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Happy 10th birthday to us

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Re: Happy 10th birthday to us

#61

Post by raldi »

jedberg wrote: post #57
raldi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure we were quite double their size. In July 2010, Digg claimed to have 200M pageviews[0] and we had 279M[1]. So I think we were more like 40% bigger in terms of pageviews, which Chris's post from the time[2] seems to confirm. Though we were undercounting a bit[3], so it was probably more like 55% or 60%. And when it comes to uniques, my memory's pretty foggy, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think D…

> And when it comes to uniques, my memory's pretty foggy, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Digg actually had more than we did at that point. My recollection was that when we visited them shortly after, we were shocked to learn just how much bigger we were. But we might both be right. It was a while ago.

And hey, if you round "60% bigger" up to the next multiple, you do get "double"...

What I remember Digg being shocked about when they invited us over for lunch was that they filled two huge floors and we filled... my Toyota Yaris.

Re: Happy 10th birthday to us

#62

Post by conradfr »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #13

all that matters in reddit history to me is the turning point when Digg botched their v4 design execution and caused a huge exodus to Reddit, who was struggling at the time. Changed everything

I was one of them. I was a lurker on r/php (actually commenting using a bugmenot.com account) that I found using Google but somehow didn't understand the rest of the website / frontpage.

Digg v4 forced me to take a deeper look at reddit and since then my life has gone downhill :)

Re: Happy 10th birthday to us

#63

Post by celticninja »

ChrisArchitect wrote: post #23
celticninja wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the product.

I use it purely for image hosting/no ads/no public gallery. It's amaaaazing haha

I imagine they will run at a loss until they can monetize effectively like reddit. I know everyone tells us that reddit is not profitable but they are selling their front page to advertisers quietly.

I recently saw a front page post that was just a Taco Bell sign that was 20 years old. A fluff bullshit post with little discernable value. Now I don't suggest that the user paid to post it, that sort of stuff would be found out quickly, but it was up voted enough to get it into the hot\rising queue and by virtue of appearing there it made it to the front page.

We know that in the early days the admins/founders used fake accounts to simulate activity on the site and I not imagine that has changed. So they use these accounts to boost up votes and almost guarantee a front page position.

They are also happy to remove front page posts that advertisers don't like e.g sears

Re: Happy 10th birthday to us

#64

Post by ilovecomputers »

I always feel strange being nostalgic about a website. Like I don't feel weird being nostalgic about a classic episode of The Simpsons or a rock concert, but for YouTube or Newgrounds or now Reddit, I do.

I've used reddit for like 7 years. Gleamed helpful info from it. Even won a contest off that site (still got that postcard of all the admin's autographs). Yet my continuing theme with that site was their social experiments. Some of them were one time events, like the Reddit Jet Blue Travels or naming a whale Mr. Splashy Pants or the Rally For Sanity (okay, we technically tagged along for that event, but I was the ones drawn to that pilgrimage). Most of them were short lived, like Soapier or The redditor zine. However, there were successful experiments like IAMA (we finally got the President in the end after making joke IAMA requests), Secret Santa, and shit, we even got Snoop Dogg as an honorary mod of /r/trees.

That was the thing with reddit, it was this general forum that various people showed up on who wanted to try new things or learn something new. Sometimes they took it too far and sometimes they had real life effects. Whatever redditors tried, it was something that broke the regular order of things. Hidden away in the subreddits, I can still see these attempts at trying something new. Try Paleo, donate a pizza, ask a scientist or historian for detailed answers, try not to jack off, meetup with like-minded people, try to be more productive with GTD, try to have this obscure politician win an election, or watch these obscure movies on netflix.

Now the site has gotten so big, so many stuff has been done on there, I'm likely just skimming the surface here.

Anyways, Jedberg, Raldi, if you're still on this thread, thanks for your early contributions to that site. It has brought me fond memories and even a few friends...who I can assure you are not the steretypical reddit weirdos. For reals!

Re: Happy 10th birthday to us

#65

Post by astrodust »

ilovecomputers wrote: post #64

I always feel strange being nostalgic about a website. Like I don't feel weird being nostalgic about a classic episode of The Simpsons or a rock concert, but for YouTube or Newgrounds or now Reddit, I do. I've used reddit for like 7 years. Gleamed helpful info from it. Even won a contest off that site (still got that postcard of all the admin's autographs). Yet my continuing theme with that site was their social expe…

I think a lot of people feel the same way about Reddit as they do about The Simpsons: It used to be good.

Like so many mega-scale communities before it, Reddit is a case study in what happens if you let your user base grow faster than your cultural core can assimilate it.

To get the good content you need to dig deeper and deeper now, hide yourself away from the deluge of garbage that is the top-level groups. /r/programming remains fairly lively, but it's still a weak substitute for what it could be given proper community oversight.

Re: Happy 10th birthday to us

#66

Post by sneak »

If every single vote on reddit (both up or down) over ten years were to equal Uber's ~$40bn market cap, each of ~19bn votes would have to be worth over $2.

Re: Happy 10th birthday to us

#67

Post by Alex3917 »

raldi wrote: post #50
jedberg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit, who was struggling at the time. This is totally incorrect, BTW. Our traffic was already double Digg's at that point. Their v4 failure caused a noticeable but small bump in traffic.

I'm not sure we were quite double their size. In July 2010, Digg claimed to have 200M pageviews[0] and we had 279M[1]. So I think we were more like 40% bigger in terms of pageviews, which Chris's post from the time[2] seems to confirm. Though we were undercounting a bit[3], so it was probably more like 55% or 60%. And when it comes to uniques, my memory's pretty foggy, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think D…

That probably included views from the Digg toolbar though, so your real traffic may well have been double.

Re: Happy 10th birthday to us

#68

Post by ilovecomputers »

astrodust wrote: post #65
ilovecomputers wrote: post #64

I always feel strange being nostalgic about a website. Like I don't feel weird being nostalgic about a classic episode of The Simpsons or a rock concert, but for YouTube or Newgrounds or now Reddit, I do. I've used reddit for like 7 years. Gleamed helpful info from it. Even won a contest off that site (still got that postcard of all the admin's autographs). Yet my continuing theme with that site was their social expe…

I think a lot of people feel the same way about Reddit as they do about The Simpsons : It used to be good. Like so many mega-scale communities before it, Reddit is a case study in what happens if you let your user base grow faster than your cultural core can assimilate it. To get the good content you need to dig deeper and deeper now, hide yourself away from the deluge of garbage that is the top-level groups. /r/prog…

Yeah, but that popularity gave us the president and celebrities. Even better, I've seen more instances where someone would post a missing person or object or ask what a mysterious bug was and you'd have high chance of someone successfully completing that request. Tapping into more people for help can be as much of blessing as it is a curse.

Re: Happy 10th birthday to us

#69

Post by TTPrograms »

astrodust wrote: post #65
ilovecomputers wrote: post #64

I always feel strange being nostalgic about a website. Like I don't feel weird being nostalgic about a classic episode of The Simpsons or a rock concert, but for YouTube or Newgrounds or now Reddit, I do. I've used reddit for like 7 years. Gleamed helpful info from it. Even won a contest off that site (still got that postcard of all the admin's autographs). Yet my continuing theme with that site was their social expe…

I think a lot of people feel the same way about Reddit as they do about The Simpsons : It used to be good. Like so many mega-scale communities before it, Reddit is a case study in what happens if you let your user base grow faster than your cultural core can assimilate it. To get the good content you need to dig deeper and deeper now, hide yourself away from the deluge of garbage that is the top-level groups. /r/prog…

Eternal September appears to be universal property of online communities - IMO Reddit has tolerated it better than most thanks to it's ability to fractally segment itself into smaller and smaller communities that don't observe these issues.

The defaults are garbage, of course, but so would be literally any other community that size, so I don't really think it should reflect significantly on the nature of Reddit. They really need to start onboarding with "What are 5 things you're interested in?" instead of the defaults, though, or else the average first-time user will have no idea that this variety in community quality exists.

Re: Happy 10th birthday to us

#70

Post by alogray »

astrodust wrote: post #65
ilovecomputers wrote: post #64

I always feel strange being nostalgic about a website. Like I don't feel weird being nostalgic about a classic episode of The Simpsons or a rock concert, but for YouTube or Newgrounds or now Reddit, I do. I've used reddit for like 7 years. Gleamed helpful info from it. Even won a contest off that site (still got that postcard of all the admin's autographs). Yet my continuing theme with that site was their social expe…

I think a lot of people feel the same way about Reddit as they do about The Simpsons : It used to be good. Like so many mega-scale communities before it, Reddit is a case study in what happens if you let your user base grow faster than your cultural core can assimilate it. To get the good content you need to dig deeper and deeper now, hide yourself away from the deluge of garbage that is the top-level groups. /r/prog…

Frankly, I don't feel like Reddit's quality has changed altogether too much since even before Digg v4 killed Digg.

There was definitely a period where the average quality of a comment seemed higher. But those times also coincided with the rise of novelty accounts, power user personalities, often with foul sounding names and awful subreddits. Drama over subreddit bannings is nothing new, either.

Honestly, I'm enjoying the website more today now than I was a few years ago.

Which, I suppose, is the same thing the people say about The Simpsons.

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