I like to scroll Reddit here and there and it always makes me think of Digg, because it’s the exact clone. For some reason though I never ever hear about Digg, even in nostalgia-filled culture.
Digg was huge during the mid-2000s. People will say that Reddit is way bigger now, but they forget that the entire web is WAY bigger now, too.
Digg was about as big as Reddit is today in terms of influence towards dorks, nerds and geeks. But also, it was a rather brand new concept.
The voting system hadn’t really existed at that scale on the internet before. It attracted millions of folks, curating pretty well discussions, as we know.
Living in France at that time, for the first time ever online there was a platform with interesting content and tons of people reacting to it. Just like Reddit later, comments quickly became what Digg was all about.
I learned so much about US/UK/AUS culture. Vocabulary, idioms, places, etc. It was so interesting and I laughed so much at comment threads. I remember a few times absolutely rolling on the floor. You know, when your sides hurt so much you keep whining “stahhhp, just staaahp”. It was addictive.
Then the HD-DVD key thing happened. I have screenshots of my old Netvibes page.
It was WILD. They started moderating heavily and that was a wrap. Reddit looked like a terrible clone and I became one of those Digg refugees. Reddit was so raw and poor at that time, it wasn’t looking like it would become the behemoth it became.
But here we are with the same dorks, nerds and geeks albeit more international now. Same social patterns.
And the same questions.