Reddit and Digg compared

2007-07-24 11:04:42 -08:00

Parallel coverage of this hoax on the two sites.

The titles:

The comments (summarized):

  • Reddit: It’s fake. You can tell because the frame shown in the “screenshot” doesn’t appear anywhere in the actual YouTube question.
  • Digg: This was really really funny and the candidates deserved it, but it embarrassed the internet on national TV, and CNN will never do a debate like this again because of it. BTW, it’s fake.

The scores:

  • Reddit: +179-132=47 (and dropping)
  • Digg: 2510 (and climbing)

UPDATE 2007-07-25:: See Simone’s rebuttal in the comments.

4 Responses to “Reddit and Digg compared”

  1. Simone Manganelli Says:

    This is a misleading comparison, at least in terms of the scores. You can’t actively subtract from a score on digg as you can on reddit. Digg stories just drop off the homepage if they are buried enough, but they still retain however many diggs they had.

    So it’s possible that there were more people who buried the story than digged it, yet digg only shows you the number who digged the story. Of course, this would mean it would gain the “buried” tag which it still doesn’t appear to have, although I did see a later digg story that indicated that this was a hoax.

    More than anything I think it just highlights the different mechanisms for promoting or burying stories on the sites. And the fact that digg seems to have many, many more users than reddit; not that that’s necessarily good, especially given the comments.

  2. Ted Says:

    I’ve found that DIGG has really become SUCK since they’ve expanded beyond mainly being a tech news/social site. It’s been overrun with too many political ideologues who don’t even read the content of most of the stories that they “digg”. I’ve given reddit a try, and unfortunately, it looks worse than digg. Slashdot still has better filtering, but since most of the readers have left for Digg and Reddit, its content isn’t nearly as current as the other sites.

    I’m probably a minority here in my thoughts, but I think the ‘net is ripe for a new tech news social site. Basically what Digg used to be before it got overrun by Moveon.org and Dailykos readers.

  3. Peter Hosey Says:

    Simone: All true.

    Ted: Reddit is rife with political stories too, but it has a big advantage over digg: The recommendation engine. If you downvote everything political, your recommended page (separate from the front page) will be trained to not give you anything political. That’s its big win, even moreso than the downvote button itself.

  4. Simone Manganelli Says:

    P.S. Ted: digg’s homepage defaults to just the technology section. You can similarly subscribe to a feed of Digg’s tech-only articles. This should bring you back to digg’s days of yore. :) (I agree that there is a proliferation of lame stories in the non-tech-related articles, but I still do find some interesting submissions in there, which is why I continue to scan through them.)

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