Digg’s MySpace Problem -- And What It’s Doing About It | Hacker News Reader

Digg’s MySpace Problem -- And What It’s Doing About It

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21 pointsquant17 comments

I went from slashdot to digg to reddit to HN.

Like an old disco, no matter how many times you remodel the dance floor people already found the hippest place around the corner.

And they're not coming back...

yeah, same. i think a lot of us had this news site journey

Had the same thing except I found out about reddit from HN. On occasion I will still checkout reddit is sort of like those grocery checkout magazines, not going to read it for long but it passes time when your bored.

It's not really right to think of "reddit" as a monolithic site anymore. The default front page is garbage. The old programming reddit is fluffy with occasional good stuff, but making good comments without getting them modded to hell has become difficult because it's pretty much numerically dominated by inexperienced programmers now who don't want to hear any suggestions that they may not already know everything. The forked-off "coding" reddit (in rebellion to the crappification of the programming reddit) is pretty good in content, seems to have attained a critical mass, haven't played with the comments much. Some of the language-specific reddits are pretty good, too. Science has tanked hard ("hurr hurr religious people are teh dumb" is not actually science) and if anyone knows a "real-science" reddit I'd be interested to hear about it.

Check out http://www.reddit.com/r/hardscience That might be what you are looking for.

I like your analogy, but...

A website, unlike a disco, can make tons of money off the unwashed masses. In fact, Digg can probably make more off the masses who remain than the "hip" crowd who founded/left the site.

Clubs do well financially when they go mainstream. It means much more liquor sales. This is a lot like websites who also love it for increased ad sales. The problem is that the masses do eventually tire of the same club. That, or they simply get older and move on to do other things. Because the club is no longer the cool place, there are no/fewer replacements for the existing clientele who are shrinking.

The problem with Digg is its a social spot and subject to the same dynamics as clubs. Going mainstream isn't a problem. It's what they do afterward that is. Not to worry, just like in real life, the owners will make bank, leave/sell the old spot to naive buyers who think it'll be a good buy. They will then start something new. This happens all the time with entrepreneurs in similar industries like clubs and restaurants.

So in a year the market will be ripe for a new player.

Am I the only one to think that "social news" websites, from the perspective of the content publisher only work when the site is small enough?

I mean, the quantity of information being submitted to Digg, and maybe Reddit, is so huge it roughly gives a new story about 5 minutes of exposure in the first page of the New Stories section, and only in the specific feed, not the global one...

It makes me think that somehow, spreading something over Twitter, using our friends to do it, might achieve a better result...

Hence, the approach of creating "niche" sites described in the article. Not saying it will work, just that they have to spend $40 million some way.

Fun food for thought is that Slashdot has been around for 10+ years and is still very strong. And they have a huge user base. They must be doing something right. It is debatable if it is the editorializing or the comment moderation or both, or something else, but something works.

>>For starters, Digg is planning to launch a spate of new Digg sites centered around niche content. <<

So they are copying Reddit? Sounds like it lost all its "first mover mojo"

It's cool. We call us (reddit) their R&D department.

Do they pay well? ;)

No, not really. In fact, they don't even mention us when they release their new features that they get from us. ;)

That's a shame :( At least we all know who came up with the idea.

"If you’re interested in rock climbing or knitting, Digg aims to have in-depth news for you to vote up or down on a separate home page."

So, they are going to become another Squidoo / Mahalo type site? Sad. I haven't been to Digg in at least a year and I don't see anything on the horizon that might bring me back.

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