I will say—I don’t want to just focus on the negative—that there are also some benefits to being small. Worth taking those into account. I was around during very early Reddit, and there’s stuff that I missed on later Reddit, as the scale became really large. Enjoy it while you have it, since you may not have it forever.
Little spam and similar stuff. Facebook has, like…3 billion MAU. We have 50k MAU. Spammers have an overwhelming incentive to focus on places like Facebook. I remember early Reddit also being pretty clean of that. Was nice while it lasted.
People read what you write, if you want to write things. We don’t have a lot of comments and such, so what people do write tend to get read. Sometimes by damn near everyone on the Threadiverse, not even people explicitly following the community. I remember watching /r/Europe change from a point where there was little traffic to the point that if a comment didn’t happen early and catch traction, it’d probably get buried and never have anyone read it. That’s kind of discouraging, if you want to put effort into writing a solid comment.
You can recognize people. I remember talking with Reddit’s founders and knowing Reddit usernames. Over time, that kind of went away, and I think that it gave something of a “you’re never as alone as in a big city” vibe. Today, on smaller subreddits, you could certainly recognize people, but on Reddit as a whole, it’s harder. I can recognize a number of users here. By the same token, it’s much easier to have a noticeable impact, be it on policy, client/server software, or whatnot.
I will say—I don’t want to just focus on the negative—that there are also some benefits to being small. Worth taking those into account. I was around during very early Reddit, and there’s stuff that I missed on later Reddit, as the scale became really large. Enjoy it while you have it, since you may not have it forever.
Little spam and similar stuff. Facebook has, like…3 billion MAU. We have 50k MAU. Spammers have an overwhelming incentive to focus on places like Facebook. I remember early Reddit also being pretty clean of that. Was nice while it lasted.
People read what you write, if you want to write things. We don’t have a lot of comments and such, so what people do write tend to get read. Sometimes by damn near everyone on the Threadiverse, not even people explicitly following the community. I remember watching /r/Europe change from a point where there was little traffic to the point that if a comment didn’t happen early and catch traction, it’d probably get buried and never have anyone read it. That’s kind of discouraging, if you want to put effort into writing a solid comment.
You can recognize people. I remember talking with Reddit’s founders and knowing Reddit usernames. Over time, that kind of went away, and I think that it gave something of a “you’re never as alone as in a big city” vibe. Today, on smaller subreddits, you could certainly recognize people, but on Reddit as a whole, it’s harder. I can recognize a number of users here. By the same token, it’s much easier to have a noticeable impact, be it on policy, client/server software, or whatnot.
The veryyy early Reddit. Rest in peace to those nsfl subs. Makemycoffin and makemycupcakes. Gosh I miss those.