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Say what you will about Digg, but at least they rolled out new software. Digg is a discussion site, not an operating system -- what is the value in "rolling ou

by neilc 16y ago

Say what you will about Digg, but at least they rolled out new software. Digg is a discussion site, not an operating system -- what is the value in "rolling out new software"? Digg's value is in the quality of the discussion and community; "innovation" that doesn't improve that is pointless. Look at HN: it remains nearly as minimalist as always, and mostly receives occasional tweaks and performance improvements.

nervechannel 16y ago
Quite -- it was innovation that killed Digg wasn't it?
- slantyyz 16y ago
  I'm of the view that the growth and community killed Digg. Once Digg hit critical mass, they were killed by the signal to noise ratio. I stopped visiting the site a couple of years ago because of that. The reason why HN thrives is that the signal to noise ratio is still quite high, and while there is diversity in the submissions, you can probably group them into a few common themes.
WesleyJohnson 16y ago
I would agree that I love HN's minimalist approach, but the end game for HN and Digg are vastly different, aren't they? I think the perceived value of rolling out new software is that Digg had hoped it would draw in more uses and entice existing users to become more active. If you're running a website that is largely user generated content and is also stagnant, how do you inject new life into it without adding new features? I'm genuinely curious.
bmm6o 16y ago
Sure, you can argue that they would have been better off not rolling out new software, or that they don't need new features. I'm just saying that the answer to the (sometimes implicit) question of "why does Digg have so many more people than Reddit" is that some of them are designing features and writing code, and there doesn't seem to be much of that going on at Reddit. Personally, I'm in general agreement with you. And you can rebase the whole argument: take MetaFilter, with 4 people on the payroll (and not all technical). What is everyone at Reddit doing?

by neilc 16y ago

nervechannel 16y ago

Quite -- it was innovation that killed Digg wasn't it?

slantyyz 16y ago
I'm of the view that the growth and community killed Digg. Once Digg hit critical mass, they were killed by the signal to noise ratio. I stopped visiting the site a couple of years ago because of that. The reason why HN thrives is that the signal to noise ratio is still quite high, and while there is diversity in the submissions, you can probably group them into a few common themes.

WesleyJohnson 16y ago

I would agree that I love HN's minimalist approach, but the end game for HN and Digg are vastly different, aren't they? I think the perceived value of rolling out new software is that Digg had hoped it would draw in more uses and entice existing users to become more active. If you're running a website that is largely user generated content and is also stagnant, how do you inject new life into it without adding new features? I'm genuinely curious.

bmm6o 16y ago

Sure, you can argue that they would have been better off not rolling out new software, or that they don't need new features. I'm just saying that the answer to the (sometimes implicit) question of "why does Digg have so many more people than Reddit" is that some of them are designing features and writing code, and there doesn't seem to be much of that going on at Reddit. Personally, I'm in general agreement with you. And you can rebase the whole argument: take MetaFilter, with 4 people on the payroll (and not all technical). What is everyone at Reddit doing?