Reddit is smarter than digg though - they know they need to keep their legacy and leader users happy - because once influencers (real ones, not Instagram users) leave the site will stop being culturally relevant.
The fact they’ve kept the old site still running for so long (4 years now?) I think it evidence they’ll keep it around. I don’t think it’s costing them anything.
I know its an old article, but knowing the current situation at Digg's replacement Reddit, I wonder if Digg can do to Reddit what Reddit did to Digg. It wouldn't be far fetched to see the kind of mass exodus from Reddit that would have a similar effect on Reddit's valuation.
digg died fifteen years ago. clearly a lot has changed, and the mistakes that killed digg have not been made.
and i think reddit is beyond the point at which a digg-style fuckup could kill them. at worst you might see cadres of ideological users depart for something like lemmy, which is already happening to an extent, but there is a lot of space to flee internally, so most users don't feel the pressure. and diffusion to federated media is in the future for every mass audience. reddit has such a huge and active userbase it will dominate for the foreseeable future.
It took longer, but Reddit looks dead set on being the next digg. If they disabled the ability to use old.Reddit it would have already happened. But pushing more for gamification of tokens and premium experiences sounds like it will digg it reliably.
Digg died not just because it was a redesign, but because it sold out as part of that redesign. Built into it was highlighting the content of media companies, and elevating it above the submissions by regular users.
Reddit has avoided getting bitten by this by selling out quietly behind the scenes. It has partnered with those same media companies and advertisers but it simply allows them to present themselves as regular users, or present their content in AMAs or other officially sanctioned channels.
Reddit has so far avoided Digg's big misstep; making it obvious to the users that they value the money from media companies more than the memes and other junk regular users make. But make no mistake, Reddit is currently in the same position Digg was in when everybody jumped ship. It's just too subtle for most Reddit users to notice.
Digg is 19 years old as well, and was significantly more popular than Reddit at its peak. Where is it now? Or Myspace? Or Tumblr? Or Google+? Or Twitter?
Any open forum that is private and profit-focused is eventually going to destroy itself. Reddit is not an exception, especially after its recent IPO. How long do you think it will be before investors are no longer content with losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year and want more monetization and more user-hostile features built in?
Killing old.reddit.com would probably be their final Digg moment for me. Maybe they'll manage to keep the bulk of their users and keep some husk of it's former self going for a long time, but I'm gone. I suspect many others will join. The quality of content has been plummeting for years anyway.
Another point to consider is that Reddit has the backing of a huge company that is making money elsewhere. They can be choosy with ads, etc.
Digg, on the other hand, was forced to make different decisions because they needed the incoming revenue. But, they could have done things differently and still kept revenue (and users) up.
Digg is working hard to pull off a comeback — but at the end of the day it come down to community. And the community at reddit is passionate, loyal and really obsessed about the content. Sadly the previous management at Digg seemed to work hard to kill that. The lesson to me is that it isn't about upgrading features, but keeping your audience in love with you...
"After a controversial 2010 redesign and the departure of co-founders Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, in July 2012 Digg was sold in three parts: the Digg brand, website, and technology were sold to Betaworks for an estimated $500,000;[9] 15 staff were transferred to The Washington Post Company's "SocialCode" for a reported $12 million; and a suite of patents was sold to LinkedIn for about $4 million."
The fact they’ve kept the old site still running for so long (4 years now?) I think it evidence they’ll keep it around. I don’t think it’s costing them anything.
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