How big was the Reddit AMAgeddon?
When people say that users are flocking away from Reddit, how many people have actually stopped using it? Maybe it's difficult to put an exact number on it but roughly how big was the exodus and how will it affect Reddit?
8 years ago by AinBaya
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I guess we won't really have an idea of how many people actually stopped using Reddit altogether because of the AMAgeddon unless Reddit releases their traffic statistics. A few subs including a sub with over 180k subscribers did permanently shut up shop however so their was definitely permanent damage done to the site.
The AMAgeddon isn't likely to be what kills Reddit but with the large migrations to alternative sites the next time a massive drama storm rolls around people will have an option to leave to already established communities and alternatives.
If the sub with 180k users you're talking about was crappydesign, he didn't end up shutting it down. He took out all of the custom CSS removed himself as a mod then left. The sub is still running but now without any moderation.
edit: nevermind. someone already took control as the moderator. That didn't take long.
Oh I only saw it on SRD yesterday when he said he was going to keep the sub down Indefinitely and the user base was migrating to CrappyDesign2
They obviously have a lot of servers running the place, do you think that with less traffic and in turn less ad revenue they'll downsize?
I suppose so but I doubt that the AMAgeddon will have caused enough users to permanently leave Reddit altogether for them to need to downsize.
The difference between the AMAgeddon and the Digg collapse is that Reddit already had its own stable site that could handle the massive influx (whereas Snapzu is invite only and slowing the flow of new users and Voat has had its bandwidth annihilated), already had its own developed culture and a better community (the joke on Reddit at the time is that Digg would get whatever was on the front page 2 days later) and had site functions that where better / expanded upon what Digg had already done.
I think that the site that will become "The Reddit Killer" will at least need to satisfy the following points.
They are hosted on AWS, they can upscale and downscale on demand.
For webservers yes, you can turn on more vm's to handle more requests. But I don't think that's an option for their database.
For database it depends, for redis and memcached you have elasticcache. For SQL databases it will depend on the architecture of your application and your sharding strategy.
True, it always depends, but unless the devs planned for this in their architecture, they'll have a greater bit of difficulty scaling up their data storage and retrieval compared to webservers.
Look at the guy from Vaot, he started the site as an expermient to learn ASP.NET and C#. I don't know how skilled the devs are behind this site, but it wouldn't surprise me if scaling to millions of users was not at the top of their heads when starting out. Hell, even sites like Twitter had immense problems because the initial idea wasn't built to scale, nor should it have been. YAGNI and all that.
Oh OK. Cool. Makes it an easy decision then if it's so eaay
At least Snapzu got 3000 more users with 15000 invites pending.
Which is a small number for Reddit. The community there has been decaying for a while and will continue to slowly degrade. Digg is still around and Reddit will be in 5-6, what it might look like or be at that point, who knows.
I don't think there will be a big exodus from Reddit to a specific site like it happened with Digg. If the current situation continues it will bleed users to several other communities over time.
I agree, with so many options right now the people leaving will find communities that fit what they are looking for. People leaving from FPH will find a place they can actively be jerks, maybe people upset about this bit of drama will go for a p2p network, I came here because I was used as a bargaining chip by the moderators and was tired of constant negative mob mentalities. This place just fits what I want. Wish I knew about it a year ago.
I think you can say voat here. If it ever comes back up for more than ten minutes. I almost pity the guy that created it because he is getting the very worst reddit has.
I think snapzu with the XP and reputation system is better for people who want good and positive contents and are tired of trolls.
They may be small numbers for Reddit, but they're HUGE numbers for Snapzu.
Pretty massive. Nowhere near the whole of Reddit, but the sub /r/RedditAlternative's subscribers alone should give you an idea.
I actually found that /r/ after coming here and was pleasantly surprised at how many options are being presented and the fact that startup ideas are being formed. It is great to see. Hopefully the new ownership knows that is something they absolutely have to keep on that site. Taking it down would be the biggest user uproar so far. Even with only 10,000 subs.
It's hard to know exactly how big the scale is. I don't have any specific statistics, but I can give you my own perspective:
I haven't stopped using reddit, and probably will not stop using reddit. I am really really liking snapzu so far, and very well may make it my 'home page of the internet'; but reddit has a lot of irreplaceable things for me. The most prominent of them all, is a little subreddit named /r/exmormon. It is a subreddit designed for people in various stages of progression out of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It has become the forum for discussion on this kind of thing, surpassing even sites dedicated entirely to supporting these people. It has been extremely valuable in my life, and just 'stopping using it' probably isn't going to happen.
While a lot of subreddits can, will, and have transferred to snapzu seamlessly; not all of them are able to. While many people will be able to cut reddit off entirely, the AMAgeddon simply isn't enough for me to do so. It's changed the way I feel about reddit and its administrators, sure...but I haven't left it.
While I obviously wish the AMAgeddon never happened, I am happy that I've been able to come across snapzu. It's really something special. :)
For Snapzu, the exodus will be massive. The site's gained a lot of users over the last few days. However, it's next to nothing to reddit, which will continue to have a huge community because people tend to either have a short attention span or just don't particularly care for the politics behind a website. I'm sticking with Snapzu now, though.
Reddit is just a comfortable place.
When you've been using the same website for 5 years, participating in discussion, making friends, and doing community activities such as the Reddit gift exchange, it's hard to leave. I came here because I wanted to try out new things, but I don't want Reddit to die. I don't think it's a case of not caring or having a short attention span, it's just that many people feel comfortable using Reddit.
Reddits dramas are just too frequent and nasty. It will go on for those who like that sort of thing. Plenty seem to be signing up just to see what the fuss is. I'm sure plenty will leave permanently because the have tried alternatives and like what they find.
I know Snapzu and Voat are getting a pretty big influx of users, but considering how humongous the reddit user base is (15M unique visitors a month) I don't think they're under threat yet. I think this exodus will be a slow, whittling one; reddit will still get plenty of visitors long after they stop being considered "cool."
People like to compare reddit's current situation with Digg V4, but that's forgetting that the Digg redesign basically made the site useless to its user base. Reddit is rendered useless by the flare-ups of drama (FPH spilling over to the front page or the blackout), but these are mostly isolated and reddit goes back to normal quickly.
So really, I think this will be a slow death, if it's a death at all. The site will continue to thrive, just not grow anymore. There will always be those of us who are compelled to move on, but the bulk of users are incredibly resilient to change. Just look at how the death of Facebook has been heralded for years...
Basically, a MySpace death instead of a Digg one.
I can only compare my observation of reddit over the last few days and the one that I made of Digg years back.
The Digg-to-reddit migration seemed to happen in a big burst, and leave Digg gasping for air. In contrast, a significant amount of reddit users this time seem to be very unwilling to migrate this time since the big deal was about internal corporate politics and not opening up the feed willy-nilly to advertisers and posters primarily interested in gaming the voting system, as was the case with Digg.
As for the reddit-to-Snapzu migration itself, I'm guessing that a large amount of reddit users who flocked over belong to two categories:
1. People who enjoyed the default subreddits and were previously willing to put up with the vocal minority of disgruntled users before all the ugly attacks on Pao and uncomfortably outward support for hateful subreddits like /r/fatpeoplehate, and
2. People like myself who had unsubscribed from the default subreddits long ago and are still happy with more niche subreddits like /r/toronto or /r/emacs but are joining Snapzu all the same in search of that same feeling we used to get from browsing the default subreddits 'back in the day'.