Digg kicked its own arse. Reddit was just around at the right time.
How Reddit Kicked Digg’s Ass
21–30 of 46 posts
Re: How Reddit Kicked Digg’s Ass
#22Will the wave of users coming from Digg be useful participants? Will there be any paid gaming of Reddit? Will Reddit turn into a sewer as it grows, as did Digg?
I've visited reddit a fair number of times and haven't found much use for it over other sites. The comments on reddit are typically about as valuable as those on 4chan with the modification that they are on average less entertaining and also contain fewer pictures of genitalia (on average).
In other words, just like Digg.
Re: How Reddit Kicked Digg’s Ass
#23Reddit kicked Digg's ass because Reddit is designed as a feedback loop that benefits all users. Digg only rewards elite users. Look at a random Reddit submission. If it survives the first minute, it makes some user's frontpage. If it is "good," it gets votes and is seen by more people. If the username is popular, it gets upvoted faster. But it turns out this is not necessary for success - I have submitted successful…
I think that the community itself matters significantly. IMO, the articles that I get from Hacker News are much more valuable than the articles that I consume from Reddit or Digg. In fact, I have seen a steady decline in the quality of content that I get from Reddit because of the surge of mainstream users.
Re: How Reddit Kicked Digg’s Ass
#24Reddit kicked Digg's ass because Reddit is designed as a feedback loop that benefits all users. Digg only rewards elite users. Look at a random Reddit submission. If it survives the first minute, it makes some user's frontpage. If it is "good," it gets votes and is seen by more people. If the username is popular, it gets upvoted faster. But it turns out this is not necessary for success - I have submitted successful…
It is funny, because I agree with your statement. But I never thought of Reddit as made for discussion. Maybe I miss out, but I always have a terrible time following the comments on Reddit (granted I don't even try on Digg and comparing Reddit to HN might be apples to oranges). The comments are usually confusing and non-beneficial to me.
Re: How Reddit Kicked Digg’s Ass
#25What do you think will happen to Digg? Will the "core / elite" users all jump ship? But does Diggs new offering have a chance with the "mainstream crowd" (who may or may not yet know about the site)?
Re: How Reddit Kicked Digg’s Ass
#26I just looked at Digg for the first time in a few weeks and the snapshot of front page articles is actually pretty good. They may take a hit in the short term with the raging power users who hate change but most of Digg's traffic is comprised of people who don't even login to the site much less spend hours a day on it voting things up/down. For most users all that matters is good content and the old system was failing them.
Re: How Reddit Kicked Digg’s Ass
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
It already did, alas. A couple of years ago it was really nice, but even when selecting only a few potentially interesting reddits (programming, science, etc), some posts are OK but comments are more and more both useless and stupid. So finally I spend much more time on HN now. Though the problem is that probably most older reddit users will come there, then pushing the HN old-timers to start some alternate HN-clone…
As I always do when someone starts off on this flight of mythology, allow me to suggest that you read Clay Shirky's "A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy": http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html You may learn some things about these cycles of "I was on Site X and it was great, then went to crap, then I went to Site Y, then it went to crap..." which will surprise you, and which -- at least in my reading and based o…
Except with reddit, people don't go to site Y, they go to /r/Y.
Re: How Reddit Kicked Digg’s Ass
#28Maybe my article from a couple of years ago about the relative merits of Reddit and Digg may be relevant: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2008-January...
It doesn't really explain why Digg has been more popular for the following two years. Or does it?
Re: How Reddit Kicked Digg’s Ass
#29Reddit kicked Digg's ass because Reddit is designed as a feedback loop that benefits all users. Digg only rewards elite users. Look at a random Reddit submission. If it survives the first minute, it makes some user's frontpage. If it is "good," it gets votes and is seen by more people. If the username is popular, it gets upvoted faster. But it turns out this is not necessary for success - I have submitted successful…
It is funny, because I agree with your statement. But I never thought of Reddit as made for discussion. Maybe I miss out, but I always have a terrible time following the comments on Reddit (granted I don't even try on Digg and comparing Reddit to HN might be apples to oranges). The comments are usually confusing and non-beneficial to me.
I get great mileage out of this "hide replies to comments" bookmarklet - it allows me to quickly read the best-rated comments that reply directly to the article. If a comment is thought-provoking I'll click through to see what discussion it's spawned.
Re: How Reddit Kicked Digg’s Ass
#30Maybe my article from a couple of years ago about the relative merits of Reddit and Digg may be relevant: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2008-January... It doesn't really explain why Digg has been more popular for the following two years. Or does it?
To be fair though, you could get a similar reddit experience by subscribing only to subreddits you find interesting.
For example, I never go to reddit.com. I go to programming.reddit.com, the subreddit for programming related articles.