Reddit is friendly to hackers, Digg is not

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

Interesting:

I received a friendly email from Steve Huffman telling me what they’d done and asking me what I was up to. When I explained he replied that ‘reddit likes hacks’, and that my little game had exposed a problem they’d been aware of with comment performance that they’d been meaning to fix.

I never did go back and create the full game, but I was left with a very different impression of Digg and reddit.

Ultimately, I think the cultural difference comes down to a difference between hackers and pseudo-hackers. Reddit’s beginnings were very much about being a hacker, and the open, liberal culture that goes with that continues to infect the site. Digg’s beginnings are bound up in the frat-boy, dark-tipper “Kevin Rose” persona. If you want to change Digg you probably have to get rid of “Rose”.