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Reddit just seems like one of those projects that got really lucky. Digg was making its users upset, slashdot was too nerdy, and metafilter too hard to get into

Reddit just seems like one of those projects that got really lucky. Digg was making its users upset, slashdot was too nerdy, and metafilter too hard to get into due to $5 cost. Early reddit was kind of a mess too. Congrats on his success, but its always odd to hear people give advice or talk about their projects when there's a large element of luck involved. To be fair, this may be true of all successful projects.

kevando 13y ago
I don't think reddit got lucky because even after becoming mega successful, it's still almost impossible to spam the site. And their "hot" algorithm is an amazing way to always provide fresh content (unless you spend hours on the site). Their luck did come though, from Digg's failure. I forget the number, but they almost doubled their page views the week after Digg's infamous update.
- TillE 13y ago
  Reddit was popular but still very niche pre-Digg 4. Not unlike Slashdot. Digg's collapse rapidly transformed Reddit into something completely different, exemplified now by the celebrity AMAs and godawful crap on the front page. Reddit did get a number of things right, but it still won't last. They may look back at killing /r/reddit.com as a huge mistake; once upon a time, people did really talk about Reddit as one big community, and there was some sense of that. That's not the case anymore.
  - kn0thing 13y ago
    The reason digg died and we've thrived is because a month in, we realized being a platform for people to create their own subreddits (and thus many community forums) was the only way we'd scale. At some point if there were only one front page, we'd hit a ceiling, whereas as a platform, we can scale forever.
- kn0thing 13y ago
  That's just not true. We saw a big bump the week after digg v4 (which more than a few of us saw coming) http://alexisohanian.com/an-open-letter-to-kevin-rose http://alexisohanian.com/an-open-letter-to-kevin-rose but it was not a doubling of pageviews. reddit's traffic has consistently doubled every year for the last 6 years.
kn0thing 13y ago
Spoiler: anything that ends up being successful is going to involve a non trivial amount of luck. It seems like you realized this by the end of your comment but it didn't dissuade you from hitting 'reply.'

kevando 13y ago

I don't think reddit got lucky because even after becoming mega successful, it's still almost impossible to spam the site. And their "hot" algorithm is an amazing way to always provide fresh content (unless you spend hours on the site). Their luck did come though, from Digg's failure. I forget the number, but they almost doubled their page views the week after Digg's infamous update.

TillE 13y ago
Reddit was popular but still very niche pre-Digg 4. Not unlike Slashdot. Digg's collapse rapidly transformed Reddit into something completely different, exemplified now by the celebrity AMAs and godawful crap on the front page. Reddit did get a number of things right, but it still won't last. They may look back at killing /r/reddit.com as a huge mistake; once upon a time, people did really talk about Reddit as one big community, and there was some sense of that. That's not the case anymore.
- kn0thing 13y ago
  The reason digg died and we've thrived is because a month in, we realized being a platform for people to create their own subreddits (and thus many community forums) was the only way we'd scale. At some point if there were only one front page, we'd hit a ceiling, whereas as a platform, we can scale forever.
kn0thing 13y ago
That's just not true. We saw a big bump the week after digg v4 (which more than a few of us saw coming) http://alexisohanian.com/an-open-letter-to-kevin-rose http://alexisohanian.com/an-open-letter-to-kevin-rose but it was not a doubling of pageviews. reddit's traffic has consistently doubled every year for the last 6 years.

kn0thing 13y ago

Spoiler: anything that ends up being successful is going to involve a non trivial amount of luck. It seems like you realized this by the end of your comment but it didn't dissuade you from hitting 'reply.'