How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’s unstoppable force

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/01/reddit_how_the_site_went_from_a_second_tier_aggregator_to_the_web_s_unstoppable_force_.single.html

by robg • 15 years ago

187 84 15 years ago

slate.com

watmough• 15 years ago

Reddit did two brilliant things:

  1. They didn't screw up their site. 
  2. They scaled. Not without struggles tho.

Pretty good demo of letting competitors destroy themselves.

chime• 15 years ago

Your first point is nearly impossible to do in conjunction with second point but reddit did it splendidly. The admins do a fantastic job of being unbiased and pro-users (instead of pro-owners). They have learned that taking a short-term loss for long-term gain is the right thing to do. They haven't tried to change the site design or rules after people have gotten used to it. They are still acting like reddit is a small community of the first 5000 users and not 20 million visitors.

You may disagree with the content that adorns the front-page but you can trust that it was driven by users and not sponsors.

stfu• 15 years ago

The bigger "miracle" to me is how they fostered a 4chan-like creative atmosphere without going overboard. This is a very tricky balance but they managed to do it really well.

mcantelon• 15 years ago

Yeah, they really did community management well, and continue to do it well. Digg pulled all sorts of sketchy admin stuff, but Reddit maintained an integrity that won it loyalty from users.

g3orge• 15 years ago

I alway believed that reddit needs a redesign, but now that I'm thinking it, Digg had 4 redesigns and maybe that is a part for why it failed. People don't like change.

smspence• 15 years ago

It was arguably only the dreaded "version 4" redesign that caused the failure of Digg. And it wasn't necessarily the look that everyone hated, it was the fact that every single aspect of functionality was completely changed in a way that made it a different type of website. It took the voting-power out of the users' hands and gave it to the "publishers" of the content.

untog• 15 years ago

"redesign" isn't really an appropriate term for what Digg did- they changed a lot of core functionality at the same time as changing design.

When when the dreaded "V4" came, it wasn't the design that was the problem, it was the change to prioritising major media companies.

It would be possible for Reddit to change their design without changing functionality. But I suspect that no-one would be happy with the result.

vicapow• 15 years ago

it's about the community and how the site is structured to support that community (and cats.)

philhippus• 15 years ago

'How' - Digg bloated and went belly up, Reddit welcomed the fallout.

oldstrangers• 15 years ago

More realistically, reddit continued to cultivate their community while digg struggled through redesign after redesign, usually putting users second or third (when they introduced RSS importing).

jedberg2• 15 years ago

When Digg went belly up, reddit already had double the traffic Digg had at peak.

zem3• 15 years ago

nah, reddit was thriving long before the digg implosion

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

I like that Reddit's voting system is a lot more democratic than Digg's system where there were "power users". I think this also helped create the strong and, at the same time, large community.

sausagefeet• 15 years ago

Offtopic but, I'd love to see a site where any downvote MUST have a comment associated with it, that way one has to validate their downvotes. A downvote can be agreed with (increasing the downvote) without comment though, like saying "Yes I agree with what this person says is wrong with this".

jbert• 15 years ago

Slashdot (the pioneer in this sort of moderation) has always had a 'reason code' for up and down votes (and meta-moderation to check that the reason codes are good).

This allows you to do things like filter results to only high scores, excluding 'funny'.

TylerE• 15 years ago

That would make things worse. The biggest problem with Reddit right now is that not enough people downvote weak content. Making downvotes harder will only increase the rate at which the 4chan refugees meme the place up.

VMG2• 15 years ago

I have often wondered what HN would look like if comments had only "upvote" and "flag" options.

The "flag" option would have to include a reason ("offensive", "off-topic", "spam")

StavrosK• 15 years ago

Or maybe you could have an "Agree/disagree with parent" on your comment and the top comment got one upvote/downvote for each one of your upvotes, respectively. There are lots of things you can do, who knows if they have any effect, though...

tikhonj2• 15 years ago

While not directly comparable, this is almost what StackOverflow does. They don't force you to comment, but if you downvote they ask you to comment and the community does not approve of random downvotes. Additionally, downvoting costs a bit of rep.

In all, this means downvotes are uncommon; usually, people try to fix the problem (editing or asking the writer to edit). However, if something is downvoted, it is extremely likely that that post is irrelevant or actively wrong.

jedberg2• 15 years ago

We thought about doing that a long time ago, but then figured all you would see is a bunch of comments that were just "." or something similarly useless.

There would be no reasonable way to force people to make a useful comment.

wavephorm• 15 years ago

A problem I've noticed with every comment/article voting system, including HN, is that a single downvote shouldn't have any effect. Here on HN one downvote turns the comment dark which is to encourage "pile-on" voting. Any vote up or down should not be visible to other users until X votes have been cast.

nyellin• 15 years ago

I don't think HN works that way. Almost all of my votes are corrective votes.

tikhonj2• 15 years ago

I don't think it's a really big issue, but I agree with you wholeheartedly.

The color of the post should only change when it hits a negative score. A post downvoted by only one person is a reflection of that person rather than the post. Also, since they start at 1 point anyhow, it would be a very elegant system.

rickmb• 15 years ago

Also, there's very little incentive for gaming the system by ordinary users. Karma points give you no advantage whatsoever, and it's more of a running joke than anything substantial.

Redditors' reputation is depends on their actions, not points, badges, friends or any other "scoring" system. This makes for a way more dynamic and sustainable meritocracy than sites who's system tends to create an incumbent elite of power users.

SnydenBitchy• 15 years ago

Apropos reddit, here’s how Alexis Ohanian deflects the blame from redditors onto the victims of their creepy facebook-stalking and harassment: “Your kids need to know that any time they take an image and put it in a digital format… they should assume that it is now public content… That’s the useful thing I think CNN could have reported on, instead of making up a bunch of jibber-jabber about reddit.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXZYvrue1BE&feature=youtu...

harryf• 15 years ago

Alexis is using similar tactics to John Stewart; "reddit is just a collection of links". Which isnt true; it also has comments where it's community shapes an opinion about the subject of the link. And that probably terrifies mainstream media about reddit the most; losing their monopoly on shaping public opinion.

babs4742• 15 years ago

That is really interesting to me considering reddits reaction to a service I created a while ago that allowed you to retrieve deleted or edited comments.

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/etd52/lets_have_...

Apparently digital reddit comments are exempt from this notion.

ceol2• 15 years ago

Ah, I remember you. Would you mind going over how unedditreddit saved comments? Do you think you'd be able to make the same service now where threads reach 5,000+ comments daily?

brador• 15 years ago

Aside: There is a lot of very cool stuff on Reddit at this point and it would be a shame to lose it through some random act of nature/massive admin error/other non predictable event...

Has Reddit considered providing a public backup functionality ala Wikipedia? Anyone have thoughts on this?

newandimproved• 15 years ago

Not only that, but with Reddit being a political force to be reckoned with, it may become a target of the US government.

zhazam4• 15 years ago

> it may become a target of the US government.

The FBI might target them, but most likely for their laissez-faire moderation where deleting a subsection literally dedicated to child pornography caused a major uproar.

kamaal• 15 years ago

This is probably an Indication of one thing. Some people go in the search of elusive perfection. Which never seems to be achievable. No pure perfection exists.

So please don't deny the good for the perfect.

Reddit, has been ridiculed enough for being bad for X reasons. But hey, that's the only thing existing out there. And it works well for vast majority of the people. People who are out there just for chat or a serious discussion on a sub reddit.

I have seen that this thing works in many cases. If you have some good idea that can solve problems. Work on it and get an implementation out. Even if for the moment the working quality of that thing or the implementation quality of that thing isn't upto the mark.

This can be seen manifest in things like programming languages too! People criticize Php/Perl for all sort of reasons. But hey, remember they are so much useful and practical in the real world the elusive perfect that is supposed to replace never comes into existence. Because the elusive perfect is always in never ending path of ideation and implementation, in form of some abstract concept.

People call bash scripts and solutions hacked together using sed/bash/Unix text processing utilities crud, non readable, not elegant or whatever. But remember they often serve as the fastest way to solve some very difficult problems in seconds/minutes. While an equivalent verbose elegant language would take hours of effort writing and testing the program.

Sometimes an existing ugly solution survives in the real world, it wins and persists and nothing really replaces it. For many reasons, it was first to arrive. It convinces people that it can be useful to them. It is practical, it can survive and maintain the niche for a long time.

Meanwhile the elusive perfection, never arrives.

Reddit works and wins on the same principles.

AznHisoka2• 15 years ago

As an aside, anyone else sick of hearing success stories of sites/businesses we all have the potential to make? Reddit and DropBox.

bpodgursky• 15 years ago

But you didn't.

prawn• 15 years ago

Like the classic response to criticism of contemporary art:

  I could've made that.
  Yeah, but you didn't.

JeremyBanks• 15 years ago

You would have fucked it up.

ddelony• 15 years ago

Reddit is a spiritual successor to Usenet, with all the good and bad that entails.

thought_alarm• 15 years ago

If only they had heirarchical reddits...

    /r/comp/sys/hp48

... and an archive like DejaNews or Google Groups (back when it used to actually work) to record everything for future reference.

ChuckMcM• 15 years ago

"In many ways, Reddit is a more accessible, less vulgar version of 4Chan, the meme-spewing online redoubt of the Web’s most vicious trolls."

This sort of sums up Reddit for me. 4chan is an example of what some Usenet groups were years ago, a community of like minded individuals debating their world views which are fundamentally similar and who share a common background/mindset. I suspect there is a relationship between the commonality of the participants and the vibrancy of the community.

It has been my experience that when you take a set of self selected folks and give them a wide ranging area to discuss, their discussions about most topics are energetic and self-reenforcing. This makes for a very strong community experience.

I first noticed it hanging out with 'air force' kids (which is to say early in my life everyone I hung out with, their parents, like mine, were serving in the air force). That shared experience, moving from base to base, base housing which was always nearly the same, stores with the same goods, etc, we (the kids) seemed to have remarkably similar views about things. I noticed it again when I went to college, the bulk of the folks who entered engineering were all there for similar reasons and that created a community with a common set of interests and values. For many folks college was the first place they had experienced the 'community effect' that arises when there is a 'kind of people' selection criteria affecting the overall group.

I am glad for the successes of Reddit. Staying vibrant and alive will be a challenge, it is for any community, but they have a good start.

ChrisNorstrom2• 15 years ago

I actually left Reddit for this exact reason. It's obviously a success but to me the size of the community became too much to be a functioning community. Every submission had thousands of comments. The "smartass" comments are always at the top, the mindlful ones get lost in the middle, mine ends up at the end. What's the point in chiming in with meaningful discussion when there's 2,000 "chit chat" comments like "That's what your mom told me last night" followed by "That's I told your mom last night", followed by "That's what she told me to tell your mom last night", followed by another regurgitation of the previous comment in a different order.

=== Why I left Reddit ===

I remember Reddit back when it had tech news and startup advice. Back when it was like Hacker news basically. At that time Reddit's comments were of the highest quality. It was the most intelligent & sometimes hilarious discussion I had ever seen in an online community. So I fell in love with Reddit. But as it grew (especially from Digg refugees and popularity) Redditors started to "participate" on an astronomical scale. Because of the shear amount of participation, the first members to comment on a story (despite having mediocre comments) had a better chance of getting upvoted, those who waited a few hours to submit their comment got their voice lost among thousands of comments and no one would ever see it.

The problem with upvotes is this: They don't scale up very well. Whoever comments first competes with LESS comments and so has a HIGHER chance of getting their comment upvoted. Remember, just because your comment was one of the first to be seen and voted on doesn't mean it contributes the most to the conversation, the best comments come from people hours, sometimes days, after a submission gets popular. So by the time high quality comments came in, the community of Redditors had already received and upvoted the most mediocre, smart ass comments with tired memes, old jokes, & complete non seriousness. Even if they spotted your high quality comment that revealed something incredibly profound and rare, you never stood a chance at catching up to the comments at the top.

Also, as Reddit's popularity grew, the worst of humanity came out. Off-topicness, mob-rule, endless memes all became the norm. You had to flee to a subreddit and even then, the massive amount of comments (most of them one liners and chit chat) was just too much to wade through. I became frustrated at trying to have a serious conversation in a room full of jokers, I was just fed up with trying to speak in a room full of thousands of people yelling. So I just left.

My last few days I was a Redditor, I remember every submission had comments like these at the top:

Comment#1 "Smartass answer that doesn't contribute to the conversation",

Comment#2 "Smartass conversation that doesn't contribute to the answer",

Comment#3 "Contribution that doesn't converse the smartass answer"

Comment#4 "Smartass answer that doesn't converse the contribution"

Comment#5 "I see what you did there"

Comment #2,476 The most intelligently posted comment that will never get upvoted because no one can see it

I just left, and not on a good note. I miss Reddit because it helped me overcome my Christian Extremism and move towards Athiesm but it is nothing like it used to be, and for that I am angry. The Reddit I remember is dead.

sien• 15 years ago

You should try Metafilter and maybe Something Awful.

It's surprising to hear anyone really praise Reddit, even at the start it wasn't that great. 'Downvoting' comments that you disagree with regardless of the quality of the points made is daft.

Reddit's discussion has always been far behind Metafilter. The $5 entrance fee keeps out people who don't want to make some contribution at least. The active mods there do a great job.

b0rsuk2• 15 years ago

Reddit is an interesting lesson for everyone with vague interest in society and human (tribal?) behavior. One of less pleasant experiences I had was on Atheism subreddit. Atheists like me like to think they're a bit special, they're more civilized, and don't exhibit the behaviors attributed to religious folks (intolerance, agression, mob mentality). Except that Atheism subreddit is eerily similar to how religious folks behave at times. My conclusion is that it's not so much atheism that makes certain folks more restrained, but isolation. Online, on a site like Reddit where atheists can group together, they're just another tribe. Only a bit (if at all) better than others.

Oh, and the top voted link at the moment was a sex tape of some woman who declared she's having sex with a stranger just to spite her husband who joined a sect which made him sell their furniture. And she was going to making him watch the video.

turar• 15 years ago

That was actually a reason why it took me a long time to adopt Reddit. I used to stumble upon it for years, browse around for several minutes, get overwhelmed by sheer number of comments, and leave.

This happened again recently, only this time, I discovered hundreds of smaller subreddits and started participating in a few of them because they offered that smaller community atmosphere. It feels a little like a cozy lounge with glass doors at a super busy airport.

peterjmag2• 15 years ago

OT: I wish journalists would stop capitalizing "web". The internet is an established medium, not a singular entity. I can't think of any good reasons to capitalize it—any suggestions?

petercooper• 15 years ago

I was thrown into the world of online journalism in the late 90s when it was dictated by most style guides to capitalize Web. I still retain this as a habit in professional writing, although appreciate and occasionally use the newer forms like "website" instead of "Web site." The AP style guide also recommended "Web" although I don't know if it does now as I don't pay as much attention to style as I did.

Put it this way, journalists who've been around a long time learnt "Web" and will often stick with it out of habit. "E-mail" seems to be a little further along the line here though with old school journalists seemingly more likely to use "email" than they did 10 years ago.

(This page - http://www.apstylebook.com/?do=ask_faq - indicates that AP recommends "Web" but also "website" and "email.")

Internet, on the other hand, is (and continues to be) capitalized in most cases and certainly in formal usage. The Internet is an internet, but an internet is not necessarily the Internet.. ;-)

peterjmag2• 15 years ago

Ah, I was aware of the AP's recent switch to "website", but I wasn't aware that it did not include a change to "web". Thanks for pointing that out!

You make a good point about "Internet", but I always feel somehow unclean when I write it that way. Perhaps it's just this generation's aversion to capitalization in general. Here's one interesting argument against that form: http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/08/64596. Food for thought. :-)

Jun8• 15 years ago

Started reading the article and got stuck reading the http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/omdyt/what_is_the... thread for 30 minutes or so.

That's how.

vl• 15 years ago

You. are. evil.

You just reddit-bombed me and who knows how many HN'ers. 30 minutes gone and counting.

ChrisNorstrom2• 15 years ago

Won't work on me, I'm asexual.

johno2152• 15 years ago

The killer feature that reddit has is subreddits.

I disagree with the article; there is no one reddit culture. One can go to r/politics, r/gardening, r/fitness, or r/askscience for example, and they all feature their own cultures and own biases. For example r/fitness has a culture focusing on weight lifting for fitness. But for people who are into fitness through running, there is r/running. The same thing goes for politics: r/politics tends to be left leaning, but you can find right leaning people in order subreddits.

There are thousands of vibrant community subreddits were people with similar interests (and sometimes opinions) participate. All with their own cultures and moderation rules for what are acceptable posts.

Subreddits combined with voting and good moderation make reddit way better than usenet, Digg in its heyday, or 4chan.

cdr2• 15 years ago

I don't really agree. There is definitely a general reddit culture (a bland white male young american type of culture) and it seeps into all subreddits to various degrees. It's pretty awful for the "default" subreddits but it affects the entire site. If you want to have intelligent discussion outside of the biases of the above demographic, god help you if your subreddit gets popular or someone does a search that finds it.

You could compare it to 4chan having a culture despite there being dozens of different boards.

johno2152• 15 years ago

Maybe we just visit different sub-reddits. I tend to stay away from the front page ones because they remind me to much of the culture Digg used to have when it was popular. But there are plenty of smaller yet highly active subreddits that don't.

I will admit that for the ones I use, the proportion of Americans are at least 90%.

cookiecaper• 15 years ago

I fully agree with you. I moderate a religious subreddit and I am convinced that at least 2/3 of the regular readers are trolls and antagonists. There is a pervasive common culture on reddit.

The site self-selects; you are not going to get many grannies coming on board when the front page is filled with f-bombs, sexual questions or interviews (AskReddit/IAmA), non-sensical pictures and jokes, and news about IPv6 or other techie stuff. That's just the long and short of it.

Even if you give a specific link to an individual subreddit, anyone who participates to a meaningful degree will venture outside into the broader world of reddit and be very sorry they did so, often swearing off the site entirely.

I haven't even mentioned the intentional harassment offered by the kind reddit denziens who find what you are trying to talk about "moronic", "abusive", or "mind-numbing".

This effect was so pervasive that I recognized I could not get meaningful participation from relevant segments of the population if I hosted the community on reddit. I coded a clone and started an independent site. I think this is required for anyone whose primary audience doesn't overlap with the 20-something nerd crowd.

mangodrunk2• 15 years ago

I hope you realize that reddit is a very large community of different subreddits where your experience is very different from others. What is so bad about being a young white male? You don't say how this adversely affects the site nor do you provide any evidence that it is the case. It's like if you were to complain about people being like minded on Facebook, well they are your friends.

asdkl234890• 15 years ago

I have absolutely nothing in common with anyone who subscribes to r/wtf or r/all, and several other sub-reddits. I am on reddit specifically because I can avoid a ONE culture.

contextfree• 15 years ago

I only ever visit the programming subreddit. I used to prefer Hacker News but for my taste it has declined quite a bit of late, to the point where r/programming threads have approximately the same content quality with slightly less groupthink and much less self-seriousness.

(No, this isn't a quality post either, but it at least expresses my sincere if underexamined feelings.)

georgieporgie• 15 years ago

Much like the rest of Reddit, /r/programming comes across as a bunch of 23 year olds. The "wisdom" I see bandied about in there is stunning.

b0rsuk2• 15 years ago

One of things I like the least about link aggregator sites like reddit, hacker news and digg is the tendency to post hordes of links about the same major event. I understand these links differ in their point of view and show the event in different light, but come on ! There should be a way to group them and make them use only one line, like

"Breaking news: Elvis Presley remains dead (41 links)"

Have a look at this picture: http://wstaw.org/h/5e262d116e9/

How Reddit went from a second-tier aggregator to the Web’s unstoppable force

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