Slashdot -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy. I used to spend lot of time on TheEnvironmentSite.org some time before Slashdot, but I cant recall whether anything else came in between those two.
I think StumbleUpon was between Slashdot and Digg. But my timeline may be off.
Me too, but I’d put Usenet in there before Slashdot.
Not AOL Keywords between those two?
That was me, but I also had Facebook between Digg and Reddit.
I never found slashdot, and I wish I had. I’m a LUE to Gen[M]ay to YTMND to /b/ to Digg to Reddit to here person-thing.
I am this old:
BBS’s -> College’s Telnet -> .edu sites over lynx -> Usenet -> IRC -> commercial websites -> Slashdot -> Fark -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy
BBS From the back of Computer Shopper magazine, we would get a list of phone #'s to call which then connected us to various Wildcat BBS’s that were filled with interesting & squirrelly information and people. Usually 1 at a time could connect, but the fancy ones had multiple phone-lines.
College/Telnet/Usenet Went to college and got access to a telnet account, which let me run Lynx and open a Usenet reader. From there we bounced all around text-based sites (using the book above) because there were no search engines. You had a big list of all the places you liked to visit, and you visited those. Sometimes, someone told you about another spot, or you played whack-a-mole with various .edu domains. A lot of kids started hosting sites on their dorm-room machines. Usenet opened up a whole world of discussion about topics far outside the scope of my tiny little town.
Next up was a PPoE connection using Trumpet Winsock and suddenly I could load NCSA Mosaic and mIRC and that opened up a graphical web with the easy ability to download software and more communication. Then Businesses all decided they needed to try “internet” for themselves, and you started seeing the rise of commercial endeavors. So early PCMag and other adopters showed up.
Slashdot came along and was primarily a Linux site, with some tech news sprinkled in. I still remember following the threads there for Columbine (when school shootings were still a novelty) and then on 9/11 when just about every site ground to a halt, there was lots of speculation and word-of-mouth, but at least information was still moving. It then expanded its audience with tags so that all sorts of news topics could open up and you could follow specific ones.
Ran with an RSS feed for a while around this point and subbed to all the different sites I liked, so I could get my fix in one place.
Fark came along and was an irreverent alternative to Slashdot. Somewhere between twitter performance art with everyone trying to make the catchiest title for their headline, but also just a lot of goofing off in the comments. Totalfark was $5 a month and worth the money to get at the un-curated content.
Then, just as Tech TV was going south and becoming some sort of wrestling-based channel, Kevin Rose mentions at the end of The Screen Savers about “This new website, Digg!” which in hindsight he was shamelessly plugging. That site offered the upvote/downvote concept allowing the community to create a constant stream of content. Somewhere along those lines Slashdot lost its luster, presumably because all of its content was curated by a handful of people who were in the process of selling out to other investors.
Reddit came along, and further customized the upvote/downvote/commenting experience. It also allowed you to create your own communities/subreddits and follow those. Because its audience was basically “anyone” it allowed for tons of creative content. Right as it started to take off, Digg made a huge faux pas on how they moderated content, which annoyed all the content creators and they moved to reddit as well.
I loved what Reddit could have been without the enshitification taking over. If you look at that list, Slashdot, Digg, Reddit all suffered from busily trying to monetize their users, and all of them died (or are dying) a slow, sad death. Fark is still owned by Drew Curtis, and as far as I can tell, still has a similar feel & userbase.
Lemmy honestly feels like finding Usenet, IRC & Lynx again. There’s a learning curve you have to get over, and then you have to be willing to hunt for your information. But the quality of the content is higher than reddit, and each one of those other services went through the same decline as we jumped ship to the new one.
In a world where every new “service” just annoys me now, because I know it’s going to be frustrating to use, and will likely just steal my data, turn into a content/ad mill and eventually turn to shit Lemmy feels like a big middle finger to those sites. And I’m here for it.
I was in a computer class during 9/11. Not fully understanding the magnitude of the events, we basically checked kazaa over and over to see how long it took for a clip from CNN to get uploaded. It was about 5 minutes. We also played tribes (2?) a lot in that class. It’s also where I saw my first beheading on the Internet 😢
Oh man this are the types of comments I miss from the other site. Thank you Mr mwknight
Slashdot -> Digg -> Reddit -> Lemmy. Back then, web servers didn’t have a lot of resources. So if a Digg post was popular, it could slow the site to a crawl. Then we all knew the site was being “Digged”.
I still have my slashdot account but don’t use it much other than niche interest stuff. But otherwise same path for me.
Put it this way, I still remember the drama around MrBabyMan and other power users!
OMG we all hated him so much. Every single post on the front page was from him. Then v4 came along and that was it, everyone left.
I remember visiting Reddit and StumbledUpon and thinking to myself how ugly these sites were compared to my beloved Digg
Yes, and also watched the Diggnation netcast.
The glory days!
Me! I was a huge fan of Kevin Rose due to TechTV and jumped on board as soon as he released it.
I’m in a similar boat. I used slashdot occasionally (still do), but once I heard Kevin Rose was involved with digg, I started using the site heavily. I only stopped when digg v4 dropped.
I’ll have to see what he’s up to these days.
There will never be someone as cool as Kate awkwardly dancing and saying “it’s menus a-poppin today on windows tips”
Leo Laporte was the bomb.
I listen the “Classical Sprouts” podcast with my kids, hosted by Kate Botello. I think they get tired of my saying “I knew of her when she was a dorky co-host of a tech support tv show!”
Oh shoot. I gotta check this out.
I used Digg and it was great while it lasted.
I am not sure how many years I used Digg. In the rear-view mirror, it feels like a temporary gig between Slashdot and Reddit.
I was a casual lurker of Digg. I would open it up and scroll through for a bit, never spending more than 20 minutes or so just looking for something interesting to read. I don’t think I even knew it “died.”
In 2013 I joined Reddit, and somehow began spending hours reading posts and comments, and then becoming a poster/commenter myself.
Me!
I loved Digg back in the day. I had a reddit account too, but preferred Digg by a lot. Then the enshittification of Digg via v4 came along and I hopped wholesale over to reddit and never looked back.
I was using Digg and Reddit both at the height of Digg. I had already mostly moved over to Reddit at the time of the migration but still was on Digg some. But I was among those that abandoned Digg then.
Raises hand
I was and used to watch the Diggnation podcast all the time. Loved Digg in its heyday, and it was sad when it went downhill. Reddit ended up being excellent though, and better than Digg ended up being. Sucks that it died too, but hopefully the Fediverse ends up finally being the chosen one.
Remember when podcasts were just audio? I guess I’m old.
Remember when there weren’t podcasts at all and you would have to get on a radio station to broadcast stuff?
Oh man, a few months ago my kid found an old boombox in the garage. It was awesome showing him “ok, here’s the knob and how you change stations” and explaining why he couldn’t just pick the song he wanted lol.
Not only Digg, but I also watched Tech TV and was on forums I can’t even remember the names of. I’m still using IRC.
TechTV is how I found slashdot, then digg to reddit and now here.
Comcast was to blame for the enshittification of TechTV.
I discovered Digg about a year before the Digg Exodus to Reddit, so I don’t know if I’d call it the “prime” but I was there just in time to watch it fall.
