Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars • Hacker News Board

Re: Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

#41

Post by raldi » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 2:42 PM UTC

seunosewa wrote: post #39

raldi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conde rightly gloats about how, during The Sarah Chubb Years, they were hands-off about meddling with reddit as a site, but they're eliding over how, during that same time, they were extremely hands- on about preventing us from hiring people or buying decent computer hardware.

This may have been a good thing. Digg didn't have any constraints on buying new hardware and hiring new people, and we can see how that ended (they bought too much, hired too many people, and collapsed)!

We weren't asking for unlimited hardware and headcount. We would have been thrilled with a rule that every time traffic doubles, we get to hire one person.

As for hardware, all we wanted was a team printer that didn't jam, an SSD for ketralnis's workstation, and the right for our engineers to substitute an equal-cost laptop of their choice for the IT-approved MacBook.

Re: Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

#42

Post by darien » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 3:35 PM UTC

davedx wrote: post #23

"On Thursday, President Obama signed up for an “Ask Me Anything” (A.M.A. in geekspeak) session at Reddit, a vast social site that is a staple of digital life for the young and connected, but less well known among grown-ups." How patronizing.

Yea, that's David Carr's voice (the NYTimes writer). He's kind of a skeptical luddite, but I have immense respect for him. He's one of the central figure in the NYTimes documentary "Page One: Inside the New York Times."

Re: Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

#43

Post by rmc » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 4:11 PM UTC

npguy wrote: post #14

Can someone explain to me how PG funded Reddit when it was more like a HN clone?

Other way around. Reddit came first, and lots of initial users and content was like what HN is now. However reddit changed. PG set up HN as to be like "reddit as it was at these start". Now both have different cultural norms, users, goals, standards, and are different.

Re: Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

#44

Post by rmc » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 4:13 PM UTC

easytiger wrote: post #35

noirman wrote: post #11

Keep in mind that when Reddit got acquired, Reddit gold doesn't exist yet. So they were losing (more) money every month.

reddit gold may never have worked if it was sold without understanding that reddit was in trouble and couldn't grow without the support of it's users. If it had been an out of the blue proposal to slap charges for features then people might have kicked up a fuss.

Another theory was that the owners (Conde Nast?) were very old media and used to thinking of magazine subscriptions. So they invented subscriptions for reddit, to show that, yes even by magazine standards, reddit is a good business.

Re: Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

#45

Post by jvm » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 5:53 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #8

"Strategically, what they have done should be a model of how to create and support a virtual start-up within a larger corporation,' said Anil Dash, a writer and entrepreneur in digital realms." Well, strategically, they might eventually want to think about making some return on investment for the acquiring investors with actual cash profit. Otherwise, they will eventually be shed at a loss (is anyone else here old en…

They bought them for 20mil, that's pretty cheap given their userbase. I bet Conde can sell them for more than that now.

Re: Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

#46

Post by kellishaver » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 8:55 PM UTC

kahawe wrote: post #36

kellishaver wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back I deleted my Reddit account and just recently I've created a new one under my real name. I decided that if I was going to post, I would do so as myself and not hide behind an anonymous name. I hadn't really done any trolling in the past, but I'd participated in discussions I certainly wouldn't have participated in if they could have readily been tracked back to me. But for better or worse, I decided to g…

Out of personal curiosity: compared to the trolling before, how does your karma do? (especially given that most 6-figure karma "stars" mostly post half-funny, hivemind-compliant one-liners.. cheap laughs without substance.)

I haven't really noticed a difference. I wasn't much trolling before. I would just end up participating in more discussions that were a) about things that didn't matter, or 2) about social topics that were more controversial than I would normally discuss when the conversation could so easily be tracked back to me.

Re: Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

#47

Post by kellishaver » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 9:09 PM UTC

webwanderings wrote: post #40

kellishaver wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A while back I deleted my Reddit account and just recently I've created a new one under my real name. I decided that if I was going to post, I would do so as myself and not hide behind an anonymous name. I hadn't really done any trolling in the past, but I'd participated in discussions I certainly wouldn't have participated in if they could have readily been tracked back to me. But for better or worse, I decided to g…

Well, that's not a bad decision if it works for you well. But anonymity doesn't necessarily equal to the poster wasting time. I use reddit with pseudonym and I don't troll. My pseudonym is my authentic identity on Reddit, just as it is here on HN. A while ago I was using one identity here on HN and for one reason or another, some people didn't like what I had to say (even though personally I was very authentic) so th…

Oh, I agree with you. You don't have to be an ass, just because you're anonymous. I didn't troll, either, but I did find that I felt more free to comment on things I otherwise wouldn't for a variety of reasons.

That's certainly both good and bad.

The negatives, in my case, were that I would end up getting into discussions over trivial topics, or would end up reading tons of comments, some good, some bad, and comment on them just because I could.... For example, if I disagreed with you, I would tell you, event hough most of the time it was over things that just weren't worth the time and effort of getting into a debate with a random stranger over.

On the other hand, posting anonymously also gave me freedom to talk at length about things that matter to me but maybe aren't the best things to go talking about using my real name when everything is indexed in a search engine (politics, religion, etc.). I'll certainly stand up for what I believe in, but in cases like a potential client who may be looking me up on Google, my religious views, for instance, shouldn't be the first thing they find. It's just irrelevant in a work relationship 99% of the time.

So making the switch to my real name, I did lose some of that freedom, and one could argue that this is a bad thing, but for me, the constraints it places on the types of discussions I'm willing to have means better time management and (overall) more thoughtful responses when I do respond. I suppose if there was a real hot-button issue that I felt compelled to comment on, I would create a throw away account and do so, but sticking with my real identity forces me to think and evaluate those situations more closely before doing so.

Re: Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

#48

Post by vaksel » Mon, Sep 03, 2012, 9:27 PM UTC

seunosewa wrote: post #39

raldi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conde rightly gloats about how, during The Sarah Chubb Years, they were hands-off about meddling with reddit as a site, but they're eliding over how, during that same time, they were extremely hands- on about preventing us from hiring people or buying decent computer hardware.

This may have been a good thing. Digg didn't have any constraints on buying new hardware and hiring new people, and we can see how that ended (they bought too much, hired too many people, and collapsed)!

Digg didn't collapse because of hardware or headcount...they collapsed because they trashed their product with unnecessary changes and pissed off their user base

Sure, the fact that they had a huge headcount, meant that they had to take more risk to try to monetize...but the nail in their coffin wasn't cost...but loss of traffic

Re: Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

#49

Post by webwanderings » Tue, Sep 04, 2012, 1:36 AM UTC

kellishaver wrote: post #47

webwanderings wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's not a bad decision if it works for you well. But anonymity doesn't necessarily equal to the poster wasting time. I use reddit with pseudonym and I don't troll. My pseudonym is my authentic identity on Reddit, just as it is here on HN. A while ago I was using one identity here on HN and for one reason or another, some people didn't like what I had to say (even though personally I was very authentic) so th…

Oh, I agree with you. You don't have to be an ass, just because you're anonymous. I didn't troll, either, but I did find that I felt more free to comment on things I otherwise wouldn't for a variety of reasons. That's certainly both good and bad. The negatives, in my case, were that I would end up getting into discussions over trivial topics, or would end up reading tons of comments, some good, some bad, and comment…

I think I have gone through a similar transformation and understanding as yours and I can totally relate to the experience and dynamics you describe. However, my conclusion was that it is better to be 100% authentic in a small and controlled confines than it is to be in public. And slowly I have adopted the approach of only speaking online what I could backup offline, that is with or without anonymity.

So upon that realization, I kept using the platforms where pseudo-identities are welcome and not frowned upon and I can be transparent where I feel comfortable. It is similar to being in an environment where I can speak on any matter on my own terms and not anyone else'. So when I acquire an avatar/identity for a site, I make sure that I use that avatar/identity with full honesty.

The people who use pseudo-identity to gratify their egos and to be abusive towards their freedom of anonymity, are basically being dishonest with themselves and everyone else. I think one can be anonymous and still be authentic. Each one of us have multiple compartments from which we operate and live our lives and we are always evolving and changing as person. Google Plus team and Mark Zuckerburgs would wrongly want you to believe otherwise.

It is just so that Internet as a whole is not a trust-worthy place so you have to pick and choose how and where you participate, and we have to be able to do it on our terms.

Re: Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

#50

Post by underwater » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 12:09 AM UTC

johnx123-up wrote: post #26

underwater wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might get a few details wrong; but HN certainly was inspired by reddit. Reddit was originally written in Lisp. Paul Graham had actually written an article about how Lisp was his secret weapon when building his Yahoo-acquired Viacom. Reddit was one of the first YC companies so I assume their language choice was inspired by this. Soon after launch reddit had performance issues and was rewritten in Python. This improv…

I always wonder how HN works without cookies. Can you share some insights on that?

Like 'almost' said; it does use cookies to remember you between session. In practice they are not strictly needed.

In a traditional web server the request comes in, some operations are performed to product an output, and the server discards all state. When the next request comes in the server handles it from scratch; authenticating sessions, loading objects in to memory, etc.

In arc, when a link or action is generated the interpreter (I think) the stack is captured an serialized. This, and he closure that the link would execute, is referenced by a unique fnid. When the user clicks on a link the server restores the previous stack and executes the closure as though the response and new request cycle never happened.

This makes it very easy to write web applications; you can concentrate on the exact flow you want rather than creating a bunch of separate-but-linked controllers that have to duplicate a lot of logic. On the down side it does violate the stateless nature of the web. I can't take a link and sharers with you. URLs become meaningless; instead of pointing to a resource they become merely a way to communicate state back to the server.

As a disclaimer: I haven't actually built anything in arc. I have peeked at the HN source code though. I do believe that it does use the traditional-style request handling for some parts where storing the stack causes issues or is unnecessary (e.g. A link from homepage to article uses a traditional stateless URL).