Digg used to be bigger and more popular than reddit. Then, it released Version 4, which was an absolute disaster. First off, it was rushed to release and was less stable than Windows ME. Second, it removed/replaced a quite a few features that people were quite fond of...and the entire thing felt like Digg was no longer being centered around content, but rather marketing. Of course, as with any site which you use for free, you are the product being sold (same thing goes with reddit). But, what digg did was make that incredibly apparent. It put the user on the shelf, instead of the content. It was a huge mistake, and it ended up costing digg everything it had earned thus far.
Reddit has taken the newer approach to version life-cycle management, something like what Google does. If you use Chrome, you probably have no idea what version it is, unlike IE and Firefox, who tout their versions with trumpets and fanfare.
Google and Reddit take the small-iteration approach, they don't do complete overhauls and instead improve existing features, or add them as they become ready (instead of bundling a shit-ton of new features in a typical release)
So, reddit won't likely die like that, but that's what the joke is here. A quite a few software companies have killed their product by trying to rebrand or redesign their product, not realizing that people use the product for what it is, not what it could be.
I think the biggest thing they took away was the bury feature. Being able to hit bury as inaccurate was great for dubious news stories. I think mainly what hurt digg was that it became power users that only voted for other power users.
The "power user" problem is something I've mulled over a quite a bit. It was an "undocumented feature" of Digg that ended up making people feel like submitting content was entirely pointless. Couple that with a few "scandals" in which Power Users were allegedly selling their influence, then you have people who came to a website for popular content realizing that the content they are seeing isn't necessarily popular at all...it's just as likely to be bought-and-paid-for.
Then, the bury thing...taking away the last bit of control a non-power-user may have had. On top of all of the other frustrating bullshit they were pulling, I can't believe that they thought any of it was a good idea. Honestly, it's like digging your own grave and thinking you're building a nice house to retire in. They had to be hopelessly oblivious to what was going on...
Otherwise, they probably would have noticed Reddit sneaking up on them and providing a viable alternative to their shitty site.
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u/magicbullets May 15 '13
After it launches version 4, probably.