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Fark redesign is now live (2007)

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Re: Fark redesign is now live (2007)

#41

Post by sveme »

SilkRoadie wrote: post #28
boc wrote: post #12

I have a 14yo reddit account, and was a Digg user for years prior to that. While there were scandals like the HDDVD code stuff, ultimately the user-hostile Digg v4 redesign killed it for me- the day they forced it on everyone I never went back. Tonight watching all the subreddits go private is the first time I’ve ever felt like Reddit is the next to die. If anyone from reddit corporate is reading this, understand tha…

Twitter killed a lot of third party apps and it just grew and grew. I suspect there is a vocal minority complaining about these changes. Most sub’s are going dark for 2 days. Time will pass and Reddit will continue to have a highly active user base.

Reddit is relying heavily on the voluntary work of moderators. Without them and power users that indirectly curate the content of subreddits, the site is toast. Reddit is not dying by alienating its user base; it might be if they are alienating their power users.

Re: Fark redesign is now live (2007)

#42

Post by hayst4ck »

Apocryphon wrote: post #4

Digg was also killed by a user-hostile redesign. Reddit was wise enough to keep its redesign indefinitely optional, at least.

There was a snarky comment in the IAMA when spez said "old.reddit.com isn't going away", and the person responded with a link to spez saying the exact same thing with the exact same words about the API 6 years ago.

Google's "don't be evil" had to go away too. Capitalism can't make room for considerations such as proliferation of evil.

Re: Fark redesign is now live (2007)

#44

Post by netsharc »

brokenkebaby wrote: post #5

And what exactly is user-hostile there? It doesn't look beautiful to my tastes, but functionally nothing is particularly complicated to understand.

I had to check what the previous design looked like: http://web.archive.org/web/20060223114105/http://www.fark.co...

I guess the new (current since 2007) design has a lot more whitespace, although not as bad as now "mobile-first" designs of the last 5 or so years. On the topic of mobile, the current fark.com doesn't have a phone-friendly design.

Re: Fark redesign is now live (2007)

#45

Post by shusaku »

SilkRoadie wrote: post #28
boc wrote: post #12

I have a 14yo reddit account, and was a Digg user for years prior to that. While there were scandals like the HDDVD code stuff, ultimately the user-hostile Digg v4 redesign killed it for me- the day they forced it on everyone I never went back. Tonight watching all the subreddits go private is the first time I’ve ever felt like Reddit is the next to die. If anyone from reddit corporate is reading this, understand tha…

Twitter killed a lot of third party apps and it just grew and grew. I suspect there is a vocal minority complaining about these changes. Most sub’s are going dark for 2 days. Time will pass and Reddit will continue to have a highly active user base.

The problem is a lack of alternatives. At least with Twitter there was mastodon, but that was always going to fail outside of techie circles. What is the alternative to Reddit? Years ago the idea of starting a successful social network was a venture capitalist’s dream, but I wonder if they’ve woken up to the challenges of actually managing one.

Re: Fark redesign is now live (2007)

#46

Post by creshal »

SilkRoadie wrote: post #28
boc wrote: post #12

I have a 14yo reddit account, and was a Digg user for years prior to that. While there were scandals like the HDDVD code stuff, ultimately the user-hostile Digg v4 redesign killed it for me- the day they forced it on everyone I never went back. Tonight watching all the subreddits go private is the first time I’ve ever felt like Reddit is the next to die. If anyone from reddit corporate is reading this, understand tha…

Twitter killed a lot of third party apps and it just grew and grew. I suspect there is a vocal minority complaining about these changes. Most sub’s are going dark for 2 days. Time will pass and Reddit will continue to have a highly active user base.

Twitter's official app and interfaces were never as user-hostile and borderline unusable as Reddit's app and redesigned web interface.

And twitter never tried to pivot its core product and kick out most of its users to chase last year's hype and be more attractive to markets that are already happy with other apps.

Re: Fark redesign is now live (2007)

#47

Post by SllX »

ripreddit420 wrote: post #11

Anyone else remember the great Digg exodus? It’s wild watching Reddit quickly following the footsteps. Steve Huffman (aka Spez) let his true colors shine, with (IPO) dollar signs in his eyes.

One of the major differences is that there’s no clear alternative.

Digg and Reddit had a lot of overlap in what they were trying to do immediately prior to Digg’s redesign. Reddit was an obvious place to go if you preferred Digg up until that point.

Now what’s the clear alternative to Reddit? Discord is probably the closest just from a UX perspective and I expect to be finding stuff there that I used to find on Reddit in the near future; but it’s not as close as Digg and Reddit were, and a lot of the people that made Reddit into what it was have an issue with Discord’s walled off nature.

Re: Fark redesign is now live (2007)

#48

Post by Apocryphon »

jwrallie wrote: post #22
boc wrote: post #12

I have a 14yo reddit account, and was a Digg user for years prior to that. While there were scandals like the HDDVD code stuff, ultimately the user-hostile Digg v4 redesign killed it for me- the day they forced it on everyone I never went back. Tonight watching all the subreddits go private is the first time I’ve ever felt like Reddit is the next to die. If anyone from reddit corporate is reading this, understand tha…

There were times like this in the past (the changes when Pao became CEO and later the censorship through quarantining of multiple subreddits came to my mind, but there were others). I think the main reason there was no exodus similar to Digg's is not due to good policy on Reddit's side (it became increasingly worse over time) but the lack of a competitor that could quickly scale to receive a migration without going d…

I would joke that 9gag is the natural Reddit competitor, but I also want to point out that somehow 9gag is a YC startup.

Re: Fark redesign is now live (2007)

#49

Post by onli »

hackernewds wrote: post #23
rapsey wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the business model is terrible. You need to sell ads to survive and the ads ruin the site.

and when you try to rein in expenses to show less ads, the community begins to propose $10M buyouts and every refrain from reasonable optimizations of their API calls.

This references the Apollo client discussion and is wrong on many levels.

1. They are not "reining in" expenses, they are purposely pricing out 3rd-party clients (which probably has the goal to show more ads, not less)

2. The $10M buyout comments was a reasonable comment countering the statement that reddit loses $20M each year by users using Apollo. A comment which was a half-joke, as the audio recording shows clearly. In that case, buying Appolo for $10M would have been a steal and Reddit would have jumped on it. They didn't, their prior statement was probably a lie.

3. There were no suggestions for reasonable optimizations of API calls. Apollo claims they already optimized whenever possible and whenever they were asked for it, and that client was specifically not listed in an earlier discussion about ineffective API usage. Reported measurements confirm that, the official API uses more calls. Regardless, later Reddit made this accusation, showing that they are not truthful in this discussion.

Your pro-reddit position is not reasonable.

Re: Fark redesign is now live (2007)

#50

Post by blitzar »

boc wrote: post #12

I have a 14yo reddit account, and was a Digg user for years prior to that. While there were scandals like the HDDVD code stuff, ultimately the user-hostile Digg v4 redesign killed it for me- the day they forced it on everyone I never went back. Tonight watching all the subreddits go private is the first time I’ve ever felt like Reddit is the next to die. If anyone from reddit corporate is reading this, understand tha…

If anyone from reddit corporate is reading this, understand that its over. This week is critical to save your personal narrative.

No matter what really happened; always tell people you are the person who invented the like button at facebook, not the one who decided to band porn on tumblr.

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