

An open letter to Kevin Rose from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian - dcurtis
http://alexisohanian.com/an-open-letter-to-kevin-rose

======
blhack
Uhh...what? These are features that seem kindof obvious to me...I think
they're awesome. In fact, this is really similar to something that I used to
do on _my_ website over a year ago (we stopped doing it because there weren't
enough users to make it feasible at that time...some of the ideas still exist
though).

Alexis, one of the problems with reddit, at least right now, is that there are
just _too many freaking people_. I don't care about the majority of the users
on the site. If there was a way to see reddit as it was 5 years ago when it
was you and 10 other people, that would be great, and I think that is what the
move digg has made here is trying to accomplish.

(Shameless plug for my site, which is embarrassing when compared to places
like here, reddit, or digg, but still just as addictive to me:
<http://newslily.com> \- the part I'm talking about [show me what my friends
are doing] is here: <http://newslily.com/lilypad> ])

~~~
varaon
Reddit comments are excellent, and I think that while having a buzzing
community creates a lot more noise, there is also a lot more great content.
Initiatives like $180,000 for Haiti, or the secret santa wouldn't have been
the same 5 years ago.

~~~
aquateen
Not sure what tilts me more, reading reddit comments or reading that reddit
comments are supposed to be excellent.

That place has been a sewer for years and I hate that it was ruined.

~~~
Silhouette
> That place has been a sewer for years and I hate that it was ruined.

That's a bit like saying Usenet is a waste of space or IRC is full of trolls.
Reddit, like Usenet and IRC, is more of an enabling technology than a single
community.

In each case, there are some really great communities where you can find a
good signal to noise ratio. There are also some fairly pointless ones that are
just rants or FUD or whatever. Fortunately, no-one makes you read every sub-
reddit, any more than you are forced to read every Usenet group or follow
every IRC channel. Just sign up to the ones that have discussions you find
interesting and ignore the rest.

~~~
aquateen
I'm guessing you weren't there the first few years.

~~~
Silhouette
Where? I've been on Usenet for well over a decade, and I was lurking on Reddit
within months of its birth. The main reddit has always been overrun with a
whole bunch of stuff of varying quality, and the best material and most
interesting discussions have been in the specialist subreddits for several
years.

------
staunch
Digg has already shopped itself around to all the big buyers and they passed
(explicitly or not). This move is an attempt by Digg to position themselves as
a potential rival to Twitter and/or Facebook. Now all they need is one big
dumb company that buys into that illusion.

~~~
mikeyur
I wish them luck in getting bought out. Seems like Digg would be a good fit
for Yahoo, considering their new content-only direction.

------
chaosmachine
Digg's front page hasn't been controlled by the users in a long time. The new
changes hand control over from an anonymous group of moderators to your
friends and people you follow, which seems like an improvement.

------
ojbyrne
Has he spent any time with Kevin? Because frankly this version reeks of Kevin
- it's just endless twiddling with design and a fear of doing anything to
actually change the way the site works.

~~~
kn0thing
You certainly know him better than me, Owen. I don't profess to know Kevin at
all. In fact, I'd be interested to read your "open letter to alexis: stfu,
here's the real explanation for digg4"

~~~
ojbyrne
Perhaps. But I've really moved beyond it, and anything I say is probably not
going to be constructive (and I guess my comment fits that criticiscm). At
least until I get a green card and get to be something other than an employee
in this country. Because I'd really like to do rather than say.

As someone who used to work at a newspaper and harangue the business editor
about how corrupt the editorial process was, long before digg, I occasionally
get angry. Probably for similar reasons to your post.

Cmon green card...

------
seldo
This is such obvious linkbait that it even admits "this title is linkbait" at
the bottom. He means give the power back to Kevin Rose, which is exactly what
appears to have happened recently. So... non-story.

~~~
marcamillion
What? I don't understand what the big problem with some HN users and
'linkbait'.

Who cares? It's called journalism. In order to catch attention, the headline
has to be attention grabbing.

This post was soo timely for HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1384994>

If the article was garbage, then yes I would agree with you. But who cares if
he manipulates the headline to get attention.

The next time you write a blog post, or anything, that doesn't have an
attention grabbing headline and gets a ton of traffic...please let us know.

~~~
zach
Indulge me a Simpsons quote:

    
    
      Baby-Proofer: Your baby is dead!
      Homer and Marge: [horrified scream]
      Baby-Proofer: That's what you'd hear if your baby
      fell victim to one of the thousands of deathtraps
      lurking in the average American home!
    

I would like to think that HN follows some of PG's taste for things, and none
of his essays have "Your Baby Is Dead" style titles, even when the ideas
inside are provocative. I think there's a line to draw, even though nobody is
ever going to agree, but that's the way social norms are.

------
shortformblog
As a blogger, the fact of the matter is, all I ever use Digg for is skimming
to see if they have any cool videos to post. I don't even use Reddit for that
anymore. I feel like their communities aren't super-welcoming like HN is, and
have avoided them.

I think that Kevin realizes that to reach a broader audience the site needs to
have value for people who don't choose to be active members of the community
(or want their own little niches). Facebook does some of this, but it's too
closed-off (unless you're on a fan page). Twitter does some of this, but it's
too broad in some ways. If anything, it kinda takes the best elements from
each.

Digg has a lot of problems with the way its audience has grown, and as a
result, it's become overly-influenced by one core group of people: Young guys.
Jezebel actually called them out on this recently:

[http://jezebel.com/5531991/boys-will-be-boys-the-problem-
wit...](http://jezebel.com/5531991/boys-will-be-boys-the-problem-with-digg)

If you want to win the influence game, you have to have more than just guys
and more than just Justin Bieber fans. And the fact of the matter is, you can
still have a huge audience on Twitter even without ever touching the trending
topics. The current Digg, you have to roll the dice the right way. Reddit, you
have to also keep your fingers crossed.

And to win the publishers over, you have to a) not treat them as if they're
jerks for wanting to build traffic b) not waste their time. This design does
both.

I'm going to use this once it goes up, because it doesn't feel like the deck
is stacked against my little blog ( <http://shortformblog.com/> for the
curious).

------
rodh257
what does he care? if you think they are making a mistake, great, they are
your competitor... why bother writing an open letter?

I also don't get what he is ranting about..I think the new Digg looks great,
just when I was starting to get sick of the top news stories not being
relevant to me, now I will be able to follow people with similar interests,
just like twitter, but I don't have to read through what they had for
breakfast to get the links I want.

~~~
steveklabnik
They're not his competitor, he left Reddit months ago.

~~~
kn0thing
Exactly the reason why I felt OK publishing it. I'm still a redditor of
course, but breadpig is my only ... uhh.. horse in this race.

~~~
steveklabnik
By the way, thanks for Reddit. I still enjoy it immensely, even if it has gone
downhill lately.

------
benologist
"back when "social media gurus" were simply called "tools.""

Did we stop calling them tools?

~~~
mikeyur
..back when we were able to game Digg (algorithms were very predictable) for
fun and profit.

------
phatboyslim
Digg still crushes reddit in traffic. I'm not saying traffic is an indicator
of profitablity, but it's apparent they are either marketing it better, or
more people prefer it. Either way, it's tough to argue "with the people" based
on the author's indication of importance.

<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com+digg.com/>

~~~
fletchowns
This may have to do with the fact that Kevin Rose was a mini-celebrity in the
tech world when Digg was launched.

~~~
mdg
But what about PG ?

(for the record, reddit is my #1 site)

------
mikeryan
I don't have a dog in this race and I actually agree with Alexis (I don't like
the new product direction - it does seem very derivative as opposed to
innovative)

But if you look at where Pownce was going it looks like Kevin has liked some
of these ideas for some time now.

------
ziadbc
I do agree that these features are 'inspired' by other apps. Had they launched
these in 2006 it'd be a copycat move. At this point, these are features that I
think many users expect in something like digg. Facebook features have also
been 'inspired' by other apps (i.e. twitter) and you can't argue with their
growth. Digg has looked more like a forum and less like a startup for a long
time, and this may be a catching up on lost ground, and a prelude to hopefully
more innovative days.

------
nostromo
Reddit's quality has gone down in flames; it's 6 months away from being Digg
with a shitty (if lovable) interface. I still visit Reddit, but less than
ever. So to talk down to Digg, which Reddit shamelessly copied, and while Digg
is at least trying to innovate is odd. What has reddit done lately?
Subreddits? Narwhals? I still have love for Reddit, but this post seems
obnoxious.

~~~
rubinelli
Two minutes tweaking your subreddits will give you a much better experience. I
found that just removing main Reddit made my first page an order of magnitude
better.

~~~
tibbon
I concur 100% with this. The 'main' reddit isn't all that great and more of a
distraction than anything. The strong use of subreddits has increased my
interest in Reddit strongly over the past few months. Otherwise yes, what is
on the front page is just a precursor to what will be on Digg the next day.

That being said, these things just funnel around in a hierarchy. HN, Slashdot,
Reddit, Digg, etc all suffer a bit from this.

------
antirez
Hi think Alexis is biased by the fact that in some way Reddit was lucky in not
having the social dynamics leading to a monopolization of the whole site.

This is instead what happened to Digg, and to many other social news sites,
and the only fix is probably to switch to a hierarchical model. This also
happened to OKNOtizie, that is the "Italian Digg", that I happen to run
currently.

So I'm looking forward to the Digg changes, and in general to the idea of
binding users to real identities of other social network sites, like twitter
or facebook. We implemented a great deal of filters, but this does not work
when a great percentage of your users are not playing the game correctly.

~~~
tibbon
Subreddits (by design) somewhat prevent this monopolization of the front.

------
jmtame
can it be confirmed that KR isn't making the calls anymore at digg?

~~~
kn0thing
Let me only confirm that I'm entirely speculating.

~~~
silkodyssey
You don't like the direction Digg is going. If you were the one making the
decisions what would you do?

~~~
kn0thing
Hmm... User-created diggs (like we have on reddit, but better articulated &
designed - I say this as the closest thing reddit had to a designer, I'm no
designer). I have no idea about headcount, so I won't speculate there, only to
say that reddit's ratio of 1 non tech for every 5 technical worked well for
us.

And i'd make that digg mascot more prominent, maybe change it around for
holidays, too.

~~~
fleaflicker
Basically reddit with a different skin?

Is digg a site you frequent? Why so interested in its fate? Wouldn't you
rather see reddit leave it in the dust?

------
marcamillion
My response: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1388142>

------
budu3
I'm a Reddit fan but come on Alexis. Let Kevin be. Digg v4 hasn't even been
released to the public yet. You left Reddit a long time ago. If you were still
at Reddit then I'd chalk this down as a little trash talk from a competitor.
You're no longer in the game. Give him time to prove himself.

~~~
kn0thing
My intention was quite the opposite from trash talking. As a commenter
articulated, this feels more like something forced on him by acquisition
hungry VCs than of his own design.

Digg was in a way one of the best external things that could've happened to
reddit: it did all the work of educating people to the concept of "social
news" and provided a Goliath to our community's David.

~~~
puredemo
The VC is a huge assumption for one thing, and it sort of comes off as concern
trolling.

------
kierank
I assume the April 1st 2011 reddit site redesign has been decided then.

------
sixbit
This link crashes the browser on iPad.

------
vaksel
an open letter to Alexis Ohanian

fix search, it's been broken for a couple of weeks now.

~~~
mahmud
Reddit search? Was there _ever_ one?

~~~
vaksel
sort of, before you'd get "crap" results, now you get no results. All you get
is:

Our search machines are under too much load to handle your request right now.
:( Sorry for the inconvenience. Try again in a little bit -- but please don't
mash reload; that only makes the problem worse.

