4 ms·

Reddit Grew 230% in 2010 at Digg’s Expense

23 points by iwwr 16y ago

david_shaw 16y ago
It's a very impressive growth spurt, though I wish they could scale the site accordingly. They've done well considering the massive amount of traffic and the complex way they are constantly adding comments, but the site is slow as sin and, honestly, quite unpleasant to browse sometimes. I don't want to be reminded of refreshing a page on dial-up.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  They're working on it. They still only have 4 engineers (!), plus a trainee. They've hired/are hiring a couple more, so maybe that will work. Unfortunately, by selling to Conde Nast, they've ceded control on things like hiring. Every time they want to hire somebody, they have to beg to CN for permission. If it was VC funded, they'd have 40+ employees by now, and the site would look/work good. Unfortunately, CN just doesn't know what they have. Also, never mind the headline; Mashable pretty much lives off of Digg referals, so this is just linkbait.
  - chris11 16y ago
    What's wrong with the design? I love the minimalist feel. I think Reddit's and HN's design works great for news aggregators.
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      I agree that it's functional, but it's not hugely intuitive, which is why most people who've only ever glanced at reddit complain about its design. Vim has a great design with fantastic UI if you're an expert with it, but it's confusing as all hell for people who've never used it. Similarly, I think reddit (and HN, for that matter) could probably make more effective use of their space and lay things out in a way that's more intuitive. That's not to say I want them to be digg, or one of the many over designed CSS nightmares out there, but it's be nice if they had a UX expert really sit down and hack away at it. I'd settle for it loading, however. That'd be nice.
alex_c 16y ago
The comparison to Digg feels forced and unnecessary, especially without numbers for Digg in January and December. Reddit had 250 million pageviews in January, Digg had 200 million in July (before the redesign - this likely means Reddit was already ahead in January), and Reddit ended the year with 830 million. Most of Reddit's growth couldn't have come from Digg.
drivebyacct2 16y ago
In before senseless reddit bashing... The reddit admins are quite adamant that their growth was independent of digg.v4 and if you look at their numbers, they seem to be right. There are some increases associated with v4, but reddit was enjoying growth prior to that as well.
- zone411 16y ago
  The graph based on their Google Analytics data https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en#siteDetails?identifier=reddit.com&geo=001&trait_type=1&lp=true https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en... shows that the increase in reddit's numbers to due to Digg's problems was major, whether their admins want to admit it or not.
  - drivebyacct2 16y ago
    Not really. There was a short term spike, but their year-over-year growth was much more consistent AND greater in magnitude.
    - zone411 16y ago
      Did you look at the graph at all? It shows that the spike right around when Digg's problems occurred was just as big as their traffic increase over the last two years with the spike excluded. You need to count the increase in estimated and direct graphs separately because of the discontinuity.
      - drivebyacct2 16y ago
        It looks temporary to me: http://i.min.us/ibF9ni.png http://i.min.us/ibF9ni.png. It also think this logic is supported by alex_'s logic [1]. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2098679 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2098679
getsat 16y ago
I think the growth was more at Reddit's expense. There was a drastic downturn in the quality of material hitting the front page in 2010. The comment quality has gone down significantly, too. (Yes, I know you can decide which subreddits appear on the front page when you are logged in).
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  Yeah, I'd say the overall quality has dropped, and has been dropping with increased traffic for a long time. Still, there's been some absolute gold on there. Check out the Best of 2010 for some examples: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/f12id/its_time_to_choose_the_winners_in_reddits_best_of/ http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/f12id/its_time_to_choo...
  - getsat 16y ago
    Yeah, like I mentioned in a reply below, I've started filtering the subreddits shown and it's helped the signal/noise ratio a lot.
- guywithabike 16y ago
  The biggest win has been for smaller niche subreddits that now have enough of a readership to feel like communities now. Reddit's strong suit has always been in the discussions.
  - getsat 16y ago
    I agree. I've been filtering certain default subreddits (e.g., AskReddit) from the front page because the signal/noise ratio is terrible. As an example, I like the fact that /r/coding was spawned from the fact that 90% of the articles in /r/programming are not related to programming.
relix 16y ago
Maybe there's room in the market for a third big player* now? Digg's reputation has gone down the toilet and is declining. Reddit has taken over 1st place but they have a few problems: First, Conde Nast doesn't supply them with enough resources compared to their popularity. This makes the user experience painfully slow, and the site is down even more times than Twitter was in the early days. They also don't have a designer which makes the usability bad. Third, they lack the creativity to make money off their huge userbase. I'm sure these three reasons are related. If a start-up would be launched now it could even exploit the recent delicious-catastrophe by importing those links. This could bootstrap the community and content, and it'd make for some good marketing. * I still count 4chan as an underground site, but maybe they are the third player. They're niche though, so let's say there's still room even then.
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  They also don't have a designer which makes the usability bad. I've heard this repeated a number of times, and I completely disagree with it. Reddit may not be the prettiest site on the block, but it's damn functional. There is very little unnecessary stuff on the screen, and I quite like it that way. I tend to turn off custom subreddit styles because they takae away from the minimal, functional interface. I've heard people talk about "improving reddit and HN's design", but I've never seen any clear examples of where they think it's bad. I still count 4chan as an underground site, but maybe they are the third player. They're niche though, so let's say there's still room even then. 4chan's an entirely different category. They're less about linksharing, and more about...well, whatever the hell they are. I don't think I'd put them anywhere near Digg or Reddit except for the fact that they both have memes. That's pretty much the only comparison.

23 points by iwwr 16y ago

It's a very impressive growth spurt, though I wish they could scale the site accordingly. They've done well considering the massive amount of traffic and the complex way they are constantly adding comments, but the site is slow as sin and, honestly, quite unpleasant to browse sometimes. I don't want to be reminded of refreshing a page on dial-up.

redthrowaway 16y ago
They're working on it. They still only have 4 engineers (!), plus a trainee. They've hired/are hiring a couple more, so maybe that will work. Unfortunately, by selling to Conde Nast, they've ceded control on things like hiring. Every time they want to hire somebody, they have to beg to CN for permission. If it was VC funded, they'd have 40+ employees by now, and the site would look/work good. Unfortunately, CN just doesn't know what they have. Also, never mind the headline; Mashable pretty much lives off of Digg referals, so this is just linkbait.
- chris11 16y ago
  What's wrong with the design? I love the minimalist feel. I think Reddit's and HN's design works great for news aggregators.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    I agree that it's functional, but it's not hugely intuitive, which is why most people who've only ever glanced at reddit complain about its design. Vim has a great design with fantastic UI if you're an expert with it, but it's confusing as all hell for people who've never used it. Similarly, I think reddit (and HN, for that matter) could probably make more effective use of their space and lay things out in a way that's more intuitive. That's not to say I want them to be digg, or one of the many over designed CSS nightmares out there, but it's be nice if they had a UX expert really sit down and hack away at it. I'd settle for it loading, however. That'd be nice.

alex_c 16y ago

The comparison to Digg feels forced and unnecessary, especially without numbers for Digg in January and December. Reddit had 250 million pageviews in January, Digg had 200 million in July (before the redesign - this likely means Reddit was already ahead in January), and Reddit ended the year with 830 million. Most of Reddit's growth couldn't have come from Digg.

drivebyacct2 16y ago

In before senseless reddit bashing... The reddit admins are quite adamant that their growth was independent of digg.v4 and if you look at their numbers, they seem to be right. There are some increases associated with v4, but reddit was enjoying growth prior to that as well.

zone411 16y ago
The graph based on their Google Analytics data https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en#siteDetails?identifier=reddit.com&geo=001&trait_type=1&lp=true https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en... shows that the increase in reddit's numbers to due to Digg's problems was major, whether their admins want to admit it or not.
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  Not really. There was a short term spike, but their year-over-year growth was much more consistent AND greater in magnitude.
  - zone411 16y ago
    Did you look at the graph at all? It shows that the spike right around when Digg's problems occurred was just as big as their traffic increase over the last two years with the spike excluded. You need to count the increase in estimated and direct graphs separately because of the discontinuity.
    - drivebyacct2 16y ago
      It looks temporary to me: http://i.min.us/ibF9ni.png http://i.min.us/ibF9ni.png. It also think this logic is supported by alex_'s logic [1]. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2098679 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2098679

getsat 16y ago

I think the growth was more at Reddit's expense. There was a drastic downturn in the quality of material hitting the front page in 2010. The comment quality has gone down significantly, too. (Yes, I know you can decide which subreddits appear on the front page when you are logged in).

redthrowaway 16y ago
Yeah, I'd say the overall quality has dropped, and has been dropping with increased traffic for a long time. Still, there's been some absolute gold on there. Check out the Best of 2010 for some examples: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/f12id/its_time_to_choose_the_winners_in_reddits_best_of/ http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/f12id/its_time_to_choo...
- getsat 16y ago
  Yeah, like I mentioned in a reply below, I've started filtering the subreddits shown and it's helped the signal/noise ratio a lot.
guywithabike 16y ago
The biggest win has been for smaller niche subreddits that now have enough of a readership to feel like communities now. Reddit's strong suit has always been in the discussions.
- getsat 16y ago
  I agree. I've been filtering certain default subreddits (e.g., AskReddit) from the front page because the signal/noise ratio is terrible. As an example, I like the fact that /r/coding was spawned from the fact that 90% of the articles in /r/programming are not related to programming.

relix 16y ago

Maybe there's room in the market for a third big player* now? Digg's reputation has gone down the toilet and is declining. Reddit has taken over 1st place but they have a few problems: First, Conde Nast doesn't supply them with enough resources compared to their popularity. This makes the user experience painfully slow, and the site is down even more times than Twitter was in the early days. They also don't have a designer which makes the usability bad. Third, they lack the creativity to make money off their huge userbase. I'm sure these three reasons are related. If a start-up would be launched now it could even exploit the recent delicious-catastrophe by importing those links. This could bootstrap the community and content, and it'd make for some good marketing. * I still count 4chan as an underground site, but maybe they are the third player. They're niche though, so let's say there's still room even then.

jokermatt999 16y ago
They also don't have a designer which makes the usability bad. I've heard this repeated a number of times, and I completely disagree with it. Reddit may not be the prettiest site on the block, but it's damn functional. There is very little unnecessary stuff on the screen, and I quite like it that way. I tend to turn off custom subreddit styles because they takae away from the minimal, functional interface. I've heard people talk about "improving reddit and HN's design", but I've never seen any clear examples of where they think it's bad. I still count 4chan as an underground site, but maybe they are the third player. They're niche though, so let's say there's still room even then. 4chan's an entirely different category. They're less about linksharing, and more about...well, whatever the hell they are. I don't think I'd put them anywhere near Digg or Reddit except for the fact that they both have memes. That's pretty much the only comparison.