this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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A little history on Reddit. From the politics subreddit with just 85,678 users in 2008 to 500 million active users today. Lemmy/Kbin will follow the same path. (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by Mereo@lemmy.ca to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
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This is going to be a short and sweet little history of Reddit. Reddit was founded in 2005.

Take a look at what Reddit looked like in 2006: https://web.archive.org/web/20061206235353/http://reddit.com/

Note that it didn't have subreddits back then because the user base was too small.

Look at Reddit in 2008 (December 31): https://web.archive.org/web/20081231080128/http://www.reddit.com/reddits/

Politics had just 72,314 subscribers. Technology had 85,678 subscribers, and the "Nicher" Food subreddit had only 4,438 subscribers.

Lemmy/Kbin follows the same path. Initially, generalist communities like Politics and Technology will have the most momentum and gain subscribers, just like Reddit did back then. As the user base grows, "niche" communities will be able to sustain themselves.

Let's not think about the Reddit of today, let's think about Reddit of old. Rome wasn't built in a day.

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[–] Riker_Maneuver@startrek.website 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Let’s not think about the Reddit of today, let’s think about Reddit of old. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

I can agree with this to a degree, but can't we just not think of reddit? I mean, back then, I don't recall redditors obsessing over other sites as much as I have seen on lemmy. Digg was the top dog, and I don't recall daily threads about reddit's numbers or how it wasn't matching up.

It was just it's own thing and not constantly comparing itself to it's alleged competition. I feel like that helped it grow into it's own thing, and we should give lemmy a chance to do the same instead of trying to turn it into reddit 2.0. That said, I might just be forgetting—there could've been constant 'sky-is-falling-because-we-aren't-Digg' posts—but I just don't recall them.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

I can agree with this to a degree, but can’t we just not think of reddit? I mean, back then, I don’t recall redditors obsessing over other sites as much as I have seen on lemmy.

Back then, centralized corporate social media wasn't seen as the clear and present danger to society that it is now, in our post-Cambridge-Analytica world.

It's not enough to see Lemmy and Mastodon and Friendica succeed. Spez and Musk and Zuckerberg need to fail.

[–] ShustOne@lemmy.one 12 points 1 year ago

Digg refugee from back then. The amount of people coming over wasn't as significant as we see today. But yes there were lots of posts about how to use Reddit, tools to make Reddit look prettier or more like Digg. Diggers found the subreddit subscription confusing. Literally all the posts we see today from Redditors coming to Lemmy.