Incorporating the Network/Viral effect into Digg

Digg lacks the ability for the network effects to take over because of the following reasons:

• Users cannot follow others and so you can't really see what others are following, what comments others are making against various posts etc.

• Users can't tell if a post is being shared or not

• The lack of hashtags etc makes it difficult to follow trending topics across communities.

• Users cannot message each other and users cannot create their own follower base outside of creating communities

• It is not at all clear as to why some posts are "trending" and why some posts are not.

Can some of these issues be addressed? If not, I believe that Digg's reach and popularity may remain constrained.