This is a case of a company having delusions of grandeur. Instead of humming along with 10 or so employees raking in cash hand-over fist, they tried to grow as fast and as large as possible to try to revolutionize news. Instead, Reddit did the former and is stable and profitable; it never pretends to be something it's not.
Not all companies are going to change the world, nor should they. I see Facebook and Twitter making the same mistakes. Perhaps Facebook is a great place to keep in touch with friends but nothing more. Perhaps Twitter is simply a great replacement for blogging, nothing more. Instead of filling their niches and quietly making a small number of employees very wealthy, they try to become these massive institutions that are reliant on very fickle user bases. It's a house of cards.
> "Instead of filling their niches and quietly making a small number of employees very wealthy, they try to become these massive institutions that are reliant on very fickle user bases. It's a house of cards."
The problem is that Twitter, Digg, et al took a buttload of VC money, and quietly making a dozen employees rich is not an acceptable ROI.
Google still gets the VAST majority of their revenue from search. And they haven't done a whole lot of innovating in the search space since their initial success and are very busy trying to become dominate in every area, including social. They're probably the most premier example of a company having delusions of grandeur.
Perhaps true, but short of redefining everything about capital markets, and human nature, I don't see how their actions are anything other than rational.
When you have vast amounts of cash, and a dominant market position, you're probably obligated to make large bets to expand into complementary markets, just by fiduciary duty and especially now because of the low cost of capital (i.e. interest rates) - the alternatives available to your investors are very low return, meaning a low bar to investing money on company expansion.
Also for every company with "delusions of grandeur" there's another company who took the safe, conservative route you seem to be suggesting, only to watch their dominant position disappear because of market or technology shifts. Which is another reason why its sound management to reinvest your profits to try and expand.
Why do you say that. This video shows the office environment which is fun. It's funny with a lot of nerds trying to dance and look cool without looking awkward.
In the hindsight, Digg might have made some wrong decisions but this doesn't say anything about the company one way of another.
Digg was at the top of their game when this video was shot. Digg v3 was a massive success. It's only when they introduced v4 and pandered to social media sites (a decision made by Kevin) that it took a nosedive.
This. I used to visit digg 20-30 times throughout the day on V3. At the time Reddit looked like a laughable comparison that I could never imagine being as good as Digg. Then V4 came out, Digg collapsed in on itself, a paris hilton news blog shot to #1. I decided to check out reddit again and I've never been back to Digg since. It's still remarkable how drastically the site turned from V3 to V4, I never could have seen that coming.
Instead of humming along with 10 or so employees raking in cash hand-over fist, they tried to grow as fast and as large as possible to try to revolutionize news
Digg required the network effect to sustain their user base -- it was where it was at. It is presumptive hindsight to assume that a slow and steady approach would have yielded long term success. As likely it would have lost its newness (as many other sites came and went. Remember when a Slashdotting was pinnacle of torrential request targeting?) Digg took a big risk to try to cement their position, and it failed to do so. People blaming the v4 miss that Digg had seriously already lost its lustre at that point, the redesign serving primarily as a convenient scapegoat.
Not all companies are going to change the world, nor should they. I see Facebook and Twitter making the same mistakes. Perhaps Facebook is a great place to keep in touch with friends but nothing more. Perhaps Twitter is simply a great replacement for blogging, nothing more. Instead of filling their niches and quietly making a small number of employees very wealthy, they try to become these massive institutions that are reliant on very fickle user bases. It's a house of cards.