Maybe Digg uses small servers whereas StackOverflow uses big servers?
Using big servers would be what Microsoft's licensing model makes you want to do.
Why does digg need so many servers?
51–60 of 65 posts
Re: Why does digg need so many servers?
#52Just as perplexing, why do they need ~68 employees ( http://about.digg.com/team ). My counting may be off by 1-2, but last I checked Reddit is coming up on them traffic-wise ( http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com+digg.com/ ), and only has 7 employees? And I'm pretty sure Reddit doesn't have 500 servers either, although I could be wrong. Both sites offer very similar functionality. While past its peak, Slashdot…
My understanding (which is, to say, belief built up over watching the companies from outside) is that Reddit is currently running what could best be described as a skeleton crew: Conde Nast won't fund them, so they're just trying to keep the ship afloat and don't have time for anything else. Digg has scaled to the size of a company that, for a couple of years now, has considered itself just on the tipping point of "s…
Everything that is cool about Reddit at this point is what Redditors are doing with Reddit, not what Reddit is doing with its site. And isn't that how social media is supposed to work? Not just some notion that users are tools, that you'll crowdsource your way to being yet-another-traditional-media source (except without journalists)... social media should be individuals forming their own communities... communities of interest, communities of practice, communities of support -- all of which exist in Reddit (/r/SuicideWatch both disturbs and impresses me).
So the fact Reddit-the-software isn't changing that much doesn't seem like that big an issue, it's more like infrastructure. A major redesign would be negatively disruptive to the communities that are building there. Not that there aren't great things Reddit could do but isn't, but I think they are doing well at the most important stuff. If Reddit had 68 employees they not only would be fat, they'd probably fuck up a good thing.
Re: Why does digg need so many servers?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. Every time someone trots out "And Reddit only has 7 guys", I think to myself that they're innovating as if they had 3. Say what you will about Digg, but at least they rolled out new software.
Say what you will about Digg, but at least they rolled out new software. Digg is a discussion site, not an operating system -- what is the value in "rolling out new software"? Digg's value is in the quality of the discussion and community; "innovation" that doesn't improve that is pointless. Look at HN: it remains nearly as minimalist as always, and mostly receives occasional tweaks and performance improvements.
Quite -- it was innovation that killed Digg wasn't it?
Re: Why does digg need so many servers?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely. Every time someone trots out "And Reddit only has 7 guys", I think to myself that they're innovating as if they had 3. Say what you will about Digg, but at least they rolled out new software.
Say what you will about Digg, but at least they rolled out new software. Digg is a discussion site, not an operating system -- what is the value in "rolling out new software"? Digg's value is in the quality of the discussion and community; "innovation" that doesn't improve that is pointless. Look at HN: it remains nearly as minimalist as always, and mostly receives occasional tweaks and performance improvements.
I would agree that I love HN's minimalist approach, but the end game for HN and Digg are vastly different, aren't they?
I think the perceived value of rolling out new software is that Digg had hoped it would draw in more uses and entice existing users to become more active. If you're running a website that is largely user generated content and is also stagnant, how do you inject new life into it without adding new features? I'm genuinely curious.
Re: Why does digg need so many servers?
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Say what you will about Digg, but at least they rolled out new software. Digg is a discussion site, not an operating system -- what is the value in "rolling out new software"? Digg's value is in the quality of the discussion and community; "innovation" that doesn't improve that is pointless. Look at HN: it remains nearly as minimalist as always, and mostly receives occasional tweaks and performance improvements.
Quite -- it was innovation that killed Digg wasn't it?
I'm of the view that the growth and community killed Digg.
Once Digg hit critical mass, they were killed by the signal to noise ratio. I stopped visiting the site a couple of years ago because of that.
The reason why HN thrives is that the signal to noise ratio is still quite high, and while there is diversity in the submissions, you can probably group them into a few common themes.
Re: Why does digg need so many servers?
#56[Sunglasses On] Sounds like the .Net stack performs much better than the LAMP stack.
I thought people on HN are more open to technology discussion. It seems people can't handle their bubble being pierced when presented with facts.
It would be more interesting you have facts to refute my statement than downvotes.
Re: Why does digg need so many servers?
#57The difference is that digg has network information (IE: Followers). Stack overflow doesn't. Think through the ramifications of each of these page flows: 1. Give me this question and everybody who commented on it. 2. Give me every post that this user is following has made over the last n days. That's why.
That would increase the load on the database. Why does that increase the load on the webservers?
Re: Why does digg need so many servers?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding (which is, to say, belief built up over watching the companies from outside) is that Reddit is currently running what could best be described as a skeleton crew: Conde Nast won't fund them, so they're just trying to keep the ship afloat and don't have time for anything else. Digg has scaled to the size of a company that, for a couple of years now, has considered itself just on the tipping point of "s…
Everything that is cool about Reddit at this point is what Redditors are doing with Reddit, not what Reddit is doing with its site. And isn't that how social media is supposed to work? Not just some notion that users are tools, that you'll crowdsource your way to being yet-another-traditional-media source (except without journalists)... social media should be individuals forming their own communities... communities o…
Do not take my comment to mean I'm anti-Reddit, I like Reddit way more than I ever did Digg :) But Reddit doesn't really do a lot apart from keeping everything going.
I agree that altering Reddit now is probably not a good idea, and they don't need a large headcount, but it's good that Reddit isn't answering to shareholders directly, because if it wasn't for Digg's implosion, their growth would have been far too slow.
Re: Why does digg need so many servers?
#59Re: Why does digg need so many servers?
#60My last job served around 30-40 million pages a month on 4 servers that used ASP.Net and SQL Server 2000. The only server whose CPU utilization was over 20% was the database server. I'm not sure the CPU utilization on the web servers ever went above 10%. A friend of mine's company has a tough time keeping up with 500,000 page views a month using more equipment. They're using PHP and MySQL.
I serve around 50 million requests a day using 4 servers on a system built using PHP and MySQL on one of my services.
Requests/Pages per server is a bad metric to determine efficiency when every persons problems are so different.
If your utilization is so low why do you have the additional servers?