Speaking as a former reddit admin who had direct access to the server logs (and "wc -l"): Quantcast (and Alexa, and Comscore, and all the others) are terrible at estimating traffic. They make wildly inaccurate guesses using low-quality source data and all the ad execs just gobble up their results as if they're fresh off God's own LaserJet. It's very frustrating to watch.<p>The most accurate results are visible at Google AdPlanner, because it's reporting actual Google Analytics data from a bug embedded on every reddit page:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en#siteDetails?identifier=reddit.com&lp=true" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en...</a><p>Google Trends is also pretty good -- again, because they have access to <i>actual, real</i> search data which they're presenting raw and unvarnished:<p><a href="http://www.google.com/trends?q=reddit%2C+digg&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/trends?q=reddit%2C+digg&ctab=0&...</a><p>To my eye, the hockey stick begins in Q1 2010, well before the mid-Q3 spike when Digg v4 was launched.<p>TLDR: Digg's implosion may have accelerated Reddit's traffic growth, but it was already doubling yearly, a trend which goes back to the site's launch in 2005.
The day I realized reddit wasn't the same anymore, was when I made a jest about Youtube commenters only posting unintelligible comments in the main /r/reddit.com subreddit.<p>I got tons downvotes and a confused reply saying "is there something wrong with youtube that I dont get?"<p>Then I realized the people commenting on Reddit were the same ones posting the comments on Youtube.<p>They weren't even aware of the stigma of Youtubes comments, which shows the cultural shift on Reddit from tech-savvy to mainstream.
Unfortunately, reddit has started to hit new and new lows. See this recent highly-voted post for example (<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/jvhot/i_found_a_girl_on_flickr_who_has_169_images_of/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/jvhot/i_found_a_girl_...</a>), where they're making fun of a poor girl's badly photoshopped photos that she dared to publish on Flickr.<p>I've been on reddit since its very beginnings, back when its being rewritten in Python was causing huge discussions or when programming.reddit was still a sub-domain. I've lived through the 2008 elections stealing the front page from geeky-related articles, or when making fun at digg was actually considered cool (back in 2009 or so). Anyway, I never thought that making fun and hurting actual innocent people would really hit the front-page, I'm ashamed of having supported this website for so long. There are still some pockets of common-sense left, starting with TrueReddit which I think is more like an animal preserve for those who can still remember how cool and exciting reddit used to be. I'll also want to add /r/history to the list of sub-reddits worth following.
Too bad. The voting system isn't as robust as it needs to be for me to use the site on a regular basis anymore. Too many of the top rated threads are jokes, puns, or stupid questions.<p>Moderating by category made slashdot comments useful. In the user profile, setting all "Funny" moderated comments to -5 eliminated all the "In Soviet Russia" jokes. Repeated comments were marked redundant etc.<p>Reddit has become quite popular and as a result the comments have become less interesting and more populist. While it's great for the staff to run a successful site, the newfound popularity has pushed me away, and just as they released the Gold accounts as well.<p>I'd pay for a gold account if it gave access to an advanced moderation system. News.yc is still small enough and the community homogeneous enough that the really stupid shit gets moderated out. People are strict enough around here that the idiots leave quickly. Not having sub-sites helps as well to push away the people primarily looking for lolcats.
I deleted my account yesterday. As a community it has given me nothing back, except pictures of funny cats (ok slight exaggeration)<p>It seems as if every single comment that hints to insight fulness, knowledge or that comes accompanied with a (scientific) source is ridiculed or downvoted into oblivion. And top comments increasingly are inside jokes. That is all ok, but I am not putting energy in it anymore.<p>Compare that to HN, where I comment very little, yet nearly every interaction sparked an email or two with people who do cool stuff.<p>Reddit commenters seems to take some pride that they are not as worse as their cousins at 4chan or youtube. To me they seem to be the internet white noise, and if they don't deviate into the tail, they will be fine. The usenet comparison by blhack is spot on I feel, so new communities will spring to live where others slip.<p>edit:typo
>It’s not guaranteed that something of high quality will make it on Reddit, but it’s absolutely guaranteed that something of low quality will be destroyed there.<p>That's not true at all. There are tons of low quality posts. There's just such a high turnover that you tend to forget some of the stuff that you automatically skip or filter.
Anyone feel lost in the high amount of traffic? I have been a redditor for 5 years and I feel not only has the traffic grown considerably but the content submitted has changed so much. The tone of the site has changed enough that I only subscribe to usually low user count subreddits.
I wonder why no one talks about the huge growth for imgur, which has more traffic than reddit...<p><a href="https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en#siteDetails?identifier=imgur.com&lp=true" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en...</a><p><a href="https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en#siteDetails?identifier=reddit.com&lp=true" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile?hl=en...</a>
To me this sums up what Reddit really got right: "The community is the most passionate out there."<p>Towards the end of his time with Digg Kevin Rose seemed to have little empathy for his audience, and the audience knew it when he checked out of the building and handed things over to Jay. The redesign was more about having a solid code base than rolling out new features for the users. And one got the sense that while they had Twitter envy that Reddit was doubling down on making their community (with all of their quirks) feel at home.
For me the standout feature of reddit is the ease of commenting and browsing comments. Being able to reply, edit and even delete your comment inline without leaving the thread probably raised my level of contribution more than an order of magnitude. I don't understand why more sites (HN, hint hint?) don't make commenting this easy.
If I ever wrote a list of top 10 times an internet "product" handed a competitor most of it's "customers", two that would be on there include MovableType v3 (went free to paid and caused WordPress 2.0 to actually gain attention) and Digg v4.
The crazy thing is how Reddit dominated Digg at the v4 launch. What the hell happened there? Did the Reddit community mobilize 4chan-style? The article teases us this sentence:<p><i>Please forgive the long screenshot below, but it’s important to understand exactly how Reddit blasted the Digg front page at this time</i><p>This suggests that they have something deeper to reveal, but instead it's just a screenshot showing the actual posts on the front page—how much rather than how.
Mandatory: <a href="http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate-our-traffic.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/experts-misunderestimate-our-...</a><p>Also, same title could have been posted in 2010 and 2009, which also saw explosion in growth year-over-year.
I have just ONE thing to say: Do not change anything Reddit.<p>Seriously, it's working, it's great to have, and I would be completely bummed if they pulled their own "Digg v4" at broke a perfectly working system.<p>Sure, infrastructure can get better, or maybe small improvements as you see happen on HN like with voting, points, etc, but otherwise, just let it ride.
I searched this thread to see if monetization has been mentioned. I see that it has been. Monetization was mentioned as a reason that Digg failed. What way does Reddit have to make money? Does it make any difference to Reddit, if Reddit has no way to make money, how much traffic Reddit has?
In the snapshot he put, the stories has lots of diggs, but surprisingly few views. The first story has for example 5733 dig and only 1015 views. This is not normal, and suggests that something is going on.
Only posted an hour and already the same, predictable comments. People, please take the time to explore other subreddits. If you stay subscribed to reddit.com, pics, politics and other various default subreddits, you're not going to enjoy yourself (unless you liked digg v4).<p>Also, I have no idea why reddit defaults to "top" for comment sorting. The experience is much less gimmicky when you sort comments by "best". They're usually more relevant and less meta/jokey. (edit, I appear to have been mistaken on this, I was just sure when I created a new account a while back it had defaulted to 'top'. Oh well, something to keep in mind anyhow.)