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...
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.