I was around at the time, but I went from /. and/or forums to nothing to reddit. I was also about 5-7 years late to reddit
What were the prevalent reddit like boards at the time doing such that reddit became popular?
Reddit back then was like a blend of what content we’re seeing on the “chat” communities here on Lemmy, and what Hacker News is today. It was much more technology oriented, and much less topical.
Subreddits existed, but ones for smaller fandoms and narrowly focused meme formats did not.
Was there a catastrophic event similar to the Reddit API change that led people to flock to Reddit? Or was it the appeal of the format?
For reference: I started because my friend was browsing Reddit in class and it seemed like something to do. I’m not sure if I represented the general population
I wasn’t around for it, but I understand that Digg was the “it” place until they did something dumb, and then reddit was flooded with Digg refugees. It seems like history is repeating itself, or at least rhyming.
Yeah, the digg v4 move didn’t have identical reasons as now, but it sure felt familar
I remember a UI redesign that looked kinda like shit, losing the ability to downvote and therefore bury paid ads placed to look like regular content, and something about a facebook connection but details are real hazy.
Digg was the main competitor. They updated so that it showed where the links were coming from, and so many were coming from reddit it started a mass-exodus. In retrospect, it was the beginning of the end. A cool nerd hangout got mass appeal.
