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> Huffman et al. were at the right place and right time with a LAMP(?) stack when Digg imploded. That's incorrect revisionist history. Reddit was a large part

by phire 3y ago

> Huffman et al. were at the right place and right time with a LAMP(?) stack when Digg imploded. That's incorrect revisionist history. Reddit was a large part of the cause for Digg to implode. users had been flooding from Digg to reddit for years before Digg finally imploded. There was an entire series of "digg vs reddit" comics. Both sites launched within a year of each-other. Digg always had the prettier website, which did a better job at looking professional and attracting users. But reddit had better algorithms for promoting content to the front page and the threaded comment system that attracted in-depth discussions. Digg's algorithms sucked so much that their front page always seemed to be links that had reached Reddit's front page 6 hours earlier. Though, you might be right about the "trying to prove he's special" thing.

iaw 3y ago
I'd argue we have different perspectives on the matter and wont undermine yours. My thoughts are that Digg sealed its fate with Digg 2.0 (or whatever major redesign they had) that made the site unusable and degraded content quality. I think the lesson Huffman is missing is that quality content from your 2% contributors makes the site worth visiting.
- phire 3y ago
  While I was one of the many users who migrated from Digg to reddit in 2007-2009, I'm mostly basing my assertions off the perspective of the Digg engineer who launched Digg v4, and the article they wrote [1] on the topic. From this inside perspective, it's very clear that Digg was already dying long before the launch of Digg v4; They explictly state that Digg v4 was pushed out the door early, as a gamble, because they only had so much runway before the remaining VC cash ran out. They knew it was a disaster and decided to launch it anyway. I'll admit, that from the perspective of the average Digg user in 2010 it would seem like Digg was perfectly healthy, then suddenly shat the bed by pushing out digg v4. But really, the digg v4 launch only served to communicate to the users that the site was dying. [1] https://lethain.com/digg-v4/ https://lethain.com/digg-v4/

by phire 3y ago

iaw 3y ago

I'd argue we have different perspectives on the matter and wont undermine yours. My thoughts are that Digg sealed its fate with Digg 2.0 (or whatever major redesign they had) that made the site unusable and degraded content quality. I think the lesson Huffman is missing is that quality content from your 2% contributors makes the site worth visiting.

phire 3y ago
While I was one of the many users who migrated from Digg to reddit in 2007-2009, I'm mostly basing my assertions off the perspective of the Digg engineer who launched Digg v4, and the article they wrote [1] on the topic. From this inside perspective, it's very clear that Digg was already dying long before the launch of Digg v4; They explictly state that Digg v4 was pushed out the door early, as a gamble, because they only had so much runway before the remaining VC cash ran out. They knew it was a disaster and decided to launch it anyway. I'll admit, that from the perspective of the average Digg user in 2010 it would seem like Digg was perfectly healthy, then suddenly shat the bed by pushing out digg v4. But really, the digg v4 launch only served to communicate to the users that the site was dying. [1] https://lethain.com/digg-v4/ https://lethain.com/digg-v4/