4 ms·

Are we still talking about this?

48 points by jaybol 16y ago

SlyShy 16y ago
This was my favorite part. "Michael, just because you put a question mark after things, doesn't make them evidence to support your headline of 'Guy Who Copied Digg Slams Digg For Copying Twitter.'" That might be because I find the rhetorical question incredibly annoying outside of a Socratic setting. On a different note, I'm disappointed that Arrington would fuel this little drama production, but of course, that is his MO.
- ohashi 16y ago
  Drama creates pageviews.
theli0nheart 16y ago
Alexis, you sound like an awesome guy. If this were someone else, this would probably turn into a shouting match, but you were above that, and instead offered him a t-shirt. That's just the right thing to do. I respect that a ton.
- kn0thing 16y ago
  Thanks! The way I see it, it's all sticks & stones. I got to learn that early as an overweight kid with a girly name and fondness for videogames. I just wish I could get the TC Comments to work for me (why aren't they using disqus?) so I could chime in there...
  - jaybol 16y ago
    I will take you up on the Reddit t-shirt offer
ojbyrne 16y ago
Well, since we're throwing mud, remember that Arrington is the one who just held a startup contest that gave a $50k prize to a company with $8 million in previous funding. Attacking the establishment is not something he's known for.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
pavs 16y ago
Taking TechCrunch and its pseudo journalists seriously is liking taking trolls seriously, MA is the biggest troll if there ever was one in blogosphere. He is good at creating drama, don't fuel his ego or take seriously whatever comes out of his blog. His business model is to dramatize actual events to rile people up so that he can get pageviews. Ignore trolls.
grandalf 16y ago
They all copied slashdot and the idea of a purely voting/community driven site was discussed frequently on slashdot for years before digg or reddit. So there :)
- kn0thing 16y ago
  One day I want Sir Tim Berners-Lee to hop into one of those threads and tell everyone to GTFO. But really, we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. It's cliche for a good reason (though the English teacher in my brain is yelling at me for using one).
- jimboyoungblood 16y ago
  I think of del.icio.us as the direct ancestor. Digg came out when joshu's baby was the new hotness and everybody and their dog were trying to clone it.
  - kn0thing 16y ago
    That reminds me, on Demo Day (Aug '05) del.icio.us was the site we kept hearing over and over. Explaining how we were different from them was pretty straightforward [Del.icio.us is king of social bookmarking, a way to keep make your bookmarks always accessible, the by-product is you can see what people are saving for later. Ppl use reddit to find & share new & interesting links about anything popular at the moment, not reference material to save for later.]. But our spartan designs did look similar, which I suspect is what made the connection.
- jsz0 16y ago
  Does anyone else remember kuro5hin? If my memory is correct it pre-dated Digg by several years but of course didn't have the same level of success. Digg deserves a lot of credit for making the idea work on a big scale.
  - lftl 16y ago
    kuro5hin definitely shared the voting element, but other than that it was pretty different than the reddit or digg. It was more like a social blog, you didn't post links, you actually posted full essays and people voted and commented on them.
j_baker 16y ago
Yes, yes you are still talking about this. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just pointing out the irony that you're trying to put an end to the conversation by continuing it. Michael does these kinds of things because they get attention. Perhaps the best thing to do is just ignore him rather than giving him more attention? (For what it's worth, I agree with you and my blog post would have been a lot meaner. :-) )
- kn0thing 16y ago
  Oh, it's indeed ironic. If it weren't for the misrepresentation, I'd have ignored it, but that kind of thing is particularly irksome - especially as I'm looking at the evidence in my inbox. In that instance, it was worth it to get the facts straight. Call me whatever you want, but don't make stuff up.
  - random42 16y ago
    Can you share the email with us? I know its private communication, but it would be educational for many of us to know how was the thoughtprocess of 2 successful entreprenuers, in the early days.
staunch 16y ago
The naming of Reddit: reDDit like diGG seemed the most obvious reason to suspect it was inspired by Digg. Since they say they didn't consciously copy Digg I take them at their word. I doubt they'd lie about it. I wouldn't be surprised if they're misremembering though. People are always teaching me things I taught them a week earlier. Memory is faulty and that was probably an especially stressful time for them.
- kn0thing 16y ago
  Fun fact: it was between "reddit" and "reditt" while I was a senior at UVA sitting in Alderman library. I asked my friend (and library buddy) Melissa for which one made more sense for the way "read it" oughta be misspelled. She picked reddit. We ended up considering a number of other names once we got to YC (PG wasn't a fan of reddit) but I persisted and I think Steve just realized he had better things to do. I've got the email I sent to Steve about digg (subject line: READ THIS on 7/11/05 at 11:48pm (we launched reddit on 6/23/05). I'm not lying or misremembering, which is what motivated me to respond. http://alexisohanian.com/are-we-still-talking-about-this-response-to-m http://alexisohanian.com/are-we-still-talking-about-this-res...
  - arn 16y ago
    fwiw, arrington first heard about digg only 5 days before reddit's launch. http://techcrunch.com/2005/06/18/profile-digg/ http://techcrunch.com/2005/06/18/profile-digg/
binspace 16y ago
Wow, who cares?!?
- kn0thing 16y ago
  Dude, I couldn't agree more.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    I was going to respond with some remark like, "this thread has become very reddit-like". Then I read the username :)
- jrockway 16y ago
  My thoughts exactly. People copy and improve each other's ideas all the time. Reddit was a better Digg. Digg is taking ideas from Twitter. Who cares? It's good for the users, it's good for the company, it's good for the investors, it's good for technology in general. With so much good involved, I don't see why there's any reason to get so bent out of shape.

48 points by jaybol 16y ago

This was my favorite part. "Michael, just because you put a question mark after things, doesn't make them evidence to support your headline of 'Guy Who Copied Digg Slams Digg For Copying Twitter.'" That might be because I find the rhetorical question incredibly annoying outside of a Socratic setting. On a different note, I'm disappointed that Arrington would fuel this little drama production, but of course, that is his MO.

ohashi 16y ago
Drama creates pageviews.

theli0nheart 16y ago

Alexis, you sound like an awesome guy. If this were someone else, this would probably turn into a shouting match, but you were above that, and instead offered him a t-shirt. That's just the right thing to do. I respect that a ton.

kn0thing 16y ago
Thanks! The way I see it, it's all sticks & stones. I got to learn that early as an overweight kid with a girly name and fondness for videogames. I just wish I could get the TC Comments to work for me (why aren't they using disqus?) so I could chime in there...
- jaybol 16y ago
  I will take you up on the Reddit t-shirt offer

ojbyrne 16y ago

Well, since we're throwing mud, remember that Arrington is the one who just held a startup contest that gave a $50k prize to a company with $8 million in previous funding. Attacking the establishment is not something he's known for.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

pavs 16y ago

Taking TechCrunch and its pseudo journalists seriously is liking taking trolls seriously, MA is the biggest troll if there ever was one in blogosphere. He is good at creating drama, don't fuel his ego or take seriously whatever comes out of his blog. His business model is to dramatize actual events to rile people up so that he can get pageviews. Ignore trolls.

grandalf 16y ago

They all copied slashdot and the idea of a purely voting/community driven site was discussed frequently on slashdot for years before digg or reddit. So there :)

kn0thing 16y ago
One day I want Sir Tim Berners-Lee to hop into one of those threads and tell everyone to GTFO. But really, we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. It's cliche for a good reason (though the English teacher in my brain is yelling at me for using one).
jimboyoungblood 16y ago
I think of del.icio.us as the direct ancestor. Digg came out when joshu's baby was the new hotness and everybody and their dog were trying to clone it.
- kn0thing 16y ago
  That reminds me, on Demo Day (Aug '05) del.icio.us was the site we kept hearing over and over. Explaining how we were different from them was pretty straightforward [Del.icio.us is king of social bookmarking, a way to keep make your bookmarks always accessible, the by-product is you can see what people are saving for later. Ppl use reddit to find & share new & interesting links about anything popular at the moment, not reference material to save for later.]. But our spartan designs did look similar, which I suspect is what made the connection.
jsz0 16y ago
Does anyone else remember kuro5hin? If my memory is correct it pre-dated Digg by several years but of course didn't have the same level of success. Digg deserves a lot of credit for making the idea work on a big scale.
- lftl 16y ago
  kuro5hin definitely shared the voting element, but other than that it was pretty different than the reddit or digg. It was more like a social blog, you didn't post links, you actually posted full essays and people voted and commented on them.

j_baker 16y ago

Yes, yes you are still talking about this. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just pointing out the irony that you're trying to put an end to the conversation by continuing it. Michael does these kinds of things because they get attention. Perhaps the best thing to do is just ignore him rather than giving him more attention? (For what it's worth, I agree with you and my blog post would have been a lot meaner. :-) )

kn0thing 16y ago
Oh, it's indeed ironic. If it weren't for the misrepresentation, I'd have ignored it, but that kind of thing is particularly irksome - especially as I'm looking at the evidence in my inbox. In that instance, it was worth it to get the facts straight. Call me whatever you want, but don't make stuff up.
- random42 16y ago
  Can you share the email with us? I know its private communication, but it would be educational for many of us to know how was the thoughtprocess of 2 successful entreprenuers, in the early days.

staunch 16y ago

The naming of Reddit: reDDit like diGG seemed the most obvious reason to suspect it was inspired by Digg. Since they say they didn't consciously copy Digg I take them at their word. I doubt they'd lie about it. I wouldn't be surprised if they're misremembering though. People are always teaching me things I taught them a week earlier. Memory is faulty and that was probably an especially stressful time for them.

kn0thing 16y ago
Fun fact: it was between "reddit" and "reditt" while I was a senior at UVA sitting in Alderman library. I asked my friend (and library buddy) Melissa for which one made more sense for the way "read it" oughta be misspelled. She picked reddit. We ended up considering a number of other names once we got to YC (PG wasn't a fan of reddit) but I persisted and I think Steve just realized he had better things to do. I've got the email I sent to Steve about digg (subject line: READ THIS on 7/11/05 at 11:48pm (we launched reddit on 6/23/05). I'm not lying or misremembering, which is what motivated me to respond. http://alexisohanian.com/are-we-still-talking-about-this-response-to-m http://alexisohanian.com/are-we-still-talking-about-this-res...
- arn 16y ago
  fwiw, arrington first heard about digg only 5 days before reddit's launch. http://techcrunch.com/2005/06/18/profile-digg/ http://techcrunch.com/2005/06/18/profile-digg/

binspace 16y ago

Wow, who cares?!?

kn0thing 16y ago
Dude, I couldn't agree more.
- jrockway 16y ago
  I was going to respond with some remark like, "this thread has become very reddit-like". Then I read the username :)
jrockway 16y ago
My thoughts exactly. People copy and improve each other's ideas all the time. Reddit was a better Digg. Digg is taking ideas from Twitter. Who cares? It's good for the users, it's good for the company, it's good for the investors, it's good for technology in general. With so much good involved, I don't see why there's any reason to get so bent out of shape.