7 ms·

Just as perplexing, why do they need ~68 employees (http://about.digg.com/team http://about.digg.com/team). My counting may be off by 1-2, but last I checked R

• noodle 16y ago
  reddit uses something like 250-300 EC2 nodes.
  • tibbon 16y ago
    Unless they are using the really big instances though, I find that EC2 nodes are generally lower in power compared to what most people are using for their servers. I remember not too long ago before they moved to EC2 everything fit in just a few racks. Of course, their traffic has expanded significantly recently.
    • ergo98 16y ago
      EC2 nodes are terribly underpowered, particularly in the I/O realm (the biggest weakness of virtually every site) where a standard desktop absolutely annihilates the I/O performance of an S3 connection (where you have to perform software RAID to get anywhere near the performance of a single magnetic low-end SATA drive, which is absolutely terrible). A lot of the "web scale" noise has come from dealing with these gerbil sized instances.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• Lewisham 16y ago
  My understanding (which is, to say, belief built up over watching the companies from outside) is that Reddit is currently running what could best be described as a skeleton crew: Conde Nast won't fund them, so they're just trying to keep the ship afloat and don't have time for anything else. Digg has scaled to the size of a company that, for a couple of years now, has considered itself just on the tipping point of "something big happening." As in there being a sea change in the way everyone consumes their news, and Digg is at the center. You'll need lots of employees when that happens, right? I think Digg has partly grown fat due to non-existent leadership; the struggle between Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose was been well-documented, and having your two lead guys check out for at least a year is not a good way to run a business. A lot of the people there are "sales", which I guess helps Digg stay profitable, but I don't really think you need as many as they have. Five community managers on a community that is supposed to manage itself is also excessive. I expect the truth of the matter lies somewhere in the middle of Reddit and Digg. More than Reddit so you're not stagnant, less than Digg so you're not fat.
  • tibbon 16y ago
    But that's the funny thing, is the Reddit is growing and Digg is shrinking- despite their staffing. Reddit does a much better job at allowing the community to manage themselves on a volunteer basis with the moderators/admins of the subreddits than Digg.
  • ianb 16y ago
    Everything that is cool about Reddit at this point is what Redditors are doing with Reddit, not what Reddit is doing with its site. And isn't that how social media is supposed to work? Not just some notion that users are tools, that you'll crowdsource your way to being yet-another-traditional-media source (except without journalists)... social media should be individuals forming their own communities... communities of interest, communities of practice, communities of support -- all of which exist in Reddit (/r/SuicideWatch both disturbs and impresses me). So the fact Reddit-the-software isn't changing that much doesn't seem like that big an issue, it's more like infrastructure. A major redesign would be negatively disruptive to the communities that are building there. Not that there aren't great things Reddit could do but isn't, but I think they are doing well at the most important stuff. If Reddit had 68 employees they not only would be fat, they'd probably fuck up a good thing.
• thecoffman 16y ago
  Yes, it blows my mind that digg needs so many employees. Reddit actually is larger than digg (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reddit_to_mainstream_media_we_aint_small_infograph.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reddit_to_mainstream_me...), and until recently had even less than 7 employees. If I'm not mistaken they have 3 programmers and a systems admin. Kind of makes you wonder what all the digg employees do all day.
  • jshen 16y ago
    "Kind of makes you wonder what all the digg employees do all day." Communication. I'm always surprised that so few people who do software (I'm talking management at companies) are familiar with the mythical man month. Adding employees to a software project always yields diminishing returns due to the increase in communication required.
• rythie 16y ago
  My guess is that Reddit won't be able to innovate much with that level of staffing, they are basically just keeping it running - but maybe that's ok, since they have already been bought. Slashdot has been the same for a long time too, but they are also not looking for a big exit. Digg has had $40m in funding [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/digg http://www.crunchbase.com/company/digg] and so unless it sells for $200m+ the investors will most likely see it as failure. Kevin Rose seems to be advising people to take less money [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/weblife/kevin-rose-10-tips-for-entrepreneurs-to-succeed/1930 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/weblife/kevin-rose-10-tips-for-ent...] or no money, presumably because Digg was over-funded, at least for it's current position.
  • ojbyrne 16y ago
    Where is Kevin advising people to take less money? If you mean the $80 million comment, that was almost certainly before the Series C, so digg had less than half the funding.
    • rythie 16y ago
      http://www.zdnet.com/blog/weblife/kevin-rose-10-tips-for-entrepreneurs-to-succeed/1930 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/weblife/kevin-rose-10-tips-for-ent... point 4
      • ojbyrne 16y ago
        For someone who took $ x million "off the table," during those funding rounds the hypocrisy is impressive.
        • deleted 16y ago
          [deleted]
        • Lewisham 16y ago
          Since when did "experience" == "hypocrisy"?