Actually Reddit didn't copy Digg. It copied del.icio.us/popular. This will be clear if you
look at screenshots of the two sites in summer 2005. Reddit was
del.icio.us/popular with votes instead of
bookmarks, in the same way that Digg was Slashdot with votes
instead of human editors.<p>The differences between Reddit's and Digg's origins are visible
even today. When a story gets enough votes on Digg it becomes the
new top story, as on Slashdot. Whereas on Reddit stories bubble
up from the bottom then sink back down again. This is a significant
difference because it makes Reddit harder to game.<p>Originally the Reddits thought they'd have to motivate people
to upvote stories by using the votes to train a filter. But it
turned out users were willing to vote out of a form of altruism,
so the idea of training a filter died out after a couple months.<p>As for the names, what they originally wanted to call Reddit was
Snoo, as in "what's new?" But the name was owned by a squatter
who wouldn't sell, so as a temporary expedient Alexis chose Reddit,
which Steve and I both hated initially. (They had to settle for
calling the Reddit alien Snoo.)<p>The Reddits learned of the existence of Digg a week or two after
launching. They were pretty bummed. We still use their story as
one of the canonical examples to encourage new YC funded startups
to launch quickly.<p>If Michael wasn't sure whether Reddit copied Digg, he could have
just asked me. But saturdays are slow days for traffic, especially
on Memorial Day weekend. Arguably he genuinely thinks he's giving
Alexis a gift of pageviews, which to an online publication must
seem valuable almost regardless of context.