How the Digg team was acquihired(lethain.com)
lethain.com
How the Digg team was acquihired
https://lethain.com//digg-acquihire/
122 comments
> Their downfall is thinking they actually knew what they were doing and therein lies their problem.
I read an interview with the PlentyOfFish founder and he alluded to this.
People would ask him why his site looked so bad compared to other dating sites. He said he he was afraid trying to make it better would make it worse. In reality he didn't know why people liked his site so much but it was working.
So he ended up working a couple hours each morning checking for spam and paying bills and took the rest of the day off instead of trying to constantly "improve" the site.
I read an interview with the PlentyOfFish founder and he alluded to this.
People would ask him why his site looked so bad compared to other dating sites. He said he he was afraid trying to make it better would make it worse. In reality he didn't know why people liked his site so much but it was working.
So he ended up working a couple hours each morning checking for spam and paying bills and took the rest of the day off instead of trying to constantly "improve" the site.
Digg looked great. Even original digg looked way nicer than current reddit. The problem was big redesign.
They really fucked it up. Ads were being shoved left and right without knowing what really was an ad and what wasn’t. It’s the same fuckery reddit started doing and scaled a bit back. I still hate current reddit (all the pop ups are really annoying)
Moral of the story: don’t do massive redesigns. Listen to your customers (not your VCs). Change one small thing at a time, A/B test it, UX interview it with customers, then roll it more % of customers. if no red flags, increase % over time to 100%.
They really fucked it up. Ads were being shoved left and right without knowing what really was an ad and what wasn’t. It’s the same fuckery reddit started doing and scaled a bit back. I still hate current reddit (all the pop ups are really annoying)
Moral of the story: don’t do massive redesigns. Listen to your customers (not your VCs). Change one small thing at a time, A/B test it, UX interview it with customers, then roll it more % of customers. if no red flags, increase % over time to 100%.
The classic example of a redesign done right is with eBay.
eBay's background used to be a (very) bright yellow, which looked pretty bad even for the web in 2009. When they initially changed it to the current white, the designers received enough complaints to change it back for fear of loosing parts of their userbase. They still wanted to change the background to pave the way for other websites, so slowly, over several months, they lightened the shade of yellow until it became white. [a]
This concept has been applied by many other "big" websites - Amazon, Dell, Google, and Yahoo come up as examples. [b]
[a]: https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience
[b]: https://articles.uie.com/death_of_relaunch/
eBay's background used to be a (very) bright yellow, which looked pretty bad even for the web in 2009. When they initially changed it to the current white, the designers received enough complaints to change it back for fear of loosing parts of their userbase. They still wanted to change the background to pave the way for other websites, so slowly, over several months, they lightened the shade of yellow until it became white. [a]
This concept has been applied by many other "big" websites - Amazon, Dell, Google, and Yahoo come up as examples. [b]
[a]: https://theuxblog.com/blog/redesigning-user-experience
[b]: https://articles.uie.com/death_of_relaunch/
It seems like any time a company backtracks on a design decision that they simply didn’t do their research thoroughly, if at all. All too often web pages look and feel is left to the software people who make terrible changes. Companies fail to realize that the webpage is their customers’ window to their business. Why would you leave that in the hands of coders?
Oh man, I really dislike the new reddit. It's slower and wastes half the screen real estate. Why did they think it was good?
Seriously a bummer, as you know the old design is gonna be phased out at one point or another.
Seriously a bummer, as you know the old design is gonna be phased out at one point or another.
Don't change a thing that is working just for the sake of change.
You can see this for successful small family restaurants, they usually don't have a lot of choices and usually do little things very well and stick with them and can last for generations.
You can see this for successful small family restaurants, they usually don't have a lot of choices and usually do little things very well and stick with them and can last for generations.
It is famously also one of the only well-known startups where the initial version was built by offshore outsourcers, like "exception which only highlights the rule that outsourcing sucks".
In my role as unofficial, self-appointed late-stage Digg historian [0], it's my belief that Digg ultimately had to change as the Google SEO changes had fatally wounded its near-profitability. Further, as a VC funded company it made the inevitable (and I think best for everyone involved) decision to modernize in an attempt to be a member of the Facebook, Twitter cohort rather than experience a long-term shrinking into mediocrity.
[0]: https://lethain.com/digg-v4/
[0]: https://lethain.com/digg-v4/
But did Digg serve its purpose for that period of the internet? That is, is it simply the case that Digg had limited shelf life and should have been left alone to die out naturally. If it was losing numbers then maybe the redesign or whatever it was accelerated its demise. Sometimes it's better to use the iPod effect as momentum to launch then next new thing (iPhone). That new thing is totally separate from the old thing (Digg).
If you take investor money and start to fail, you aren't gonna die out naturally, you'll be killed and drained of blood, or die attempting a triple pirouette off a 200 meter high dive into a kiddy pool.
That doesn't seem to have happened here. Digg isn't popular, and I'd definitely stipulate that it's lower quality, but it still exists and functions as a general interest content aggregator thing.
New Digg is a resurrection of old Digg by a completely different company. [1]
The Digg v4 thing was a very big deal back when it happened. In a matter of a month or two, Digg lost the majority of its traffic to Reddit. I personally remember switching pretty much overnight after v4 when beforehand I always thought Reddit was inferior to Digg.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Sale_and_relaunch
Edit:
Found an old graph of the traffic dropoff when v4 launched [2]
[2] http://i.imgur.com/FuqV9.png
The Digg v4 thing was a very big deal back when it happened. In a matter of a month or two, Digg lost the majority of its traffic to Reddit. I personally remember switching pretty much overnight after v4 when beforehand I always thought Reddit was inferior to Digg.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg#Sale_and_relaunch
Edit:
Found an old graph of the traffic dropoff when v4 launched [2]
[2] http://i.imgur.com/FuqV9.png
As I understand, Digg the original company was killed and drained of blood. The company that acquired the rights to digg.com as a result then re-launched it. The original Digg, the company, is long dead and buried.
Just because a website is up doesn't mean its relevant
I think it's tempting to attribute to structure what can be better explained by accident.
You obviously have more context, but from my experience developing product, there are almost always ways to change direction incrementally and in a manner that allows you to get your toe wet to test the temperature, and not dive in unshielded.
Although I realize now you may be saying that change was inevitable, but catastrophe wasn't.
You obviously have more context, but from my experience developing product, there are almost always ways to change direction incrementally and in a manner that allows you to get your toe wet to test the temperature, and not dive in unshielded.
Although I realize now you may be saying that change was inevitable, but catastrophe wasn't.
Google Panda launched in 2011. Digg V4 launched in 2010. This seems to contradict the timeline in your post?
And reddit is doing the new thing. Their new design caused me to leave, even their "old." subdomain is pretty bad.
Didn't really need it in my life anyway.
Didn't really need it in my life anyway.
Reddit exited in 2006. It has not been a startup for a long time.
I think reddit's so far approaching it well in the sense that they're keeping both around.
Also, reddit was doing pretty well before the introduction of subreddits, but that change really was a very successful one.
Also, reddit was doing pretty well before the introduction of subreddits, but that change really was a very successful one.
A key difference is that Digg's traffic cratered after their redesign, while Reddit's traffic has grown like crazy since theirs.
Do they release this data?
Also how's the user acquisition and retention rate as compared to traffic?
Also how's the user acquisition and retention rate as compared to traffic?
They don't specifically break out numbers pre and post-redesign, but first full year with the new design was 2019, during which there was a:
* 30% increase in monthly active users
* 37% increase in comments
* 53% increase in views
https://redditblog.com/2019/12/04/reddits-2019-year-in-revie...
* 30% increase in monthly active users
* 37% increase in comments
* 53% increase in views
https://redditblog.com/2019/12/04/reddits-2019-year-in-revie...
Quick googling got me no other info besides dropping from US #5 to US #6 between ’18 and ’19
But old.reddit.com is the same as reddit before they implemented the bloated redesign.
it constantly tries to make you to the new page. I actually have an extension to keep me on old.reddit.com. TBH I really miss Usenet. That functionality is what essentially I'm trying to get from them.
And it constantly annoys you, begging you to use the mobile app.
Reddit: Stop it. I'm aware there's a mobile app. If I wanted to use it then I would. I don't need to see an advertisement for it on every damn page.
Reddit: Stop it. I'm aware there's a mobile app. If I wanted to use it then I would. I don't need to see an advertisement for it on every damn page.
On iOS, you can use AdGuard or other blocker and create custom blockers to block all those popups.
It's an account setting -- you can completely opt out of the new version. I use Reddit every day, and have never been sent to the new version by mistake.
Unfortunately, if you use the old version, you will also not have access to the newest mod tools, including a lot of sub settings. But the old version works fine for reading and commenting.
Unfortunately, if you use the old version, you will also not have access to the newest mod tools, including a lot of sub settings. But the old version works fine for reading and commenting.
I've set my preference to old numerous times. That setting seems to either revert or disappear entirely / appear as a new setting.
I'm constantly directed to www.
That's obvious as I've disabled JS for the domain, and so get an empty page with a spinner.
It's a clusterfsck.
I'm constantly directed to www.
That's obvious as I've disabled JS for the domain, and so get an empty page with a spinner.
It's a clusterfsck.
It’s a cookie, and it’s linked to your login session. If you log out or clear cookies, or use incognito mode, it will revert to new by default. I used to have the same issue until I figured that out. Now I just have a dedicated container for it in Firefox and all is well.
I would have left reddit a long time ago if I were forced to use the terrible new UI. The fact that they still keep it around, years later, is a telling sign. When you are so scared of your own decisions, you know you messed up.
I would have left reddit a long time ago if I were forced to use the terrible new UI. The fact that they still keep it around, years later, is a telling sign. When you are so scared of your own decisions, you know you messed up.
This occurs consistently whilst logged in.
I'm on Reddit daily, and never had it forget my setting. You need to go to your preferences and disable "Use new Reddit as my default experience". When you do this, www.reddit.com shows the old design; you don't need to use old.reddit.com.
Because reasons, I want old.reddit.com as the site.
Going to www, with the setting as specified, does not behave as you describe.
Going to www, with the setting as specified, does not behave as you describe.
Did you also disable cookies? You might be causing the site to forget your settings by accident.
No.
The old version works fine, if you're aware of these workarounds, and these workarounds will not be shut down
I for one don't have an account, so I would get nagged by their popups constantly.
It was a perfectly fine website, they ruined it completely for me.
I for one don't have an account, so I would get nagged by their popups constantly.
It was a perfectly fine website, they ruined it completely for me.
2 posts per page isn't usable when most of the content needs to be skimmed through.
https://i.imgur.com/9vweCAg.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/9vweCAg.jpg
Does anyone know why exactly they would do something like this? Is it because it forces users to scroll more and thus take longer for people to consume content (so more opportunity to show ads)? It looks like a disaster.
There is a button (visible in that screenshot) to switch to a far more compact layout.
https://host.zlsadesign.com/r1pxSUnkU.png
https://host.zlsadesign.com/r1pxSUnkU.png
I never noticed that before, just went to the old version after seeing the default layout.
Old is a lot faster as well (at least when I checked, couldn’t be bothered after it was still horribly slow on a decent desktop PC when they had the full release). I liked the compact look, but performance is (or was) absolutely atrocious.
yes, exactly. The new format enables them to sell a lot of ad impressions and video ads too
I don't ever see it trying to get me to go to the new page.
I personally use and like i.reddit.com, their lightweight mobile version from the era when people used text-shadow to create an embossed effect on navigation bars. The only problem is v.redd.it video links, which catapult you back into redesign-land complete with a modal prompting you to download the app.
The Hail Mary strategy as described in the first couple paragraphs of TFA makes it pretty clear that senior leadership didn't understand social, at all. "A friend clicked on it" (not even "read it") is such a weak signal I'm sure FB's algorithm promptly buried the links for lack of click through.
I feel this way about a lot of television shows.
Heroes is a great example. The first seasons was amazing, the 2nd season was hot garbage. They had no idea what made the first season so great.
Heroes is a great example. The first seasons was amazing, the 2nd season was hot garbage. They had no idea what made the first season so great.
Heroes was damage from the writers' strike: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_the_2007%E2%80%9308_...
[deleted]
The second season was really puzzling.
But was it by accident? They had a template to work from. The original idea behind Digg was to fix what Kevin perceived was broken with Slashdot. They did that. Mission accomplished. Could have been a fine small/lifestyle business for years. Taking VC cash and everything that necessarily followed was what killed them.
Yes, this is the standard (and often correct) refrain - but think about it from the founders perspective:
He risks 0 of his own funds to have a shot at getting rich and never having to work again; he gets the excitement of growing a company to grapple with giants and take over markets; and even if he fails, the name recognition he obtained during the journey ensures he'll have his pick of lucrative future gigs.
THAT's why so few tech lifestyle businesses stay that size, and it's all very logical really.
He risks 0 of his own funds to have a shot at getting rich and never having to work again; he gets the excitement of growing a company to grapple with giants and take over markets; and even if he fails, the name recognition he obtained during the journey ensures he'll have his pick of lucrative future gigs.
THAT's why so few tech lifestyle businesses stay that size, and it's all very logical really.
There is a great parallel to this in filmmaking. Some of the greatest films took unexpected turns during production, often forced to change in major ways due to accidents, scheduling conflicts, budget, or last-minute ad-libs which become central themes of their characters. In a number of films, those unplanned additions turned out to be key to the success of the film.
One specific example of this is The Other Side of the Wind, by Orson Welles, in which Welles noted the existence of this magic phenomenon and deliberately sought to make a film centrally driven by happenstance and unscripted ad-libs. In other words: trying to catch lightning in a bottle.
One specific example of this is The Other Side of the Wind, by Orson Welles, in which Welles noted the existence of this magic phenomenon and deliberately sought to make a film centrally driven by happenstance and unscripted ad-libs. In other words: trying to catch lightning in a bottle.
The original Star Wars is the classic example of that phenomenon.
It often happens in music too, when artists with different sensibilities somehow “clash” and the material they produce together (which they’ll inevitably think of as “full of compromises” etc etc) is superior to anything they would produce individually, before or after.
It often happens in music too, when artists with different sensibilities somehow “clash” and the material they produce together (which they’ll inevitably think of as “full of compromises” etc etc) is superior to anything they would produce individually, before or after.
Another example is Jaws: the mechanical shark didn't work very well, so Spielberg had to rely on the human characters and dialogue, a fin above the water, shark-eye-view shots, and John Williams' classic score. Based on what little we saw of the actual prop, the result elevated the film above what might have easily been a laughable B-movie.
Man, that movie is great, and yeah, it's entirely because it's about the people more than the shark.
As I remember pre the redesign of the Digg front page, it was controlled by "Diggers" who were being paid by blogs and brands for the traffic (Digg.com could deliver 100k>1m+ visitors a post with the right content angles). The redesign was to take back control of the homepage results and be able to charge brands for the exposure. Once the users realised they had little sway in getting a post to the front page they left.
I remember the days when mr babyman and friends controlled the digg front page and all the drama that followed. It was a perfect example of an over aggressive parasite killing the host. Reddit solved it by creating sub-reddits. HN solved it with clear rules and diligent mod work.
Reddit solved nothing. As far as I know there's little-to-no transparency in each subreddits moderation or content approval process. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is a glaring issue with that platform.
You don't like a sub, you don't sub to the sub.
The frontpage you see is the one that you compose yourself, that's the thing what makes reddit work.
The frontpage you see is the one that you compose yourself, that's the thing what makes reddit work.
This isn't true for a number of reasons. Firstly, the existence of a sub-reddit on a topic makes it almost impossible for a different sub-reddit for the same subject to gain traction. So, sure you can disagree with how /r/politics or /r/motorcycles moderates their subs, but the result is you don't get to read about motorcycles or US politics on reddit. The barrier to creating an alternative is almost infinitely high. I'm struggling to think of any sub-reddits that have been replaced by alternatives on the same subject.
So you end up with a tiny number of redditors who are the moderators for the largest sub-reddits. There is practically no turn over in these people, they have functionally complete autonomy over the vast majority of the traffic on the site, and they quite literally can choose to ban individual websites. What makes you think that companies were paying for digg power users to be friendly but the exact same class of users at reddit aren't getting the same treatment?
And in reality, what the majority of people see on the frontpage is the frontpage filled with the default sub-reddits. Which, again, are entirely at the discretion of handful of moderators who have 0 accountability.
So you end up with a tiny number of redditors who are the moderators for the largest sub-reddits. There is practically no turn over in these people, they have functionally complete autonomy over the vast majority of the traffic on the site, and they quite literally can choose to ban individual websites. What makes you think that companies were paying for digg power users to be friendly but the exact same class of users at reddit aren't getting the same treatment?
And in reality, what the majority of people see on the frontpage is the frontpage filled with the default sub-reddits. Which, again, are entirely at the discretion of handful of moderators who have 0 accountability.
> And in reality, what the majority of people see on the frontpage is the frontpage filled with the default sub-reddits.
This is a fair point. I'd argue that there is one single frontpage for reddit; each signed-in user has their own and this raises the cost of astroturfing with the same reach (%) as the universal Digg frontpage. Mods get their own fiefdoms in subreddits, but they don't wield the kind of power mr babyman had over the overall frontpage. This balkanization means disgruntled users are likely to leave subreddits, but stay on reddit itself, or if sufficiently motivated, create a competing subreddit (see the countless /r/X vs /r/true-X for any given X)
This is a fair point. I'd argue that there is one single frontpage for reddit; each signed-in user has their own and this raises the cost of astroturfing with the same reach (%) as the universal Digg frontpage. Mods get their own fiefdoms in subreddits, but they don't wield the kind of power mr babyman had over the overall frontpage. This balkanization means disgruntled users are likely to leave subreddits, but stay on reddit itself, or if sufficiently motivated, create a competing subreddit (see the countless /r/X vs /r/true-X for any given X)
> Once the users realised they had little sway in getting a post to the front page they left.
The only reason they left was because there was an alternative - reddit. If reddit wasn't around, digg would have a captive audience and they would be as big as reddit today. Reddit now has the same problem with power users + corporate/news/think tank/political party affiliated subreddit mods with heavy censorship. Fortunately for reddit, there really is no alternative. Also the same thing with youtube. People complain about censorship and mainstream corporate nonsense being peddled on reddit, youtube, etc, but they have nowhere to go.
If digg had waited a few years til reddit folded or they had a secure monopolistic position, they would be relevant today. Digg made the same mistake myspace did, piss off their users with a viable competitor around. And once the migration started, it was over.
The only reason they left was because there was an alternative - reddit. If reddit wasn't around, digg would have a captive audience and they would be as big as reddit today. Reddit now has the same problem with power users + corporate/news/think tank/political party affiliated subreddit mods with heavy censorship. Fortunately for reddit, there really is no alternative. Also the same thing with youtube. People complain about censorship and mainstream corporate nonsense being peddled on reddit, youtube, etc, but they have nowhere to go.
If digg had waited a few years til reddit folded or they had a secure monopolistic position, they would be relevant today. Digg made the same mistake myspace did, piss off their users with a viable competitor around. And once the migration started, it was over.
What's the benefit for an average software engineer in going along with the acquihire rather than looking for a completely new job?
It’s a job. I worked for a startup that was burning out and got acquihired. I just left and got a new job, but a few friends stayed because they wanted some form of stability. They got a pretty minimal retention bonus to stay on for at least six months, I think it was under $5k.
Mine was a Friday "hey we got bought, it was just enough to pay off our debts basically so no your stock is not worth anything, the good news is you're all hired by the acquiring company so show up at X on Monday for your new job, have a nice weekend!" so of course I showed up at X, signed their shitty employment contract, did whatever they asked, and spent the rest of the time reading novels in my terminal and finding another job that wasn't a huge open-floorplan low-wall-cube office hellhole.
Benefits are for the founders. For employees, its just another day. No need to go for job hunting immediately.
Well just another day, perhaps with a different corporate culture that you may not fit well in. So that's another minus for employees.
It's almost never going to be just another day. For a start, the acquiring company is almost certainly going to immediately stuff fucking with your benefits. Your projects are incredibly unlikely to survive- so if you care about what you're working on, forget it. If your project does survive be ready for a massive influx of new people all of whom have their own ideas of why the acquisition happened and what your project was for. Oh and because acquihires almost always happen where the acquiring company is a behemoth you're going to subsumed into a massive bureaucracy that is clearly not what you signed up for in your original job.
I have been part of an acquihire. As an early stage startup employee you work really hard for years, take salary cuts and hope that some day all the hard work will pay off. All of it will be for nothing if there isn't some kind of success/validation. In this case Digg was fairly well known but you don't get much credibility in the job market if the startup was never in the news. So if there is any form of acquisition, you get some of that brand exposure. In my case, even though we had built a great product, I rarely got inbound calls or interest in public forums. Now people reach out to me even when I haven't spent much time in the new company
>Because acquihires are “star” oriented, if you’re a senior
>leaders who doesn’t explicitly refuse to move forward,
>pressure will converge on you from all sides: investors, the
>team wanting to return to stable employment, and the non-
>participating leadership team who all want you to commit so
>they can move on to new things for themselves.
That's not pressure, that's leverage. Demand a better deal and let them know you're prepared to walk and sink the ship.
>leaders who doesn’t explicitly refuse to move forward,
>pressure will converge on you from all sides: investors, the
>team wanting to return to stable employment, and the non-
>participating leadership team who all want you to commit so
>they can move on to new things for themselves.
That's not pressure, that's leverage. Demand a better deal and let them know you're prepared to walk and sink the ship.
> that's leverage.
Yup, when Pixar went public, Jobs decided to keep 100% of the shares. (You could argue that he deserved it, since he spent the majority of his fortune on Pixar and Next.)
So his 4 top managers threatened to quit and derail the IPO.
So they got shares, but no other employees did.
Yup, when Pixar went public, Jobs decided to keep 100% of the shares. (You could argue that he deserved it, since he spent the majority of his fortune on Pixar and Next.)
So his 4 top managers threatened to quit and derail the IPO.
So they got shares, but no other employees did.
Totally the right move.
I’ve been through an acquisition. Everyone is jockeying for position and if you’re not, unless you’re really good friends with the founder, you will be exploited. As an engineer, they want you to stay on to increase the value of the deal. If you’re a star on the team, they absolutely need you to stay on for the deal to go through.
All of those extra hours, nights, weekends, that made you the go-to dev, pays off with this piece of leverage.
Use it. Say it loudly that you’re willing to sink the deal for everyone else impress your demands are met.
If they let you go, you never had any leverage to begin with. But if they listen closely to your demands, you’re right where you should be.
Do not think for a second that any of the founders, managers or other devs have your best interests in mind.
I’ve been through an acquisition. Everyone is jockeying for position and if you’re not, unless you’re really good friends with the founder, you will be exploited. As an engineer, they want you to stay on to increase the value of the deal. If you’re a star on the team, they absolutely need you to stay on for the deal to go through.
All of those extra hours, nights, weekends, that made you the go-to dev, pays off with this piece of leverage.
Use it. Say it loudly that you’re willing to sink the deal for everyone else impress your demands are met.
If they let you go, you never had any leverage to begin with. But if they listen closely to your demands, you’re right where you should be.
Do not think for a second that any of the founders, managers or other devs have your best interests in mind.
It's funny because Im now back to checking out DIgg daily. I find it much more enjoyable than Reddit these days.
I check it a few times throughout the day, but idk if it can really be compared to reddit anymore. There aren't any discussions, so it's basically just a more focused manual Google News.
I'm curious about this "everyone must sign" contract mentioned. Since employment is not mandatory, what is stopping the author or anyone from signing and then walking away after 1 day working there?
There is usually some form of compensation attached to it that must be returned if the employee doesn’t satisfy their obligations or is deferred so that the employee is incentivized to stay at least that long. You can quit if you really want to, but you might not want to return the lump sum signing bonus you received a few months ago. Or you decide to stick it out for a year at which point you receive stock.
> our starting point was far less: 200 DAU.
Digg currently, or recently, was down to 200 daily active users? I knew they lost a lot of users but that sounds like they lost everybody.
Digg currently, or recently, was down to 200 daily active users? I knew they lost a lot of users but that sounds like they lost everybody.
Sorry, I think that sentence was a bit unclear. What it meant to convey is that we had 200 daily active Facebook uniques, essentially that very few folks used FB to connect to Digg.
Does anyone see the same fate happening to Reddit? Or are they too big and too entrenched at this point?
I think Digg/Slashdot/Myspace/Friendster show that on the Internet you're never too big to fail. If someone comes along that does it better right as you make some big blunder (redesigns that primarily cater to advertisers are a common issue) you can lose your userbase seemingly overnight.
Probably the latter. Once you have that big a userbase + not much competition it's hard to go down unless something catastrophic happens.
One could say the same about FB too though but I think FB is dying/dead. Only reason they are relevant is because of their acquisitions - IG, Whatsapp and messenger and people using FB login for sites. As a content platform, I don't think that many people use FB anymore.
FB still makes the majority of its huge amounts of revenue and profit from FB. Messenger and Whatsapp currently do almost nothing financially.
I don't have Whatsapp but I do have messenger. Messenger shows me ads and I would even say they are more effective than the ads on FB. Does FB disclose how much they make in ads from individual sources?
a lot of early reddit came from digg
every community in the history the internet falls to eternal september at some point
every community in the history the internet falls to eternal september at some point
One thing that really made reddit different from the other communities that were a thing in its early days was the insistence on wholly-separate subreddits rather than the various overlapping tag schemes which were trendy at the time on delicious, fark, digg, LJ, etc.
I don't know if spez and kn0thing had some special insight about this, but my experience with it over the long term has been that you can be subbed to a few reddits for your preferred niche interests, and enjoy almost complete isolation from whatever toxicity is going on over in r/politics or wherever else (barring the occasional bit of brigading, which is basically just a mess for the smaller-community mods to clean up).
So there's clearly a large number of mainline users who basically just read whatever reddits are default on the logged-out homepage. But I think there's also a super long tail of users who don't read those at all, and my hunch is that it's that long tail of users who have probably sustained the site over the long term, and will continue to give it a lot of resiliency going forward.
I don't know if spez and kn0thing had some special insight about this, but my experience with it over the long term has been that you can be subbed to a few reddits for your preferred niche interests, and enjoy almost complete isolation from whatever toxicity is going on over in r/politics or wherever else (barring the occasional bit of brigading, which is basically just a mess for the smaller-community mods to clean up).
So there's clearly a large number of mainline users who basically just read whatever reddits are default on the logged-out homepage. But I think there's also a super long tail of users who don't read those at all, and my hunch is that it's that long tail of users who have probably sustained the site over the long term, and will continue to give it a lot of resiliency going forward.
Thats whats making them different and keeping them alive, but whats killing them and will eventually is their formatting and ads.
When it was getting popular you'd have a good 100 lines of actual readable text on a screen, with 15 maybe 20 links on the homepage. The content, the draw, was there. Now with their own redesigns, there are ads injected everywhere on the site. On the mobile apps you get 1 ad per 2 thread links.
How can you make the experience 5x worse from when it started and not eventually lose users? Its the equivilent of the makers of a snack food slowly replacing their recipe with filler. One day people will wake up and go, wait this is actually terrible!
When it was getting popular you'd have a good 100 lines of actual readable text on a screen, with 15 maybe 20 links on the homepage. The content, the draw, was there. Now with their own redesigns, there are ads injected everywhere on the site. On the mobile apps you get 1 ad per 2 thread links.
How can you make the experience 5x worse from when it started and not eventually lose users? Its the equivilent of the makers of a snack food slowly replacing their recipe with filler. One day people will wake up and go, wait this is actually terrible!
The three reddit founders didn't have special insight initially: for years, reddit had no subreddits. Those came later as a sort of necessity.
Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Reddit#Full_timeli..., the site launched in 2005, and from pretty early on there were a handful of centrally-managed ones like science, programming, etc, with the option to create arbitrary ones coming in 2008.
So technically "years", but those were the very early days.
So technically "years", but those were the very early days.
Anyone remember the date when subreddits were added?
subreddits are kinda but not really like usenet... separated groups of like minded people. it's the only thing (along with old.reddit.com) that keeps me there.
I distinctly remember that censorship was a big problem.
There was the whole DVD CSS key nonsense or maybe it was the key for Blu-ray or HD-DVD being censored on the site and the users kinda disobeying the sites mods.
I certainly stopped using the site after that. I never used reddit until recently.
There was the whole DVD CSS key nonsense or maybe it was the key for Blu-ray or HD-DVD being censored on the site and the users kinda disobeying the sites mods.
I certainly stopped using the site after that. I never used reddit until recently.
You're thinking of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controvers...
It was HD-DVD
It was HD-DVD
Thanks. I do remember people started moving over to reddit back then or at least starting to look around. I know I certainly did. But I just want to using traditional forums.
There is a post on HN right now about predictions for the next decade. My prediction would be Reddit dying/overtaken by another site in next 2-3 years.
What's the leverage the old company has over its engineers when negotiating an acquihire? Why does the new company not approach the lead engineer and the selected employees directly?
>Why does the new company not approach the lead engineer and the selected employees directly?
I'm guessing it's because tech is a small-ish world and no acquiring company wants to burn bridges (with the VCs) by doing that.
I'm guessing it's because tech is a small-ish world and no acquiring company wants to burn bridges (with the VCs) by doing that.
Non-competes, probably, are the easy way. Accusing the potential acquirer of acting in bad faith also happens.
Also, a loyal and cohesive team can do the "we go together or we don't go" move.
Also, a loyal and cohesive team can do the "we go together or we don't go" move.
I am not fully convinced.
That cohesive team, why would it make money for the old company and its investors? That signing bonus can be split entirely among themselves.
Non-competes are not allowed in California. And in any other location, the team can wait it out because the company most likely ceases existing.
That cohesive team, why would it make money for the old company and its investors? That signing bonus can be split entirely among themselves.
Non-competes are not allowed in California. And in any other location, the team can wait it out because the company most likely ceases existing.
Digg was losing so much money and required so much infrastructure to run at the end. I wonder if the team at the time could’ve done a complete restart. I think it required a new team without the history and loyalty to old decisions to move forward. Betaworks was able to right the ship, but it was too late, the world had moved on.
Yes, the fall of the original Digg happened long ago.
https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/12/betaworks-acquires-digg/
At the time Digg was acquired in name only. The team had a short period to replace the then current (and very expensive) infrastructure and hijack all traffic. They did a pretty awesome tech job of moving to AWS and stopping the bleeding from the then in place bare metal setup. I remember a tech talk where they spoke of the money they saved from moving to AWS, it was substantial and allowed them the resources to try to save the product. Since then it was a re-birthed startup with a new team that had quite a long runway IMHO.
https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/12/betaworks-acquires-digg/
At the time Digg was acquired in name only. The team had a short period to replace the then current (and very expensive) infrastructure and hijack all traffic. They did a pretty awesome tech job of moving to AWS and stopping the bleeding from the then in place bare metal setup. I remember a tech talk where they spoke of the money they saved from moving to AWS, it was substantial and allowed them the resources to try to save the product. Since then it was a re-birthed startup with a new team that had quite a long runway IMHO.
Clicked on your link... that Verizon Media privacy page is a nightmare. And then it fails to load the article...
Do you have any more information about the move to aws and why that was cheaper than their old setup?
Do you have any more information about the move to aws and why that was cheaper than their old setup?
Thanks for writing these stories up - great examples of how the earlier days were the wild west - we were all code cowboys, and it all lead to spectacular failures at times.
Can you even submit to Digg anymore? The basic functionality is broken and it's unclear why the site is floundering? Are you serious?
I'd like to know more about why a failing news site had 2 data scientists on the payroll.
I remember Digg Labs produced some really cool animated real-time visualisations of stories on the site.
A little Googling suggests that they were collaborations. But I wonder if the data scientists were also involved
http://v1.stamen.com/clients/digg.html http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=585
A little Googling suggests that they were collaborations. But I wonder if the data scientists were also involved
http://v1.stamen.com/clients/digg.html http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/project.cfm?id=585
No, the Stamen work happened before we had any data scientists on payroll.
Edit: We did have an R&D team that did things that might today be considered data science, but at the time they were mostly focused on documenting and optimizing the Digg "algorithm"
Edit: We did have an R&D team that did things that might today be considered data science, but at the time they were mostly focused on documenting and optimizing the Digg "algorithm"
I’d like to know why it took them dumping logs into hive to see the traffic came from one article.
I think these two “data scientists” were probably called webmaster or sysadmin and it took them coming in the next morning and grepping the log files. Or looking at google analytics which existed at the time. I don’t remember if real-time was free in 2010, but it could easily tell referrals and passthroughs.
I think these two “data scientists” were probably called webmaster or sysadmin and it took them coming in the next morning and grepping the log files. Or looking at google analytics which existed at the time. I don’t remember if real-time was free in 2010, but it could easily tell referrals and passthroughs.
The moral here is don't change anything. Ever.