Okay Geek Farm
Guy who Copied Digg Says 'Digg is Copying Twitter'
Brandon Davenport
Reddit Co-Founder, Alexis Ohanian, says Digg is copying stuff from other popular sites - and that is somewhat true, but are they really copying other sites, and is that really a horrible thing? Alexis says that “this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling” and that “It’s a damned shame to see digg just re-implementing features from other websites.”
Why this is so shocking is because when Digg was launched in October 2004, over six months later, Ohanian started Reddit which was complete copy of Digg. Why Ohanian would crawl out on a limb like this is un-explainable - and his claims are completely hypocritical.
From Alexis Ohanian’s blog post
…this new version of digg reeks of VC meddling. It’s cobbling together features from more popular sites and departing from the core of digg, which was to “give the power back to the people.”
Those are your words from that aforementioned 2004 video segment.
Now what matters is how many followers & influence a user has and how many followers & influence they’ve got.
Where have we heard this before: Twitter? Facebook? GoogleBuzz?
Kevin, you absolutely deserve all the credit for starting the movement — fascinating things happen when online communities can efficiently share content. Whales get silly names and we can expose the tragedies our fellow man endures faster than ever before.
It’s a damned shame to see digg just re-implementing features from other websites.
Kevin Rose Unveiling Digg on The Screen Savers - Dec ‘04
If you watch that video above, you can see that Kevin publicly announces Digg.com to the world on The Screen Savers, December 13th 2004. Now, that is about 2 months after its creation, and even then, Reddit was still in diapers, so what does this say about Alexis Ohanian’s claim that Digg is copying other sites? All it tells us is that even though Ohanian is right to an extent, all credibility is lost because he himself carbon copied the site he is complaining about.
Everyone knows that Digg is trying to claw up the ladder of social networking sites, but that also means they need to fit into the mold that everyone’s become used to. Its hard to be innovative without adapting in some way to what everyone is accustomed to.
Read more - about the new Digg
Read more - Ohanian’s Blog post
