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I remember Digg being more popular than Reddit more than a decade ago. What happened that caused Reddit to succeed where Digg failed?

Kye 2y ago
Digg was more self-immolation than failure. Reddit succeeded by being the place people fled to from Digg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Digg_v4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Digg_v4 Reddit is on the same path, but it's more of a slow burn.
- jmclnx 2y ago
  > Many users, upon finally reaching the site, complained about the new design Sounds like Reddit. When I go to reddit, I use "old.reddit.com". I hate the new version, once old.reddit disappears, I disappear too.
  - the_duke 2y ago
    If old.reddit didn't still have a very sizeable user base they definitely would have killed it by now, so you are not alone.
    - nickelpro 2y ago
      It's only about 5% of users, which is sizable but not unkillable by any means. The third-party mobile apps had way, way more than that and they proved very killable.
      - pavel_lishin 2y ago
        I wonder how much those 5% contribute compared to the folks using the new interface.
  - Kye 2y ago
    The lack of an obvious place to go seems to be all that stands between Reddit and total collapse. Instead of an obvious Digg->Reddit type path, it's more like Reddit->a bunch of less than equivalent options. You've got your Lemmys and Lobsters and so on, but none of them are a centralized catch-all. I can't (for example) go to Lobsters and talk about Star Trek in a /r/DaystromInstitute equivalent, and the official equivalent running on Lemmy is far from equivalent to what the subreddit was before all this chaos. It's kind of the same deal with Twitter. Twitter was the place ~everyone went to as forums collapsed. Now there's [Discord, new forums, Reddit, 9000 different ActivityPub platforms, Bluesky, Cohost, ...] and none are quite a match for what even the narrowest niche used Twitter for. You could easily go from your forum chat threads and topical threads and recreate that experience on Twitter with a high level of fidelity. Digg->Reddit was similar. There's no obvious match for the centralized platforms because they sucked up all the energy for creating new centralized platforms that existed before.
    - adamc 2y ago
      The obvious place is discord, but discord sucks in lots of other ways. Great for voice chat, but not great as a reddit replacement.
      - lee-rhapsody 2y ago
        I can't understand the appeal behind Discord for general communities. Everything is one giant persistent group chat--there's no discrete threads or posts to search, at least not in the servers I'm in. Sad that so many companies are opting for Discord for building communities.
        the_sleaze9 2y ago
        I've tried multiple times to use discord, and the fundamental blocker for me seems to be in it's name. Every one feels just like a private slack channel for a company I don't work for. Discordant. To say that product is going to replace twitter is -imo- just wrong.
        gardenhedge 2y ago
- eloisant 2y ago
  When Digg started to do stupid things, everyone switched to Reddit. When Reddit started to do stupid things, some people moved to lemmy but it wasn't as clear cut... I guess distributed networks are always a bit harder to get traction.
- arrowsmith 2y ago
  So the question is, if Digg users fled to Reddit, where are Reddit users fleeing to now? Before anyone replies with "the fediverse"… I've heard people talking about Mastodon etc. for years now and afaict it's still a fringe nerd thing that most people outside techie HN-adjacent circles haven't heard of. It doesn't seem remotely comparable to Reddit in terms of popularity, or potential popularity.
  - dflock 2y ago
    I think the issues is that there isn't an obvious successor place - rather lots of different ones - lemmy, etc... Mastodon recently blew past 15m users, though, so not nothing.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      Is that registered or MAU?
paxys 2y ago
Internet forums are fundamentally not companies that can grow infinitely and where investors 10-100x their money. Digg was unprofitable. Tumblr was unprofitable. Twitter is unprofitable. Reddit is unprofitable. When VCs/investors ramp up the pressure the company has to change in ways the community doesn't like, and that is what normally kills it. Whether that happens with Reddit as well is TBD, but I can personally say that the quality of the forum has been steady declining over the last few years.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  How does Facebook succeed making stupid amounts of money in this context? Is it the reality that they just have enough of data to make targeting effective enough?
  - adamc 2y ago
    They serve up a ton of ads, which is also gradually driving people from Facebook. But if reddit served as many ads, it would be completely unusable. Ads make the signal to noise ratio degrade. That works for spending a few minutes on FB, skimming to see what's up with friends or family, but not for reading long forum threads on reddit.
    - mordechai9000 2y ago
      Facebook doesn't just serve ads. They have high quality identity and market data on their users that is very appealing to advertisers looking to spend their money on specific targets. I don't think reddit is currently able to supply advertisers with data of that quality. I assume forcing people to sign up with an email or use the app instead of the website are attempts at bridging that gap.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - account42 2y ago
    Network effects mostly. If your relatives or friends are on facebook then you will either have to put up with it or miss out on social contacts. This does apply to other kinds of forums too to some extend but limited to a more abstract numbers game where the biggest forum is the place to be rather than more personal direct connections that you don't want to cut.
probably_wrong 2y ago
I believe the difference is that when Digg screwed up the redesign Reddit was ready to take its refugees. When the Reddit fiasco happened last year there was no clear place to migrate to. Having said that, and being perhaps too negative, do we know how alive Reddit actually is? Because once you factor the power users that left, the bots reposting top comments on reposted stories, the auto-generated content and the shills it is possible that Reddit has already started its decline but hasn't noticed yet.
- darkerside 2y ago
  Back to Digg? :)
BeetleB 2y ago
There was also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#AACS_encryption_key_contr...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

Kye 2y ago

Digg was more self-immolation than failure. Reddit succeeded by being the place people fled to from Digg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Digg_v4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Digg_v4 Reddit is on the same path, but it's more of a slow burn.

jmclnx 2y ago
> Many users, upon finally reaching the site, complained about the new design Sounds like Reddit. When I go to reddit, I use "old.reddit.com". I hate the new version, once old.reddit disappears, I disappear too.
- the_duke 2y ago
  If old.reddit didn't still have a very sizeable user base they definitely would have killed it by now, so you are not alone.
  - nickelpro 2y ago
    It's only about 5% of users, which is sizable but not unkillable by any means. The third-party mobile apps had way, way more than that and they proved very killable.
    - pavel_lishin 2y ago
      I wonder how much those 5% contribute compared to the folks using the new interface.
- Kye 2y ago
  The lack of an obvious place to go seems to be all that stands between Reddit and total collapse. Instead of an obvious Digg->Reddit type path, it's more like Reddit->a bunch of less than equivalent options. You've got your Lemmys and Lobsters and so on, but none of them are a centralized catch-all. I can't (for example) go to Lobsters and talk about Star Trek in a /r/DaystromInstitute equivalent, and the official equivalent running on Lemmy is far from equivalent to what the subreddit was before all this chaos. It's kind of the same deal with Twitter. Twitter was the place ~everyone went to as forums collapsed. Now there's [Discord, new forums, Reddit, 9000 different ActivityPub platforms, Bluesky, Cohost, ...] and none are quite a match for what even the narrowest niche used Twitter for. You could easily go from your forum chat threads and topical threads and recreate that experience on Twitter with a high level of fidelity. Digg->Reddit was similar. There's no obvious match for the centralized platforms because they sucked up all the energy for creating new centralized platforms that existed before.
  - adamc 2y ago
    The obvious place is discord, but discord sucks in lots of other ways. Great for voice chat, but not great as a reddit replacement.
    - lee-rhapsody 2y ago
      I can't understand the appeal behind Discord for general communities. Everything is one giant persistent group chat--there's no discrete threads or posts to search, at least not in the servers I'm in. Sad that so many companies are opting for Discord for building communities.
      - the_sleaze9 2y ago
        I've tried multiple times to use discord, and the fundamental blocker for me seems to be in it's name. Every one feels just like a private slack channel for a company I don't work for. Discordant. To say that product is going to replace twitter is -imo- just wrong.
      - gardenhedge 2y ago
eloisant 2y ago
When Digg started to do stupid things, everyone switched to Reddit. When Reddit started to do stupid things, some people moved to lemmy but it wasn't as clear cut... I guess distributed networks are always a bit harder to get traction.
arrowsmith 2y ago
So the question is, if Digg users fled to Reddit, where are Reddit users fleeing to now? Before anyone replies with "the fediverse"… I've heard people talking about Mastodon etc. for years now and afaict it's still a fringe nerd thing that most people outside techie HN-adjacent circles haven't heard of. It doesn't seem remotely comparable to Reddit in terms of popularity, or potential popularity.
- dflock 2y ago
  I think the issues is that there isn't an obvious successor place - rather lots of different ones - lemmy, etc... Mastodon recently blew past 15m users, though, so not nothing.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Is that registered or MAU?

paxys 2y ago

Internet forums are fundamentally not companies that can grow infinitely and where investors 10-100x their money. Digg was unprofitable. Tumblr was unprofitable. Twitter is unprofitable. Reddit is unprofitable. When VCs/investors ramp up the pressure the company has to change in ways the community doesn't like, and that is what normally kills it. Whether that happens with Reddit as well is TBD, but I can personally say that the quality of the forum has been steady declining over the last few years.

Ekaros 2y ago
How does Facebook succeed making stupid amounts of money in this context? Is it the reality that they just have enough of data to make targeting effective enough?
- adamc 2y ago
  They serve up a ton of ads, which is also gradually driving people from Facebook. But if reddit served as many ads, it would be completely unusable. Ads make the signal to noise ratio degrade. That works for spending a few minutes on FB, skimming to see what's up with friends or family, but not for reading long forum threads on reddit.
  - mordechai9000 2y ago
    Facebook doesn't just serve ads. They have high quality identity and market data on their users that is very appealing to advertisers looking to spend their money on specific targets. I don't think reddit is currently able to supply advertisers with data of that quality. I assume forcing people to sign up with an email or use the app instead of the website are attempts at bridging that gap.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- account42 2y ago
  Network effects mostly. If your relatives or friends are on facebook then you will either have to put up with it or miss out on social contacts. This does apply to other kinds of forums too to some extend but limited to a more abstract numbers game where the biggest forum is the place to be rather than more personal direct connections that you don't want to cut.

probably_wrong 2y ago

I believe the difference is that when Digg screwed up the redesign Reddit was ready to take its refugees. When the Reddit fiasco happened last year there was no clear place to migrate to. Having said that, and being perhaps too negative, do we know how alive Reddit actually is? Because once you factor the power users that left, the bots reposting top comments on reposted stories, the auto-generated content and the shills it is possible that Reddit has already started its decline but hasn't noticed yet.

darkerside 2y ago
Back to Digg? :)

BeetleB 2y ago

There was also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#AACS_encryption_key_contr...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]