Re:StumbleUpon closing after 16 years, accounts can be migra...
by tacostakohashi on Thursday May 24, 2018 @12:49PM
(#17145862)
Oh, right, another radical thought of mine - something that users would pay for. Even if it were just $1/month, one account per credit card only, it would serve as another little barrier to all the right people, and prevent throwaways and constant account deletion.
Obviously for a commercial, advertiser-funded operation, it is all about more and more users and traffic and the quality of the content isn't a priority, but this eventually destroys everything. I'm imagining something much smaller, but potentially higher quality and self-sustaining. I guess I'm pretty much describing The Well, but hopefully cheaper and with more users, but not free and as many users as possible.
Re:StumbleUpon closing after 16 years, accounts can be migra...
by brownbat on Thursday May 24, 2018 @03:32PM
(#17147453)
There used to be a mashup of random YouTube comments on one side, and random metafilter comments on the other testing, really validating, this theory.
The difference was pretty stark. I could only find breadcrumbs:
https://metatalk.metafilter.com/16003/Metafilter-comments-vs...
An example might be archived somewhere...
As to fixing reddit, I agree with your changes, but you'd run into the same issue all candidates for remplacement ran into: reddit delivers value through the network effect. You need users to get value. You need value to get users. Basically unless you can kickstart the replacement with a shitton of existing data, or unless reddit fucks up as much as digg did before, it's hard to compete.