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Can Digg make a run on Reddit?

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Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?

#12

They can through algorithms, which is something that is painfully lacking on most social media sites (including HN). Give users the ability to dislike something strongly enough that anyone who voted it up is excluded from all vote counts/rankings/recommendations as provided to that user for some period of time. While this leads to a filtered world, that is exactly what users expect from sites like these. Reddit is es…

Which subreddits do you subscribe to where you see that unwanted content?

Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?

#13
post #12

They can through algorithms, which is something that is painfully lacking on most social media sites (including HN). Give users the ability to dislike something strongly enough that anyone who voted it up is excluded from all vote counts/rankings/recommendations as provided to that user for some period of time. While this leads to a filtered world, that is exactly what users expect from sites like these. Reddit is es…

Which subreddits do you subscribe to where you see that unwanted content?

Which subreddits do you subscribe to where you see that unwanted content?

It shouldn't matter what subreddits I subscribe to (and the encroachment of certain trends keeps herding people to yet new subreddits. /r/gaming -> rage comics and DAE remember. Okay, everyone to /r/games...rinse repeat. /r/atheism -> ridiculous and obviously fake caricatures for people to knock down. /r/programming -> beginner material, so what, /r/notbeginnerprogramming?)

That is a hack, manual solution for machine learning of the things I am interested in.

Netflix uses strong algorithms and a lot of data crunching to suggest movies I might be interested in, rather than simply forcing me to subscribe to wholesale genres (you like Action movies so here's every movie that dropped in the Action bin). The eventually winner of the social news game will be those who effectively transfer that sort of learning to this genre.

Note that you can take it beyond simply finding correlation indexes between users -- analyze the linked site to determine factors like is it image heavy, what is the grade level / complexity level of the writing, discern the subject matter, etc.

Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?

#14
post #6

They are serving completely different purposes. Why would they be competing?

They are both link aggregators. Although, the new Digg looks more like Pinterest or even canv.as than Reddit.

Reddit is far from being a link aggregator right now. Reddit is all about the community. I'd call Reddit a community of communities, I feel like this is what describes it the best (in its current state).

Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?

#16
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which subreddits do you subscribe to where you see that unwanted content?

Which subreddits do you subscribe to where you see that unwanted content? It shouldn't matter what subreddits I subscribe to (and the encroachment of certain trends keeps herding people to yet new subreddits. /r/gaming -> rage comics and DAE remember. Okay, everyone to /r/games...rinse repeat. /r/atheism -> ridiculous and obviously fake caricatures for people to knock down. /r/programming -> beginner material, so wha…

If you think that subreddits don't matter, then you are clearly expecting from Reddit something that it was not designed to have. The most popular subreddits are swarmed with teenagers and the quality has gone downhill, that's true. But the value of Reddit is in its (less popular) subreddits.

Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?

#17
post #6

They are serving completely different purposes. Why would they be competing?

They are both link aggregators. Although, the new Digg looks more like Pinterest or even canv.as than Reddit.

But their algorithms for aggregating are very different. Reddit is primarily based on submitted links. Digg is primarily based on links shared on social networks.

Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which subreddits do you subscribe to where you see that unwanted content? It shouldn't matter what subreddits I subscribe to (and the encroachment of certain trends keeps herding people to yet new subreddits. /r/gaming -> rage comics and DAE remember. Okay, everyone to /r/games...rinse repeat. /r/atheism -> ridiculous and obviously fake caricatures for people to knock down. /r/programming -> beginner material, so wha…

If you think that subreddits don't matter, then you are clearly expecting from Reddit something that it was not designed to have. The most popular subreddits are swarmed with teenagers and the quality has gone downhill, that's true. But the value of Reddit is in its (less popular) subreddits.

huggyface's point is that Reddit should hide uninteresting-for-me material and surface interesting-for-me material automatically. Subscribing to subreddits is a manual process that shouldn't be necessary.

Re: Can Digg make a run on Reddit?

#19
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are both link aggregators. Although, the new Digg looks more like Pinterest or even canv.as than Reddit.

But their algorithms for aggregating are very different. Reddit is primarily based on submitted links. Digg is primarily based on links shared on social networks.

True. However, at the end of the day, both of these sites revolve around the content "submitted" by users (either directly on the site or across social networks), and they need this content to thrive/survive. So while their purpose/methods may be very different, both sites co-exist in the same ecosystem?
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