That doesn't seem like his point. I think he is pointing out that digg changed too much and changed too much of the UX and people got fed up and moved to the next best thing.
I don't think he's saying Zuckerberg is worried about reddit, he's saying Zuckerberg is worried about being a fad or a blip. And he should be. More than one metric is indicating that Facebook usage per-user is diminishing, or at least peaking.
Even if it wasn't fad driven, there seems to be a significant trend of the number one site getting eclipsed by new up and comers. Whether that trend is coming to a halt with Facebook or not is debatable (they seem to be staying on the leading edge and more than willing to adapt and take in the ideas any competitors would push, along with the most extreme network effect possible).
On the other hand, I doubt that reddit isn't going to suffer the same fate that slashdot and digg did when something better comes along, though I doubt they are going to make as drastic a mistake as digg did.
> Reddit also has the advantage of doing it during a major UI shift - it's easy to justify design changes when everyone is heading for mobile browsers anyway. Digg didn't have that excuse.
On the contrary, Digg’s UI changes were happening when “Web 2.0”-hype was peaking, including bold new web-design trends - many sites were actively redesigning themselves with a brighter theme and better visual-effects: this was around 2007-2010 when IE6-support was starting to be discounted by tech-oriented websites so they could start using new CSS features and alpha-channel PNG images that IE7, Firefox, and Opera supported.
I argue that the changes to their recommendation algorithm - and the introduction - and eventual promotion - of mainstream news (especially sports news) meant that their early users: technology news readers, lost interest in the site. The redesign of the site was a contributing factor, but a bad redesign is nowhere near as damaging to a site’s popularity than it losing relevance to its core user base.
Facebook is profitable at the expense of its user base. Reddit is taking a longer view, in part because of the demographic that uses their service and in part due to what happened to Digg.
First of all, this is an idiotic comparison. Digg and Facebook target different audiences, and even though Digg does have some 'social' aspects, you don't need to be registered to make use of Digg content. Not so with Facebook.
The comments bewildered me, too. Digg is hardly techie-biased anymore. Look at the front page of digg.com right now; I don't see much that is related to computing. The 'cool pics/videos' fad has taken it over like half of Reddit.
Not necessarily. Reddit was riding the coattails of Digg for a long time until Digg actively alienated it's user base with a redesign. Also, MySpace losing to Facebook.
Reddit is on path to do same. If reddit ever kills old.reddit, exodus will happen.
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But seriously, a designer should be thinking about the consumption/participation model as opposed to just the eyeballs/adwords-please-kill-me-now model...
The consumption and participation of a site is direct to the UX - and when DIGG basically made it a 100% consumption push, while also making participation weird/hard/less-desirable, that shit was dead.
Reddit is becoming a weird corporate bot colony and they are actively killing their UX.
That's how I and many others felt with Digg over a decade ago. People like to use what they are familiar, but if you push hard enough people will abandon the platform. I guess reddit isn't pushing hard enough yet, although I suppose I would be gone if the old version wasn't available.
Seems to me that digg is having a myspace moment. It's failed to keep up with innovation as the world has changed around it. Digg's value-add has been left in the dust by more targeted sites (reddit, HN, even twitter, facebook, failblog, 4chan, etc.), and they can't fix that problem without fundamentally reinventing digg.
> reddit traffic surpassed Digg traffic well before the Digg v4 launch [0].
I'm not sure exactly what that graph is showing. Is it just referrals to the author's own site? If so, that's likely biased.
It doesn't seem to line up with the numbers in your second link.
> Digg was already in decline [1] while reddit was growing [2], and the Digg v4 exodus just made it happen faster.
Digg had started to dip, but I think that was mostly from removing the DiggBar and Google's ranking changes. It had definitely plateaued before v4, but I think v4 was the tipping point where the critical mass of users abandoned Digg and (for better or worse) arrived at Reddit.
> On the other hand, reddit's signature feature is its user-created subreddits.
Yes, this is the smartest thing Reddit has done. I remember at the time people saying subreddits were totally broken because you had to submit a link to multiple subreddits separately. They argued that you should submit a link once and "tag" it to be in multiple subreddits.
I knew that they were deliberately decentralizing their communities so that each could develop its own personality and culture. It was an incredibly smart move.
At the same time, there is a lot of interaction between subreddits, and reddit still has a front page that is viewed heavily by lurkers. This means "global" things can still affect reddit as a whole.
> That's a fundamental incentive for people to stay on reddit: even if the front page goes to shit, you're not going to see something like the trans community or any of the numerous fandoms that have a presence on reddit pack up and leave.
That's only true for users that actually have accounts and tune their front page. I think a surprisingly large number don't do that.
Also, the social reputation of the site as a whole affects how people use it. 4chan also has a few nice subcommunities, but you don't want to tell your friends how much you like 4chan because they associate that name with its most toxic elements.
I'm going to toot my own horn, here. Almost three years ago to the day I wrote an article outlining what Digg should do in light of the launch of the Facebook Platform:
1. Digg should become the default way people like and share things on the web and, in particular, Facebook.
2. Digg should reflect shared content through the social graph, vs. showing me an aggregate view of all activity in the world. The former is social, the latter is not.
3. Digg should have a concerted Facebook strategy to accelerate their growth, focusing particularly on the Facebook feed (which was less than a year old at the time).
Three years later Digg is just getting around to this, but Facebook has already gotten to (1) and (2) with their "like" button and their new connect implementation.
Ho hum. To little too late? Sites like http://likebutton.me/ are in many ways more compelling than digg, which is still dominated by stories that appeal to a very narrow demographic.
Also, FWIW, Eli White from Digg responded to my article noting the technical difficulty in implementing some of my suggestions -- difficulties which were shortly eliminated by changes to the Facebook platform. So I know at least someone at Digg read it.
Has there been a better example than Digg of how detrimental it is to alienate your users on the social web?
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention Reddit, which seems to have been the main reason why Digg's numbers haven't bounced back, despite changing some of the aspects which made users leave.
A comparable social site, reddit, didn't draw attention from the wrong kind of user by changing their site. They drew attention from the wrong kind of user because their biggest competitor changed their site (Digg).
The thing is, Reddit started at the same time Digg did. It's been growing slowly and consistently ever since. Their growth rate actually hasn't changed much over time.
Reddit figured out how to support subcommunities in a way that those other sites never did. In my opinion that's what's different.
See also: social networks. Every social network was a passing fad...until Facebook wasn't.
It feels like Reddit is going the same direction Digg did years ago. Sadly for users (but good for Reddit) there isn't a moderately large rival that might have the momentum to capture jaded users.
As I remember it, Digg forced some updates on it's users that they (we) did not like and were very vocal about. Facebook does the same thing, except there were other options for Digg users (reddit), Facebook users have a steep cost of moving to another service - I would actually argue Facebook users have no other options
No maybe about it. Digg lost their market by messing with their product. It's an interesting case, because you can make a direct comparison with reddit: two nearly identical products serving the same market started at the same time. Digg tried to grow too fast and failed, reddit grew at its natural pace and succeeded.
I don't think he's saying Zuckerberg is worried about reddit, he's saying Zuckerberg is worried about being a fad or a blip. And he should be. More than one metric is indicating that Facebook usage per-user is diminishing, or at least peaking.
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