Actually, it's on a smaller scale but I was thinking a "Digg - Reddit" analogy was more appropriate.

Reddit was much smaller than Digg for years: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2005-06-01%202... . Reddit was definitely "the little engine that could" for about 6 years, but it was really in 2010 when Digg imploded with the self-inflicted wounds of Digg v4 when Reddit really took off.

In other words, MySpace losing to Facebook seemed largely because Facebook just had a better product (cleaner, focused on real identities), while Digg, like Uber, largely was the victim of self-inflicted wounds.

That's an interesting way to put it. Facebook seemed destined to overtake MySpace as it provided useful data connections (college courses/networks) and a uniform design that MySpace did not have. Lyft has pretty much been trying to be a drop-in replacement for Uber (to be fair, Uber nicked a few ideas from Lyft), with no projects like automation or even Uber's attempts at being a delivery service. If Lyft ends up winning, it's going to be a much more unexpected win than Facebook over MySpace.

Edit: the innovation of the News Feed can't be overstated. IIRC, MySpace had nothing like it and it's hard to remember Facebook before it.

MySpace in that story might have not had $14.8b raised in capital.

So which one, Lyft or Uber, is the one being made for the purpose of being sold to a giant company ?