Interesting. You could almost s/reddit/digg/g and get the same article.
IMO, part of the downside of the whole "Web 2.0" social-whatever type sites these days is that they're so easy to create. Digg. Reddit. Mixx. Etcc. Why fix the broken one, when we can build a new one over a weekend (plus pizza and beer).
As the author outlined, they go through a standard-ish 4-step program as a sort of half-life dying off (at least as far as the hard-core geek users are concerned).
I postulate that you can't fix Reddit or Digg, and Mixx will be broken soon too. These sites start out by attracting the leading-edge hacker techie types. The ones who understand about a product being in beta (and feel a sense of elitism for knowing about it early on), they will report bugs to you (often with a 9 paragraph writeup of how to reproduce the bug(s)). They will submit good content, and comment on articles, and vote, etc. But they won't click on ads, or do other things that inch the site toward profitability.
So, there is no choice but to cast a wider net, gather in a lower-level audience. The folks that haven't yet seen a cat with a lime peel on its head (at least we're not getting pancake bunny anymore) flock to the site. With the masses comes the material that the tech crowd doesn't really care for.
news.YC might be the exception, if only because it's more hyper-topical, and it doesn't seem to be concerned with making money (I think news.YC is more of a flytrap for potential investees).
So, enjoy Digg and Reddit while they're young, hold on as long as you can through the growth phase, and then bid them farewell.
Maybe they will one day manage to recover. Maybe we'll read about their recovery here. Or on Slashdot...
Not to mention, unlike Reddit, they weren't neutral. They would try to squelch certain stories and ban users. They shut down all submissions after their attempted squelching of the HD-DVD hex key didn't work. They banned unpopular viewpoints. Censorship was de rigueur.
IMO, part of the downside of the whole "Web 2.0" social-whatever type sites these days is that they're so easy to create. Digg. Reddit. Mixx. Etcc. Why fix the broken one, when we can build a new one over a weekend (plus pizza and beer).
As the author outlined, they go through a standard-ish 4-step program as a sort of half-life dying off (at least as far as the hard-core geek users are concerned).
I postulate that you can't fix Reddit or Digg, and Mixx will be broken soon too. These sites start out by attracting the leading-edge hacker techie types. The ones who understand about a product being in beta (and feel a sense of elitism for knowing about it early on), they will report bugs to you (often with a 9 paragraph writeup of how to reproduce the bug(s)). They will submit good content, and comment on articles, and vote, etc. But they won't click on ads, or do other things that inch the site toward profitability.
So, there is no choice but to cast a wider net, gather in a lower-level audience. The folks that haven't yet seen a cat with a lime peel on its head (at least we're not getting pancake bunny anymore) flock to the site. With the masses comes the material that the tech crowd doesn't really care for.
news.YC might be the exception, if only because it's more hyper-topical, and it doesn't seem to be concerned with making money (I think news.YC is more of a flytrap for potential investees).
So, enjoy Digg and Reddit while they're young, hold on as long as you can through the growth phase, and then bid them farewell.
Maybe they will one day manage to recover. Maybe we'll read about their recovery here. Or on Slashdot...