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That's actually really surprising. I was part of the Digg exodus and I'd barely heard about Reddit at the time of the v4 debacle, while Digg was a pretty big b

by Pxtl 11y ago

That's actually really surprising. I was part of the Digg exodus and I'd barely heard about Reddit at the time of the v4 debacle, while Digg was a pretty big brand in tech circles. Was it just better marketing while Reddit actually had a larger-but-quieter userbase at the time?

jedberg 11y ago
Digg spent a lot of money on marketing, while reddit spent none, so yeah, that was a big part of it. They had a lot of articles written about them because they had a fabulous marketing and PR team. One we were a bit envious of.
paganel 11y ago
As a counter-anecdote, by 2010 I had been a reddit user for 4 years and I had never commented nor had had an account on digg, which felt more like the flashier version of an online phpbb forum. I had first heard about reddit in the summer of 2005 while holding my first ever job as a programmer doing python work, which I would consider as a "tech circle". I remember that I was a little bummed when the front page first got rid of technical-related content and forced me to go to programming.reddit.com instead. That and the fact that people like Paul Graham were still being judged based on their programming merit not on any crazy start-upy valuations certainly made reddit a very techie community in the beginning, at least from my point of view. And I almost forgot, many people were actually pretty upset when reddit switched from Lisp to Python (in December 2005, I even wrote on my blog about it), because python felt "less pure". Funny times.
ChrisArchitect 11y ago
yeah my view is coming from just my experience, those around me, and general perceived vibe on the 'tech net' at the time. Digg was the spot where links broke. Then in the backlash due to the botched design launch etc, we all started giving reddit a chance, submitting there first/checking there first. It had always been around, but was more for maybe community/comments on links...not where they broke. Then that started to reverse very rapidly until well.....

by Pxtl 11y ago

jedberg 11y ago

Digg spent a lot of money on marketing, while reddit spent none, so yeah, that was a big part of it. They had a lot of articles written about them because they had a fabulous marketing and PR team. One we were a bit envious of.

paganel 11y ago

As a counter-anecdote, by 2010 I had been a reddit user for 4 years and I had never commented nor had had an account on digg, which felt more like the flashier version of an online phpbb forum. I had first heard about reddit in the summer of 2005 while holding my first ever job as a programmer doing python work, which I would consider as a "tech circle". I remember that I was a little bummed when the front page first got rid of technical-related content and forced me to go to programming.reddit.com instead. That and the fact that people like Paul Graham were still being judged based on their programming merit not on any crazy start-upy valuations certainly made reddit a very techie community in the beginning, at least from my point of view. And I almost forgot, many people were actually pretty upset when reddit switched from Lisp to Python (in December 2005, I even wrote on my blog about it), because python felt "less pure". Funny times.

ChrisArchitect 11y ago

yeah my view is coming from just my experience, those around me, and general perceived vibe on the 'tech net' at the time. Digg was the spot where links broke. Then in the backlash due to the botched design launch etc, we all started giving reddit a chance, submitting there first/checking there first. It had always been around, but was more for maybe community/comments on links...not where they broke. Then that started to reverse very rapidly until well.....