At least, that's how it appeared to me, a Digg user at the time who also left for Reddit. I've wondered if Reddit would have ever been so popular if not for Digg's mishap.
Am I totally off base? Anyway, I'm a fan of Reddit and it looks like a good book.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a company that triumphed over a rival without some help from said rival's poor decision-making.
The useful bit of advice I took from the whole thing was how important it was to be aware of competitors, but not actually give a damn about what they were doing.
Thanks for redditing :) all is forgiven about that earlier digging business.
Oh! And a question for you - what kept you from redditing those years before? Were you even aware of it?
edit: One more thing, we also owe a ton to digg for educating the market on 'social news' as a concept. Sadly, they also taught them awful practices, like that it was OK to game the system, so that we're now cleaning up the mess and explaining to publishers that it's not OK to try and game reddit: http://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-ban-the-atlantic-phsyorg...
I was aware of Reddit, and checked it out briefly. Amusingly, the interface/design is what turned me off. It's amusing to me because nowadays I highly prefer it over Digg's design, and even back then I generally preferred minimal interfaces. So I don't know why I didn't like Reddit from day one. I guess I was just used to Digg.