Reddit is looking like they might suffer a similar misstep. Not quite on the same level as Digg suffered for a number of reasons but still. They've been slowly rolling out and previewing a UI redesign. Comments on their UI redesign preview posts are overwhelmingly negative but they just keep pushing forward anyway. I don't understand why this is almost always the case.

It is usually because the design is some PM's means of getting promoted. It wouldn't look good if your work gets trashed. So it gets pushed all the way through and then they leave for greener pastures by touting the work they have done.

Someone else gets to reap the damage they have sown. But engineers do the same thing.

In this case, Snapchat just seems to be copying feeds to make money. And Wall Street is breathing down their necks.

Their toxic community will kill them if a revamp doesn't.

Most redesigns go pretty deep before users are included. And by then your investment, financial, emotional and in lost time, is so high people try and rationalize the negative reactions and justify why users will turn around after a while.

What makes it difficult that even the most perfect change will elicit negative reactions from users. It's difficult to then separate what is a natural reaction to change from genuine problems in the new design.

There was also a rapidly-maturing Reddit waiting in the wings.

If you have a moat, you can weather the storm after a design snafu. If you don't? @Jack, you dead.

Makes one wonder if Reddit has a moat. I liked their conservative design so far, but there seem to be cracks appearing the form of 'mobilization' of the user profile page for example.

Seems to be the trend of the last 5 years of making the desktop experience broken/annoying in some way or form and the mobile experience - ad-ridden and designed for momentary rather than deep engagement.

I think Reddit still has a moat.

There have been attempts to do something else, such as voat, but those generally become either A) more akin to subreddits than reddit (like this very site) or B) ideological havens for groups not welcome on reddit.

In voat's case, when reddit begin banning overt racism from white supremacists and calls for violence, as well as communities dedicated to hating fat people or women, those radicalized users all fled to voat. That toxic core userbase makes the site untenable for the masses who are repulsed by such naked racism, prejudice and other evil content.

So I don't really see anyone waiting in the reddit wings. The ones that were there before are still there (SA, fark, /.), and the ones that follow aren't poised to be the same thing.

Reddit doesn’t have a moat, IMO, because they don’t have a social graph. It’s like Facebook for strangers. Someone could wipe them out over night because users don’t really have any connection to each other.

Yeah, I remembered Digg. It's fascinating (in a bad way, really) to see something so giant, suddenly crashed so hard in a very short period of time. I'm always wondering if reddit will go down that way too.