HighUpManager: "We aren't hitting our expected KPI's, we need to find ways to increase affiliate revenue. Is there any way we can increase affiliate-link exposure?"
MiddleManager: "Well, I guess I could have my team modify the ranking algorithm so that our affiliate links rise to the front-page faster and stay there longer. However..."
HighUpManager: "Great! Make it so."
Although this is common belief, Digg was on the decline well before v4 was released. v4 was a response to the decline, not the cause of it.
They mistakenly attributed the site's decline to the rise of social media apps like Twitter, and v4's was their attempt to become the "Twitter for news".
It's true that Digg didn't do enough to foster a healthy community; threads were often toxic, and yes the top users had too much sway. What's forgotten is some of the dumb things they did to try and monetize, like that full-site ads (background image ads) that I'm pretty sure everyone hates.
It most definitely was not. reddit was already bigger than Digg long before v4 was launched. v4 did cause a bump in reddit's traffic, but it wasn't nearly as significant as people think. Most Digg users were already reddit users too. In fact, a lot of the power users were getting their stories from reddit.
That's why at the time the joke was that if you wanted to see a summary of reddit the day before, you just looked at Digg.
Took several months to get that back, and by then it was too late - all the real content creators had moved to Reddit.
It's unfortunate Reddit can't leave a working formula alone - HN has barely changed in 7 years - I really respect the control that must have taken - the lack of category filters on HN means I always need some other source
I do hope this and the imgur change last week doesn't mark the start of the end but it's probably time for a new player ... CIX -> Usenet/Dejanews -> Digg -> Reddit -> ??
Having said that I think comparing Reddit to HN is a bit unfair. The HN forums are is a happy byproduct of a successful VC firm. Hacker News forums could be switched off tomorrow and Y Combinator would almost certainly continue successfully. As far as I'm aware they generate zero revenue from the forums, in fact, it's probably impossible (or at least very hard) to measure any ROI on the forums.
Working for who? They're not making money, so the service is unsustainable. It has to change.
HN maintenance cost is orders of magnitude smaller. Also it is losing money and nobody cares because this is just like a pet project for YC.