Nice. I think no matter how we want to be seen, we will always be first compared to Reddit, which is fair. Perhaps I am kidding myself, but I see our paths as significantly different; however, I am sure it is not immediately obvious to newcomers. I don't simply want to inherit a space. I'd like to open up some new territory. Reddit is an amazing success, and due to the diversity of what goes on there, I expect that they will continue on for a long time to come. IMHO the cycle of The Eternal September might be a bit more complicated than commonly understood. Obviously we've tried to design ourselves to scale well, but IMO there are key factors involved that cannot be designed. The Reddit team is smart. They have a level of traffic that no other site like them has seen, and they have sustained it. I don't think what is bad for Reddit is good for Hubski. What is best for Hubski has almost everything to do with Hubski.
My hope is that we don't have a large influx of users that see this site compared to Reddit and then treat it exactly like Reddit or complaining that they don't like it or understand it. That would be completely missing the point of Hubski.Perhaps I am kidding myself, but I see our paths as significantly different; however, I am sure it is not immediately obvious to newcomers.
Reddit's choice to use sub-communities, rather than tags is what differentiates it from all the other link aggregators out there. Tags are public property but communities are controlled by the mods and the members. Each community has the power to make and enforce its own rules (like no memes). When one community starts being diluted by an influx of users, the core users migrate to another community. With tags, it's not easy to convert someone using #physics into using #real-physics instead. Reddit will always have these unique communities these will be what keep people on Reddit Hubski is closer to Tumblr (or Twitter or the stream component of Google+). It's mainly about following people or browsing hashtags. Hashtags are good to follow at the start - but eventually they'll get diluted. What is critical in this model is giving users a way to find people to follow. Twitter has this covered because there are a ton of celebrities on it and most people will have a few friends on it too. That said, Twitter offers friend lists that allow you to follow a bunch of people at once. Tumblr is also heavily based on following your friends, but they have a spotlight (http://www.tumblr.com/spotlight/travel) to highlight which users in a category may be worth following
I see Hubski as rather analogous to long-form journalism (something which obviously is pretty popular here). It's not often covered by major media outlets (at least, not the types most people tend to read, I think) and it's rarely spread in social media - the way the Reddit community tends to work, as I think we've all seen, is that people will often upvote a submitted title and not read an article, especially if it's particularly long. But, like Hubski, there are still places that longform journalism is really popular, and, interestingly, newer platforms are opening up - in New Zealand, we have the Pantograph Punch, a place for longer articles written by freelancers for the most part, and the writing quality is really good. Medium is getting more and more popular, and while it's not really longform journalism, it's in a similar vein, I think - not quite a blog post, but a similar sort of thing (mostly nonfiction work with personal anecdotes/experiences).
I agree. I think there's a place for more thoughtful content and engagement on the web. People won't always use Hubski for it, by my goal is that I can always use Hubski for it. There is such a prevalence of shallow content on the web, one might think that it is all the web is good for. Part of it is fulfilling a need, but part of it is self-inflicted as publishers seek revenue with a high-thorough-put approach. When I discuss a magazine with a friend, I almost never include the magazine's circulation numbers. I am always talking about the content. Of course, the publishers have those conversations, but on the web, the readers do too. IMO the web rushed as a herd towards one model at the expense of a number of others.