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Good read. Interesting that the author’s takeaway is that folks consider Digg v4 to be a catastrophic launch because of the myriad technical issues. I don’t ev

Good read. Interesting that the author’s takeaway is that folks consider Digg v4 to be a catastrophic launch because of the myriad technical issues. I don’t even remember there being technical issues, I just remember logging in one day to find a website I enjoyed replaced with a bunch of crap I wasn’t interested in.

conradfr 3y ago
That's my recollection of it. Just one day the content was not interesting anymore and felt certainly more gamed than before, which they wanted to combat as per this blog post. I'm surprised the conclusion is not that they learn to never do a full rewrite of a social product again.
- broknbottle 3y ago
  This so much. I remember visiting digg after v4 launch and it felt like a totally different site. At the time I remember looking for site that filled void and offered similar content but wasn’t so focused e.g. slashdot and I came upon reddit
thisismyhna 3y ago
Yeap, this was definitely the point where many of us jumped over to Reddit. I remember hating Reddit's interface but it was the lesser evil.
Seanambers 3y ago
Yeah, the technical issues weren't that crazy from the user perspective. The change of features were though. It was a totally different site, people left because the core functionality of the site disappeared over night. Edit - makes me wonder if they used the site themselves.
swalsh 3y ago
Was it the V4 rollout where basically every link came from MrBabyMan?
- godzillabrennus 3y ago
  Yes. Here is more info from Wikipedia: Digg's v4 release on August 25, 2010, was marred by site-wide bugs and glitches. Digg users reacted with hostile verbal opposition. Beyond the release, Digg faced problems due to so-called "power users" who would manipulate the article recommendation features to only support one another's postings, flooding the site with articles only from these users and making it impossible to have genuine content from non-power users appear on the front page.[citation needed] Frustrations with the system led to dwindling web traffic, exacerbated by heavy competition from Facebook, whose like buttons started to appear on websites next to Digg's.[19] High staff turnover included the departure of head of business development Matt Van Horn, shortly after v4's release.[20]
  - bacchusracine 3y ago
    >Digg faced problems due to so-called "power users" who would manipulate the article recommendation features to only support one another's postings, flooding the site with articles only from these users and making it impossible to have genuine content from non-power users appear on the front page So familiar....
unsupp0rted 3y ago
This is why I’m excited for the Reddit third party apps change. In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy. Even the smaller subs catch the contagion year over year. I’ve been a Redditor since before the narwhal baconed at midnight. I miss the Reddit that was good. I’m excited to see what replaces it.
- Takennickname 3y ago
  You comment is flagged. Guess the mods here are no different lol. Anyway, for me, "Narwhal baconed at midnight" was when I realized the site was overrun was kids. Slow decline while obsessively looking for alternatives since then.
- DirectorKrennic 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - drumhead 3y ago
    Its any view that they dont find acceptable however mild they may be. If you dont fit into their political world view you're likely to be banned. Discussion unless you subscribe the dominant viewpoints is almost impossible on reddit. Say something the majority dont like and you're downvoted into oblivion or banned. Literally the only place left where you can speak your mind without censure is sadly 4chan.
    - DirectorKrennic 3y ago
      > Say something the majority dont like and you're downvoted into oblivion So? That's how every society works everywhere. Don't disturb the peace. You are an adult. You're entitled to your opinion, but you should have the courage of your convictions. Reddit is no different from other social media platforms in this regard, even HN.
what-the-grump 3y ago
Digg was Digg, then V4 launched, and it was no longer Digg. It was really that simple, oh hey I should check Digg maybe there is something interesting went to oh hey I need to find something else to check because Digg is stale, the new UI had much lower information density, coupled with less content meant that there was no reason to go back if you could find a faster feed. New stuff like reddit, insta, twitter, simply took over filling the urge to hit f5 for latest content.
- johnwalkr 3y ago
  Plus it literally didn't load half the time.
mustacheemperor 3y ago
It’s interesting that as users, we think of v4 as this pivotal moment when the platform changed forever - but the article’s author seems to think of it more as the inflection point of ongoing problems that had built up for a while. Especially with a high profile implosion like this, it’s really interesting to contrast our experience in the userbase to an internal perspective. >Digg V4 is sometimes referenced as an example of a catastrophic launch, with an implied lesson that we shouldn’t have launched it. At one point, I used to agree, but these days I think we made the right decision to launch. Our traffic was significantly down, we were losing a bunch of money each month, we had recently raised money and knew we couldn’t easily raise more. If we’d had the choice between launching something great and something awful, we’d have preferred to launch something great, but instead we had the choice of taking one last swing or turning in our bat quietly.
Dwedit 3y ago
All I remember was seeing some really stale stuff on the front page of Digg, making me look for an alternative.
patwolf 3y ago
I remember a growing frustration before the v4 launch. Early on it seemed to be an aggregator for fun stuff on the internet, but over time it become more and more political. The v4 launch was the last straw that convinced me to switch to Reddit. Reddit at the time felt lighthearted and fun. I think I read somewhere that a lot of the comments were being written in-house, which makes sense in retrospect. For example, someone would leave a comment like "Is this the real life?", and then the entire lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody would appear line-by-line as comments without missing a beat. It seems improbable that a bunch of strangers could have done that perfectly. While there are some parallels between Digg v4 and what's going on with Reddit today, I think predictions of its death are greatly exaggerated. However, I would be happy to see something else take its place.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Glad to see this as the top comment. I was a "Digg refugee" to Reddit, and I do remember a lot of outages with V4, but just like you, I remember thinking more clearly "Why would I wait a long time for this page to load when all that comes back is spam." It was the most useless, uninteresting set of basically ads that I could think of. Imagine if Reddit had no interesting user submitted stories but was instead 100% of some of their worst ads that try to use "Reddit meme language". It was pathetic and sad.
kolanos 3y ago
I remember Kevin Rose talking about the impending V4 and being struck by how obsessed he was with Digg doing every popular web trend at the time. He was particularly focused on everything Facebook did to the point where Digg aesthetically started to even look like Facebook. It seemed like Digg had all but abandoned what made it great in pursuit of copying others. Maybe this was VC pressure, who knows.

conradfr 3y ago

That's my recollection of it. Just one day the content was not interesting anymore and felt certainly more gamed than before, which they wanted to combat as per this blog post. I'm surprised the conclusion is not that they learn to never do a full rewrite of a social product again.

broknbottle 3y ago
This so much. I remember visiting digg after v4 launch and it felt like a totally different site. At the time I remember looking for site that filled void and offered similar content but wasn’t so focused e.g. slashdot and I came upon reddit

thisismyhna 3y ago

Yeap, this was definitely the point where many of us jumped over to Reddit. I remember hating Reddit's interface but it was the lesser evil.

Seanambers 3y ago

Yeah, the technical issues weren't that crazy from the user perspective. The change of features were though. It was a totally different site, people left because the core functionality of the site disappeared over night. Edit - makes me wonder if they used the site themselves.

swalsh 3y ago

Was it the V4 rollout where basically every link came from MrBabyMan?

godzillabrennus 3y ago
Yes. Here is more info from Wikipedia: Digg's v4 release on August 25, 2010, was marred by site-wide bugs and glitches. Digg users reacted with hostile verbal opposition. Beyond the release, Digg faced problems due to so-called "power users" who would manipulate the article recommendation features to only support one another's postings, flooding the site with articles only from these users and making it impossible to have genuine content from non-power users appear on the front page.[citation needed] Frustrations with the system led to dwindling web traffic, exacerbated by heavy competition from Facebook, whose like buttons started to appear on websites next to Digg's.[19] High staff turnover included the departure of head of business development Matt Van Horn, shortly after v4's release.[20]
- bacchusracine 3y ago
  >Digg faced problems due to so-called "power users" who would manipulate the article recommendation features to only support one another's postings, flooding the site with articles only from these users and making it impossible to have genuine content from non-power users appear on the front page So familiar....

unsupp0rted 3y ago

This is why I’m excited for the Reddit third party apps change. In a few years nobody will remember that this is what precipitated the fall of Reddit. It’s already turned into an echo-chamber of nonsense, ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy. Even the smaller subs catch the contagion year over year. I’ve been a Redditor since before the narwhal baconed at midnight. I miss the Reddit that was good. I’m excited to see what replaces it.

Takennickname 3y ago
You comment is flagged. Guess the mods here are no different lol. Anyway, for me, "Narwhal baconed at midnight" was when I realized the site was overrun was kids. Slow decline while obsessively looking for alternatives since then.
DirectorKrennic 3y ago
[flagged]
- drumhead 3y ago
  Its any view that they dont find acceptable however mild they may be. If you dont fit into their political world view you're likely to be banned. Discussion unless you subscribe the dominant viewpoints is almost impossible on reddit. Say something the majority dont like and you're downvoted into oblivion or banned. Literally the only place left where you can speak your mind without censure is sadly 4chan.
  - DirectorKrennic 3y ago
    > Say something the majority dont like and you're downvoted into oblivion So? That's how every society works everywhere. Don't disturb the peace. You are an adult. You're entitled to your opinion, but you should have the courage of your convictions. Reddit is no different from other social media platforms in this regard, even HN.

what-the-grump 3y ago

Digg was Digg, then V4 launched, and it was no longer Digg. It was really that simple, oh hey I should check Digg maybe there is something interesting went to oh hey I need to find something else to check because Digg is stale, the new UI had much lower information density, coupled with less content meant that there was no reason to go back if you could find a faster feed. New stuff like reddit, insta, twitter, simply took over filling the urge to hit f5 for latest content.

johnwalkr 3y ago
Plus it literally didn't load half the time.

mustacheemperor 3y ago

It’s interesting that as users, we think of v4 as this pivotal moment when the platform changed forever - but the article’s author seems to think of it more as the inflection point of ongoing problems that had built up for a while. Especially with a high profile implosion like this, it’s really interesting to contrast our experience in the userbase to an internal perspective. >Digg V4 is sometimes referenced as an example of a catastrophic launch, with an implied lesson that we shouldn’t have launched it. At one point, I used to agree, but these days I think we made the right decision to launch. Our traffic was significantly down, we were losing a bunch of money each month, we had recently raised money and knew we couldn’t easily raise more. If we’d had the choice between launching something great and something awful, we’d have preferred to launch something great, but instead we had the choice of taking one last swing or turning in our bat quietly.

Dwedit 3y ago

All I remember was seeing some really stale stuff on the front page of Digg, making me look for an alternative.

patwolf 3y ago

I remember a growing frustration before the v4 launch. Early on it seemed to be an aggregator for fun stuff on the internet, but over time it become more and more political. The v4 launch was the last straw that convinced me to switch to Reddit. Reddit at the time felt lighthearted and fun. I think I read somewhere that a lot of the comments were being written in-house, which makes sense in retrospect. For example, someone would leave a comment like "Is this the real life?", and then the entire lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody would appear line-by-line as comments without missing a beat. It seems improbable that a bunch of strangers could have done that perfectly. While there are some parallels between Digg v4 and what's going on with Reddit today, I think predictions of its death are greatly exaggerated. However, I would be happy to see something else take its place.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

Glad to see this as the top comment. I was a "Digg refugee" to Reddit, and I do remember a lot of outages with V4, but just like you, I remember thinking more clearly "Why would I wait a long time for this page to load when all that comes back is spam." It was the most useless, uninteresting set of basically ads that I could think of. Imagine if Reddit had no interesting user submitted stories but was instead 100% of some of their worst ads that try to use "Reddit meme language". It was pathetic and sad.

kolanos 3y ago

I remember Kevin Rose talking about the impending V4 and being struck by how obsessed he was with Digg doing every popular web trend at the time. He was particularly focused on everything Facebook did to the point where Digg aesthetically started to even look like Facebook. It seemed like Digg had all but abandoned what made it great in pursuit of copying others. Maybe this was VC pressure, who knows.