi last night when we saw the New York Times' Jenny 8 Lee report on Twitter that Conan O' Brien had joined the Revision 3  line-up, as well as the Live Diggnation telecast at the Austin event.

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While it captured public (and our) imagination for all of five minutes, the announcement was a hoax; The crowd was in fact cajoled by the opening act NSFW Show to false tweet, using the power of social media to prank drunken tech savvy.

While people were distracted by this and numerous other SXSWi tomfooleries, serious business did go down at the interactive festival's largest unofficial party. Moments after Twitter revealed the faux Conan news to be just that — Digg.com CEO Jay Adelson took the stage and made a real announcement  about the “New Digg” a.k.a upcoming changes to the social news site's interface, voter, and submission options.

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Photo via Flickr/Alicetiara

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In perhaps what is the only tech news to come out of SXSWi thus far, Adelson revealed in an interview with Read Write Web this morning that the new site will reportedly underemphasize Digg's power users and imply content strategy changes for publishers who rely on the Digg effect for traffic.

Those curious can try out the new Digg alpha at New.Digg.com.

Follow more of our SXSWi adventures at @alexiat and @sfweekly.

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