This is the kind of mentality more companies need. It is why craigslist is still running a site that looks like it is from 1999. The opposite thinking is why digg when down in flames.
Also, Digg's failure had nothing to do with a visual refresh; it was that they changed the dynamics of the "social game" the site implemented to make previously "winning" users suddenly irrelevant in comparison to sponsored posts by companies. It'd be like Youtube doing DMCA takedowns on all the "celebrities" with million-subscriber channels.
What I can say is that Yishan was successful leading the reddit team in keeping up with reddit's growth from an infrastructure standpoint. No small task, especially since Reddit was crashing and burning all the time before he came on board but you don't see reddit go down due to load nearly as much these days (even at 5x usage). Bottom line, praise him for that -- keeping up with the growth, not driving growth that probably would have occurred regardless of who was in the captain's chair.
...the largest real estate site in the world.
...the largest dating site in the world.
...one of the largest job sites in the world.
It's now an also ran in everyone of those categories. They lost every single major market they were the dominant player in. This isn't Craiglist winning, it's Craiglist losing.
Because where else are the users going to go? Digg? Slashdot? 4chan?
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