
Facebook Didn't Kill Digg, Reddit Did - boh
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/07/13/facebook-didnt-kill-digg-reddit-did/
======
jgrahamc
And that happened, IMHO, because the people behind reddit didn't behave like
jerks and the people behind Digg did.

One example of being jerks: [http://blog.jgc.org/2006/07/sense-of-humor-
failure-at-digg.h...](http://blog.jgc.org/2006/07/sense-of-humor-failure-at-
digg.html)

After that I was unbanned, but not after an employee of Digg defamed me in a
blog post by making false claims: <http://blog.jgc.org/2006/07/unbanned-from-
digg.html>

And here's an example of how reddit people weren't jerks when I inadvertently
brought the site great slowness: <http://blog.jgc.org/2010/09/tale-of-two-
cultures.html>

~~~
mibbitier
Reddit never seemed to have to bother trying to make any profit. They still
haven't.

Digg wanted to make money.

If Conde hadn't bought Reddit, then it would likely have been a far closer
race.

When your competition isn't interested in making money, you're always going to
be at a major disadvantage.

~~~
antidaily
I'm not so sure. Digg was pretty much already dead when that deal went
through.

~~~
mibbitier
Not how I remember it at all. At that time Digg was quite a bit larger than
Reddit. Then later Digg decided to really push the revenue generation, and
users fled to the obvious free alternative.

~~~
antidaily
2006 - You're totally right. My mistake.

------
cletus
None of these things killed Digg. Digg was simply a transitional meme.

Prior to the Internet you had mass media controlling distribution. The
Internet comes along and you have things like Usenet and the proto-Web.

Then comes the first crowdsourcing sites to allow people to find content
without employing people to curate that information. Slashdot was certainly
early in this trend.

What Digg allowed is a certain band of people to control the information flow.
People would get paid to promote submissions as it became clear that a front-
page submission generated a lot of pageviews.

But what became apparent with all these community sites (and this includes
forums) is they start with an early group who provide value to each other.
This group ends up becoming insular. De facto standards form. But even in the
Usenet days you had the "September" problem (where new college freshmen would
get Internet access and not understand the "rules" and conventions that were
in place and would ask questions that had already been answered, etc).

Basically all these social sites get worse over time as the masses flood in.

Digg died because the idea that there is a central source for news was a
holdover idea from the old media days. Reddit understood this. Global reddit
is basically useless. The subreddits are the only remotely interesting thing
about reddit.

People complain about how HN is getting worse. That's probably true and it is
true (and will continue to be true) of any such social site in the future.

I've heard the same complaints about Twitter.

Facebook for most people is not a source of news. It doesn't have the same
link-sharing mindshare (IMHO) for most people that other mediums have.
Ultimately I think the biggest use case for Facebook is still sharing photos.
People go to Facebook to find out what their friends are doing. Very few go to
find out what's going on in the world (much as Facebook would like that to be
the case).

I'm surprised at how some wax lyrical on how amazing reddit is. It's just a
minor tweak on a long trend of existing prior art (the subreddits). Personally
I think it's a cesspool full of trolls. Proggit (programming.reddit.com) is
(IMHO) just awful.

~~~
dminor
> Proggit (programming.reddit.com) is (IMHO) just awful.

So I went over there, and the first article is about protocol-less links, and
the first comment notes that they have performance issues in css for IE7 & 8\.
The second article is a link to dadgum and the first comment is about
optimizing network communication.

It's not HN, but awful is an overstatement.

~~~
giulianob
It seems like proggit is dying. I've been subbed to it for a few years and
there used to be a lot more submissions. I don't have data to back it up and
hopefully I am wrong but if I am not I imagine us programmers prefer to go to
sources totally dedicated for programming instead of a mixed bag. It would
make sense for proggit to be dying out though because Reddit used to be
primarily for tech and has of course now shifted out of tech and into
everything.

~~~
jacques_chester
I stopped following proggit months ago for the simple reason that there's too
much not-about-programming posts. Too much of the content was "announcing my
iphone app!", "omg industry gossip!" and stackoverflow repost variety. And I
was sick of it.

I tried for about 2 months to politely explain to posters why their posts
didn't fit the guidelines and then I quit and gave up. Why fight an
inevitability?

------
programminggeek
The value in Digg was the tribe it created, not the software, not the ads, not
the human beings keeping the lights on. It was the tribe of people who found
interesting news on the internet and shared it.

FB, Reddit, HN did not "kill" Digg. The tribe growing up and or moving on to
other things ended Digg. A similar tribe is at Reddit now, but a similar tribe
used to live at Slashdot. Before that they probably lived on Usenet message
boards or wherever.

In college, the comp sci program I was in had a private message board that
ended up having a very similar vibe to digg/reddit/slashdot. Tech heavy, at
times very heated political and religious debate. Eventually the original
group graduated and it's never been quite the same.

It seems that each generation has something like digg, slashdot, reddit,
whatever... that is "the thing" for hanging out and sharing/complaining about
the news of the day or whatever is interesting. They might look like fads
because on the internet they peak and crumble pretty quick, but really it is
probably a natural cycle that communities and tribes go through.

Eventually HN and Reddit will become irrelevant to certain groups and the
tribes that live there will move on to the next thing, whatever that might be.

I'm guessing the next site like this already exists or is going to be built
soon, so any guesses as to what it will be if it's already out there?

~~~
marvin
From my perspective, Reddit is qualitatively different from all the sites you
mentioned. Reddit is the first large news site which allows its users to
create their own communities.

Most of the content on Reddit these days isn't technology- or politically
oriented at all. This has changed over the last year or so - there are
subreddits for pretty much anything. What makes these communities special is
that a lot of them have very specialized and very diverse knowledge, not
necessarily related to the subjects Reddit's early adopters were interested
in. There are subreddits for science, fitness, finance, sex, art and just
about any other subject people would be interested in following. What gets to
the default front page doesn't even begin scratching the surface of what the
ecosystem has to offer.

I have the contrarian opinion that Reddit won't be displaced for a long time
in the realm of primarily text-based news sharing and discussion.

~~~
danielweber
Reading your comment, I think reddit is like a moderated usenet.

I think the only thing that would really kill reddit is if the people in
charge try too hard to monetize it, like Digg did.

------
rickmb
Nobody killed Digg. Digg committed suicide by telling it's original, loyal
user base to go fuck themselves in it's quest for more money and a broader
audience. Digg became too greedy.

But it was pretty obvious much earlier on that Digg had zero respect for its
users. In many ways, Digg had a very old school broadcast attitude: the users
were merely part of the product, only the advertisers mattered.

~~~
jshen
The problem digg faced is that their loyal customers were not sufficient to
warrant the amount of money they had raised. If they had done nothing, it
would have been suicide as well.

~~~
dredmorbius
The problem they faced, then, was in deluding themselves about their
valuation, and raising more capital (and incurring greater obligations) than
they could meet.

Digg were apparently sustainable at their prior valuation, and with their
existing userbase.

Icarus problem.

~~~
jshen
by this logic nearly all startups are delusional. I don't think I'd frame it
this way.

~~~
dredmorbius
Not quite.

Digg was _viable_ previously. Hence the Icarus problem. They tried to fly too
high.

Most startups are stillborn. That's a different Greek myth.

~~~
jshen
yeah, but I think they believed they could grow into something bigger. I.e,
the same thing all startups believe, and typically fail to do.

Don't get me wrong, I think they'd have been far better off taking far less
money and simply being a profitable property. I think nearly all startups
would be better off doing this. I just don't believe that digg did anything
abnormal for a typical startup.

------
kn0thing
Here's the blog post TechCrunch flamed me about (called me a liar and
whatnot). I wrote it after I tried the alpha of diggv4, but before it was
released to the public; I have no idea what happened internally, but the
resulting product was indeed pretty devastating -- the final self-inflicted
wound after years of encouraging power users and sacrificing the best
interests of the userbase: <http://alexisohanian.com/an-open-letter-to-kevin-
rose>

------
grandalf
Actually Digg killed Digg with the redesign. One time after the redesign I
went to the site and there was NO CONTENT anywhere. It wanted me to make
friends with people before I would get to see any content.

I logged in. Still no content. That was the last time I visited digg.com, and
I'm sure I'm not alone.

My guess is that if the acquirers just rever to the pre-redesign version Digg
will come back to life.

------
yaix
Reddit Didn't Kill Digg, Digg Did

I read a bit of the discussion on Reddit, and there were surprisingly (to me)
many people that had used Digg before. Then something called "v4" came and
Digg became unusable to many people. As I understood the discussion. Digg
didn't care. So its users looked for alternatives and moved to Reddit. Digg
still didn't care. People got used to Reddit and stayed. Digg still didn't
care.

Yesterday I looked at Digg.com for the first time in years. Only a quick look
and I spotted already a number of beginners mistakes only in the front page
design.

For example the clickable headlines to the stories: they are the main content.
Yet they are very /very/ light and hard to read on the white background. WTF.
You want your main content to have /good contrast/ and stand out, and
secondary stuff (like "points" or "who submitted" or "vote buttons") to have
less contrasts as to not distract from your main content. Yet, even such basic
things Digg gets wrong. I didn't dare to digg further.

------
officemonkey
The tipping point, IMHO, was when Digg banned people from typing the following
number: "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0."

As soon as that happened, Digg lost the alpha nerds. The rest was destiny
played out over time.

------
butterfi
I was struck by the authors comment "Well, they haven’t redesigned since what
appears to be 1997, which has pleased their user base who like the simple
look."

How long before web designers start complaining about reddit the way they
complain about craigslist's design?

~~~
danso
The complaints will happen when that simplicity impedes information flow. It's
not a matter of visual aesthetics, it's a matter of usefulness. CL's design
impedes its usability, independent of its aesthetics.

In Craigslist case, there are clearly better ways to browse housing spots than
in a list of links with non-standardized location information in the linktext.
In Reddit and HN, part of the joy is serendipity...you don't need to aggregate
the content behind each link at once...because of the voting system, you don't
worry that clicking on the top link will be a waste of time. That's not the
case with CL's chronologically ordered list.

Reddit has made some concessions with allowing thumbnails of image-based posts
to show up. Otherwise, its minimalistic approach serves a real usability
purpose and is not simply the result of stagnation.

~~~
true_religion
Uh... picture subreddits are 75% of reddit's frontpage traffic and my little
startup thinks that there are better ways of browsing pictures than a long
list of thumbnails where the title is even larger than the thumbnail preview.

~~~
SwellJoe
So, you'll be competing with Pinterest?

~~~
true_religion
No. Pinterest is more tuned towards sharing pictures with people that you
already know.

Picc.it is tuned to sharing pictures with people you don't know, but share
your interests.

Think of it as the difference between glomping onto a pre-existing community
(e.g. Facebook friends), and creating a new one (e.g. Reddit).

------
ajays
IMHO, Digg killed Digg.

In any such ecosystem where the inmates are running the asylum, pissing them
off is not a good course of action.

The tribe knew that it was the reason why Digg was what Digg was. But
arrogance on the part of the upper management at Digg was its downfall; they
couldn't come to terms with the basic fact that the people were responsible
for Digg's success. So they decided to tweak it, "enhance" it, modify it to
"Digg 2.0", and the people revolted.

Lesson: if you are a user-driven site, listen to them. Don't piss them off.

------
toddhd
As an ex-Digger, I can tell you that it was Digg that killed Digg for me. At
one point in time, Digg was cool. Granted, it was still mostly a rehash of
news from Reddit, 4Chan and other sites, but the audience base was large
enough to provide original content as well, and the UI was considerably better
than any of the other sites.

What killed it (for me anyway) was that Digg suddenly allowed advertisers to
start posting away. Ads popped up everywhere, and every other post from
directly from Mashable. Digg was no longer cool, and mostly, it was Mashable's
alternative site. :)

I switched to Reddit. Reddit didn't like all the Digg users migrating over
initially, but attitudes have cooled over time. I can't really see a move that
Digg could make at this point that would entice me back.

------
r00fus
My take - Digg killed itself. Kevin Rose either sold out to advertisers or had
a tin ear for his site's community.

------
hybrid11
I used to be a huge Digg fan, and checked it religiously. Digg v4 is what
completely drove me away.

The Digg v4 idea was good, but poorly executed. They shouldn't have suddenly
forced you to follow other people to get your news. They were trying too hard
to become a social network like Twitter / Facebook. Instead, I think they
should have integrated with Twitter / Facebook to find top news, rather than
starting their own social network.

------
crisnoble
I am surprised no one has liked to ncomment's rendition of the how the digg vs
reddit war went down.

Part 1: <http://ncomment.com/blog/2009/04/08/war-13/>

Part 2: <http://ncomment.com/blog/2009/12/17/war-23/>

Part 3: <http://ncomment.com/blog/2012/01/06/war-33/>

------
WestCoastJustin
Personally, I feel Digg killed Digg. They were their own worst enemy and drove
people to alternatives.

------
binarycrusader
No, sorry, as someone that used Digg regularly on a daily basis, Digg killed
Digg.

The day that Digg changed their interface was the day they lost a huge portion
of their users, including me. I went back once more after that, and then never
again.

------
ojbyrne
In my opinion (and I was there), the never ending side projects killed Digg.
Revision3 (especially), Pownce, Wefollow, etc, etc.

------
Kaedon
I left Digg for Reddit because Reddit's community at the time valued articles
with content over images. As Reddit has absorbed Digg's old user base, so too
did it absorb much of the culture of Digg. Reddit no longer seems to have much
focus on reading and has instead become a place to find funny images, much
like Digg in its heyday. It feels inevitable that the culture of a website
like Reddit will change over its life span but it bothered me to see it happen
first-hand.

~~~
zecho
But with Reddit, there are thousands of others who agree with you, who have
created tons of subreddits that would be relevant to whatever your interests.
Obviously some communities are more active and more interesting than others,
but they're around if you look. Here are some great article-based reddits:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/indepthstories/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/literature/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/longtext/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/offbeat/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/>

~~~
crisnoble
<http://ww.reddit.com/r/tldr>

------
debacle
I would place almost all of the blame of Digg dying on Digg itself.

------
cliveholloway
DIGG killed Digg. The week after V 3.0 launched was a mess. Tons of corporate
sponsored posts (AKA intrusive adverts), often multiple submissions by the
same person on the front page at the same time, and other weirdness.

Reddit was right place, right time to pick up the exodus. I don't think it did
anything to kill Digg.

------
myakimov
I was just thinking about this yesterday when I read the Digg article. I used
to read Digg all the time, until it got to the point where the comments in
each Digg submitted article stated how that article/news story was on reddit
first. This is when I found out about reddit... haha

------
marcamillion
Facebook, Twitter, Reddit didn't kill Digg. Digg killed Digg.

Kevin got caught in a situation where he had to please investors and they were
looking at what other people were doing and he stop innovating and started
copying.

That's what killed Digg. Nothing else.

------
tibbon
One thing I never understood about Digg is why at one point they had around
300 employees and an incredible burn rate- only do less successfully and less
efficiently do what Reddit was able to do with 5-10 employees.

------
dan_yall
Maybe I'm the only one, but I moved from digg to reddit entirely because digg
was blocked at work and reddit wasn't. I've worked at four different places in
the last five years and at each one I expect to see reddit blocked as well,
but no one has gotten around to it. Maybe my situation is atypical, but I have
to believe that the lack of availability of digg to office-bound slackers had
to have played some part in it's demise.

------
unreal37
I think businesses face significant hurdles (and are likely to die) when the
founders lose interest in running them. Digg. Twitter (Dorsey left but came
back and saved it). Yahoo. Flickr. MySpace. The list is endless.

Even Microsoft is not the same since Bill Gates handed the reigns to Ballmer.
They're just too big (Office/Windows cash cows) to actually die from that.

Founder disinterest is lethal.

------
conductr
As I remember it, Digg forced some updates on it's users that they (we) did
not like and were very vocal about. Facebook does the same thing, except there
were other options for Digg users (reddit), Facebook users have a steep cost
of moving to another service - I would actually argue Facebook users have no
other options

------
milkingcowboy
To simple put it there was a time when Digg used to be as simple as Reddit,
then Kevin Rose got consumed by his own fame of this and that, the kid forgot
to focus managing this one and other companies as well (Digg, Pownce, Milk).
Did anyone remember Leah Culver? hehehehehe.

------
wastedbrains
I would say diggs attempts at manipulating the front page and banning people,
blocking posts, and unfairly pushing some content to the front helped kill it.
When I lost faith in the democracy of Digg I just stopped going and spent time
with my votes elsewhere (reddit)

------
zmmmmm
Reddit is a bit like the craigslist of news aggregators. They've resisted the
lure of monetizing in any big way and continue resolutely to put their users
first. Digg got overambitious and sold out and their users smelled it and
left.

------
mirceagoia
Digg was killed NOT by Facebook OR Reddit...but by its power users. Those
killed Digg.

------
antithesis
> What did Reddit do right that Digg did wrong? Well, they haven’t redesigned
> since what appears to be 1997, which has pleased their user base who like
> the simple look.

Reddit was founded in 1997?

------
asdfasdghasdf
This article will be useful for the zero people who think Facebook killed
Digg.

------
natmaster
Digg actually killed themselves. Reddit was just there to reap the rewards.

------
velodrome
Digg v4 killed Digg. Reddit filled the void. End of story.

------
Vivtek
I'm pretty sure it's Yahoo! that pulled the trigger.

------
krsunny
This is news?

------
benihana
Digg did not kill Digg. Nor did Reddit, nor Facebook. People using Digg killed
it. The same people are now killing Reddit, making it little more than a place
to regurgitate memes, nerd pop culture, and rage comics. Reddit and Digg both
used to be places to go for interesting discussion based off decent links.
Over time, good and insightful discussion gave way to quick-to-consume, funny
one-liners. You can see it happening in popular subreddits. Recently the
moderators of /r/science started taking a heavy hand and deleting irrelevant
comments.

This isn't a problem with the sites, it's a problem with the users of these
sites. This is democracy in action. It's cable news. People voting don't want
to see challenging, thought-provoking content. They want to see things that
confirm their biases, or things they can repost to facebook for quick laughs
from their friends.

~~~
chaostheory
> People using Digg killed it. The same people are now killing Reddit, making
> it little more than a place to regurgitate memes

1) With sub-reddits, this hasn't become as big of a problem unless a lot of
users still keep the sub-reddits that annoy them. There is a reddit for
everyone, especially since anyone can create their own sub-reddit. While Digg
only had one idea tribe, Reddit has many. Moreover users that create their own
sub-reddits can police them with other like-minded users.

2) Reddit is able to fit more content per page given their design. I don't
have to keep clicking the next page link to get more.

~~~
dwc
I _like_ reddit, almost completely because I've subscribed to several small
subreddits that have a good community, high quality content, et al.

But there's a tricky problem. Subreddits like /r/programming dominate, while
more focused subreddits like /r/ruby (or whatever) languish. If I have a ruby
link and I care at all about karma, I'm going to post it in /r/programming.

~~~
chaostheory
Well that's the price for avoiding garbage, you have to do a little more work.
It's not impossible to successfully have a branch of an existing sub-reddit.
Just take a look at the offshoots of r/gaming: r/gamingnews and r/games; or
even the branches off from r/politics like r/progressive and r/libertarian.

In your case, ruby already has a good news site and it doesn't need reddit.
Rubyflow is more than sufficient imo

~~~
dwc
"That's the price for..." implies that this is constant across alternatives,
but it's not. One alternative is a hierarchy with subtrees feeding into nodes
higher up, so that /r/programming/ruby posts would appear in /r/programming.
This has its own set of problems where the price to be paid is not the same as
for reddit's completely flat model. I'm not saying this hierarchical model
would be better, but it would have different pros and cons.

Call me an optimist, but I can't help but think that there's something better
than what's out there now.

~~~
chaostheory
> "That's the price for..." implies that this is constant across alternatives,
> but it's not

Well if there isn't, as I've already mentioned, you can make your own sub-
reddit.

> Call me an optimist, but I can't help but think that there's something
> better than what's out there now.

hmmm you're right... Reddit's sub-reddit's is imo a half-assed implementation
of an idea tribe paper that showed up years ago on HN. To this day I can't
find it.

Anyways the gist of the idea, is that everyone belongs to an idea tribe /
group aimed that making wikipedia better. All of these groups have differences
in what they think are accurate, right, cool, etc... However many groups have
things that they agree on. The paper talks about how great it would be if we
could have something that would highlight those commonalities.

~~~
PerryCox
> Well if there isn't, as I've already mentioned, you can make your own sub-
> reddit.

That doesn't mean anyone's going to use it. It takes a long time to grow a
community. I would love for /r/trueskyrim to take off because /r/skyrim has
become 99% garbage, 1% content. Unfortunately trueskyrim hasn't had a post in
6 months.

The only reason /r/Games ever took off was because it was started by the mods
of /r/gaming and got lots of attention on /r/gaming's front page. Don't get me
wrong /r/Games is wonderful, but without the publicity that it got from
/r/gaming I doubt anyone would use it.

~~~
chaostheory
> Unfortunately trueskyrim hasn't had a post in 6 months.

Why not seed it yourself for a few weeks and see what happens?

> The only reason /r/Games ever took off was because it was started by the
> mods of /r/gaming and got lots of attention on /r/gaming's front page.

It's not like you can't work with the mods of other sub-reddits. r/libertarian
is on r/politic's sub-reddit page

------
rprasad
Reddit did not kill Digg. Digg killed Digg. Reddit's big break was Digg v4,
when most of the community finally jumped ship.

~~~
Rudism
I would argue that the "big break" was actually a bad thing for Reddit. The
massive influx of disenfranchised Digg users contributed to the decline of
quality on Reddit big-time.

~~~
baq
reddit's quality is in renascence currently, as the big and popular subreddits
(e.g. pics, science) have figured out what the 'moderate' button does. until
every single one of the default subreddits start moderating, the main reddit
will be rubbish.

~~~
galadriel
And I would credit /r/askscience for it. They have shown how wonderful
banhammer is, with mods that don't hesitate to use it.

------
gubatron
no, Digg killed digg. They didn't listen to the community and they lost user
data and did nothing to recover it, at least that was my experience after
loosing several thousand diggs on my user account and then being reset to 0.
You can't imagine the piss off.

------
paulhauggis
I loved digg. When it was first out, I was able to get roughly 70,000 people
to my website per week by just posting an article and having my friends digg
it.

------
vijayanands
Actually, IMO Hacker News killed Digg. All the news here would have been in
Digg otherwise :)

~~~
vijayanands
Tsk tsk. The Lack of a sense of humor.

------
Toshio
I also used to read Digg all the time, but over time it became a cesspool of
pro-microsoft trolling, and I left in disgust. Imagine being attacked every
time you expressed legitimate disappointment with vista. I expect we are going
to witness something similar this fall on reddit (and even here) when that new
polished turd gets released.

~~~
ojbyrne
Really? I don't remember seeing any pro-microsoft trolling - perhaps it was
hidden by the much larger Apple fanboy contingent.

~~~
Toshio
> Really?

Yes, _REALLY_ My memory seems to function better than yours.

~~~
untog
Another former Digg user who never saw anything of the sort, and in fact saw
far more pro-Apple stuff than anything else.

~~~
Toshio
I think we all understand how selective memory works, but thanks for the
reminder.

Let me restate that the pro-microsoft trolls were the reason I left Digg _in
disgust_.

~~~
untog
There's something about writing " _in digust_ " in italics that makes me laugh
uncontrollably.

Looking through your past comments it is clear that you have some sort of
grudge against Microsoft, so perhaps I am not surprised you were downvoted
after all.

