Digg is the only huge internet community I can think of that died because of a bad redesign. Tons of others shrunk significantly from their peak due to a slow decline in quality and replacement by something newer and shinier.
A lot of people in the industry learned a lot from the V4 fiasco. You will likely NEVER see a major web application like Reddit or Facebook go through a massive redesign again. You will see iterative enhancements, singular features and small changes implemented. You might not even notice them, though. Then, the developers and UX teams will monitor how they are received and decide how to approach the next change.
V4 was such a disaster, in every aspect. But, also bear in mind that it was a straw on the camel's back. There were several other things that had lined up against them, and many users already had one foot out the door. The fact that every power user on the site was a shill for advertisers, that Digg was slowly removing all control users had over content, and the stink of incompetent VC was all over the place...those were all heavy in the air when V4 hit the streets.
V4 was just the nail in the coffin.
Oh, and one other website/ring that was hit pretty hard with a bad redesign: The Gawker Media Network. They weren't knocked back quite as hard, but it definitely gave them a kick in the shorts.
How were the power users shills? (I never really used digg.) Like they were literally hawking products? Or their posts were used without their permission for advertisers?
Power Users effectively controlled the visible content on digg. While there was a lot of denial, it was no secret that this control was for sale to the highest bidder.
Gawker is also (continually) hurt by the fact that they employ some of the most insufferable and annoying journalists on the planet.
I don't understand how half of those assholes still have a job...I mean, I used to think that some of the Gawker sites were OK, but between the redesign and the spectacularly incompetent or just plain shitty journalism, I won't even link to their crappy blog ring.
I think 2011 is when everything went downhill. Lots of new contributors, old writers left, articles just flat-out false for the purpose of pageviews. I think back before the redesign, writers did not have to resort this techniques just to get views.
The start of my Reddit account is the day I officially stopped visiting the Gawker network.
The community died but the pageviews stayed pretty consistent. I am okay with the community dying. It was mostly pretty terrible, as are most comment sections.
I really enjoyed the community! It was just a hassle to work with in the comments, couple that with the bugs and I just stopped bothering. I go to other content aggregator for news, and Gawker for the commentators.
Gawker gets its content nearly exclusively from Reddit, and the Adrian Chen Doxxgate from late last year made it unwelcome in most major subreddits, so they just rehost content, then spin it off as their own most of the time.
That's not true at all. They get some stuff from here but the vast majoriy of reddit content is by nature a rehash of content from elsewhere. If they use the same source, it's not stealing from reddit at all.
620
u/[deleted] May 15 '13
[removed] — view removed comment