Post by @atomicpoet@mastodon.social

2022-11-18 03:17 UTC

The only parallel I've ever seen to Twitter's current self-destruction was the Digg 4.0 fiasco. At one time Digg had ~450 million users. Then they tried to push an extremely unpopular update that caused users to leave en masse. Where did they go? Reddit. And now Reddit is one of the biggest social media sites on the planet. By the way, a whole lot of Internet users have forgotten about Digg -- or don't even know it existed. Twitter could be Digg but on a much larger scale.

Replies (4)

@atomicpoet@mastodon.social 2022-11-18 03:23

By the way, am I happy that Twitter is imploding right this moment? As much as I'd like to celebrate -- and a part of me is -- I'm incredibly wary because: 1. Mastodon does not have the scale to successfully onboard users *that* quickly 2. The moderator-to-user ratio might be stretched too thin 3. Malicious actors might take advantage of the chaos, and undermine the Fediverse's longterm survival Let's hope we survive this!

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@badgergravling@mastodon.social 2022-11-18 03:22

@atomicpoet I remember that well - I used to be on Digg a lot... There have been lots of smaller examples of updating/closing forums and communities, but Twitter might finally push Digg off the top spot

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@josh@thehb.me 2022-11-18 03:22

@atomicpoet AIM, Digg, Google Reader…

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@RL_Dane@fosstodon.org 2022-11-19 02:55

@atomicpoet@mastodon.social I had wondered why digg fell of the face of the earth. I never knew about the circumstances, because I was only a lurker, I never formed an account. I just noticed some time roughly around 2007-2010 that the quality went to pot, and I went elsewhere (Reddit, obvs. ;)

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