Slashdot Struggles to Remain Relevant in The Social Web
Earlier today we published an analysis of the top traffic drivers in social media, based on data from Web analytics company Woopra. The biggest traffic driver was StumbleUpon (51%), followed by Digg (30%), Hacker News (12%) and Reddit (5%). Surprisingly, tech news community Slashdot was not in the list of top referrers. In fact, according to Woopra CEO John Pozadzides, Slashdot "drives close to 0% of traffic to the sites Woopra measures." (emphasis ours)
Why is Slashdot almost irrelevant to the social media community? It used to be the biggest driver of traffic to tech web sites, but now it hardly delivers any traffic at all to them. We explore some of the reasons, including input from our own community.
Slashdot Has Lost Users to Competitors
Much of the reason why Slashdot isn't impacting the social Web community is its focus on heavy duty tech. Slashdot's byline is "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." That captures not just who its core audience is (nerds), but its attitude to what is newsworthy (only stuff that "matters" to technical people). Slashdot founder Rob Malda wrote on his web site that typical topics include "Linux, Open Source Software, Legos, Games, Star Wars, Science [and] Technology."
Slashdot is targeted to engineers and programmers - and makes no apologies for it. However this relatively narrow focus means that Slashdot has not grown to have broader appeal, like StumbleUpon and Digg. However, why then is Hacker News - which is also targeted to programmers - doing so well in Woopra's statistics?
The obvious answer is that Slashdot has lost users to Hacker News and other tech news communities. The following monthly traffic chart from Quantcast suggests that users have migrated from Slashdot to other sites. The trend over the past few years has mostly been a downward pattern (although note that these are estimated figures only).
Do You Still Read Slashdot?
We asked our community via Twitter: do you still read Slashdot?
The following responses were from ex-Slashdot users who have either reduced the time they spend there or drifted away from the site entirely:
@Transition: "On occasion. I've been on /. since 1998, but don't follow it as much anymore. Never got into the others, but I should."
@peterc: "Still visit /. once a week or so but no longer contribute (used to be a heavy user). Use HN & Reddit mainly now, never Digg."
@morganpyne: "I was a longtime Slashdot reader (5-digit ID, lurker way before signing up), but it became irrelevant a few years ago. So... no."
@ceesaxp: "/. always was a much different place from digg or reddit. But you're right I'm reading it much less, hardly once in a month these days."
@jezlyn: "I haven't read /. in many years. Got tired of the snotty attitude and comment wars."
Others Still Loyal, But Frustrated By Slow Social Media Take-up
Another reason for Slashdot's decline in the social Web has been its slow uptake of social media technologies. It only recently introduced Facebook and Twitter integration, many months after similar news communities had added them. In addition, Slashdot has historically favored stories submitted from traditional media, over 'new media' such as blogs. Both of these things have made Slashdot seem behind the times and a bit too closed minded.
However, Slashdot obviously still has a core and dedicated audience. For example Adam Monago, a VP at a California IT company, said via Twitter that he still reads Slashdot. "It continues to have a community feel that the other sites you mention do not have," he commented. By that he meant that the other sites (like Digg, Hacker News and Reddit) "do not have [an] identifiable set of traits or ideals that bind their users in the same way as Slashdot." Certainly, Slashdot's audience shares a common set of values around open source and scientific discovery.
Some people also complained that Slashdot was too slow to feature breaking news. "I catch a Tweet from @slashdot now and then," remarked freelance web developer @pluc, "[but] it didn't ride the realtime wave like others." Likewise, library student @battmutler commented that Slashdot "seems to always be 12-36 hours behind the curve." Although to be fair, a story can sometimes take 12 or more hours to hit the Digg frontpage too.
Slashdot continues to have a passionate, intelligent community. However the impact that this community has on the social Web is minimal, according to Woopra's statistics. Slashdot is no longer the powerhouse it once was.
Let us know in the comments if you still use Slashdot; and if so, whether you are happy with the experience there or would like to see it improve.
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I still visit Slashdot a couple of times a week, being a long-time user (low 5-digit ID), but it's become less and less over the years.
Its posts are still right up my alley, but I feel they've missed the boat on the social web a bit. More importantly, where they used to be lightning-fast with delivering the latest news, these days I've usually heard the story someplace else before it hits Slashdot.
"I haven't read /. in many years. Got tired of the snotty attitude and comment wars." pretty much sums it up.
"It continues to have a community feel that the other sites you mention do not have," is true, too, but regarding a community with a spirit one does not want to be a part of.
Ha - when I said "behind the curve," I guess the curve I was referring to wasn't the actual breaking of the news, but its emergence on social media - say, the Digg frontpage. And that's precisely the problem - Slashdot's still relying on the old submit-and-moderate model, which was fantastic six years ago, but it can't compete now. News breaks instantly on Twitter and other non-moderated social media.
I'd love to see the Slashdot community catch up to things, but I honestly don't see it happening. Digg's next version, already in alpha, really goes after the cross-platform model, and that's where the future is - being able to watch real-time, aggregate/synthesize, and build community discussion - but first, watch real-time.
There's always a difference between Breaking News and an Op-Ed Piece.
I go to the tech sites (TC, VB, etc ) for What but /. for Why. Most of the sites churn the piece of 'news'.
Also could I know which sites were measured ? If its sites like TechCrunch, I am not surprised!
Agreeing with some of the other guys. Stuff on Slashdot is never as up to date as the stuff I get from other sites. A coworker of mine still checks Slashdot regularly. He comes in and starts telling me about the latest news he read on Slashdot, and it's stuff I read about a few days ago on Twitter, Digg, Gizmodo, etc. Slashdot would have to do a complete overhaul to get me back. A lot of things would have to change
The transition between the given chart and the writing of your blog style makes the blog a little more perfect than it should look like.
PLAVEB, I always aim to be "a little more perfect than it should look like." So, thanks...I think.
You'll never be able to truly measure these people because they don't like what you do or read what you read or even like your website. They find your style of privacy invasive social media distasteful and they don't run spyware.
So whatever you're drawing here is on the most shakey of ground.
Well, I think Slashdot obviously still has a core and dedicated audience.
Once in a while, well.. maybe it's time to have some change?
i still have slashdot in my rss reader, but i don't really pay much attention to it.
for me, there's just one reason why i don't pay much attention to it. the news uptake is slow. whatever i'm reading on slashdot, i've probably already read elsewhere a day or two before. there's rarely anything new or interesting.
doesn't have anything to do with facebook or twitter integration, or anything like that. for proof, take a look at hacker news. that place is barebones as hell, but is only getting more and more popular.
I guess the curve I was referring to wasn't the actual breaking of the news, but its emergence on social media - say, the Digg frontpage. And that's precisely the problem - Slashdot's still relying on the old submit-and-moderate model, which was fantastic six years ago, but it can't compete now. News breaks instantly on Twitter and other non-moderated social media.
I stopped reading it many years ago because every time I looked at a new post, I had read about the same thing somewhere else one or more days earlier. I miss the funny, acerbic comments, but that's about it.
oh, i still like it. sure, i run into stories that are no longer "news" to me, but i run into plenty of interesting stuff i didn't see anywhere else. It's often news for this nerd. Stuff that often matters.
Besides, years of dealing with slashdotted sites were my training for constant twitter failure. "overcapacity" is still "slashdotted" to me.
Jake
Let me offer a blogger's point of view. I have nothing new to add on the reader side. I've been Slashdotted twice, and been near the top of Hacker News 5-6 times. My stuff has also showed up periodically on metafilter, reddit, and I've received periodic StumbleUpon spikes. Here's the data for the last 3 years, from my blog ribbonfarm
(the actual associated traffic spikes were between 2x-3x due to Twitter echo and reblogging effects)
Hacker News: 20,373 visits
Slashdot: 16,479 visits
StumbleUpon: 8,178 visits
Reddit: 6,234 visits
Kottke.org: 5,661 visits
Metafilter: 4,462 visits
NYTimes (I was featured in their blogs a couple of times): 1,687 visits
Delicious: 1,491 visits
But let me focus on Slashdot versus Hacker News, since that is something of an apples to apples comparison, as you say.
The difference I see is this: when content IS slashdotted, it is still the biggest sort of spike you can get (I got server-crash levels both times). It's all or nothing with /. If you get a mention at all, you get an earthquake.
Hacker News OTOH seems capable of sending spikes of varied sizes. The largest I've experienced after getting on the front page is probably 6000-7000 (about 40% smaller than the smallest feasible /. spike I think). I've also gotten spikes of much smaller size. In fact all sizes from barely noticeable to nearly-slashdot-level.
This, I think, reveals a key difference. On Hacker News (and other social sites), a lot MORE people (with varied 'point' reputations) can put you on the radar, creating a much larger-variance relationship. Slashdot has more of an older editorial model with a much smaller group. I am willing to bet that if I drilled down, HN spikes would follow a power-law distribution, while Slasdhot would be a Dirac delta type distribution.
Why does this statistical difference in traffic patterns matter? Simple: social media is more about sustained long-term performance on the long-tail, than about one-off major hits. Once a few people on HN start to like your work enough, you get a lot more chances to get on there as a writer, at varying magnitudes of effect. On slashdot, it is still a completely unpredictable sudden magnitude 9 earthquake. As a writer, you have almost no way of working at becoming more slashdot-worthy (this is simply a wisdom of crowds vs. expert effect; the /. editors are great of course, thanks guys, but as a smaller set, the behavior shows less statistically significant patterns).
This is important because you can start to cultivate HN as a "channel" in more predictable ways and build a good relationship with the community via your champions on it, and by writing about stuff that interests the community. It is still not easy, as a featured author, to dive in and participate in the discussion (since there is a rotating cast of who puts you on there/talks about you with each event), but it is MUCH easier than Slashdot.
But overall, which has been more important to growing my site? I don't know. Traffic-wise, obviously HN. But things besides traffic, like cachet, and street-cred in the geek community factor in. Overall, all I can say (besides a big thank you to people who've boosted my work anywhere) is that "social" amplifier sites are basically easier for content producers to cultivate in meaningful ways than editorial ones.
Venkat
Slashdot is the first thing I read in the morning, every morning. I don't really care about whether it's got a social networking angle or not. I go there because it covers the things I care about and doesn't make you click 3 times to get to it. Most of the time, I can get to the article from the main page (Digg takes about 3).
If you want faster info, you can go into Firehose mode where you get stories almost in real time. I don't bother waiting for the tweet and only check the tweets if I happen to be in twitter and see a story.
One thing you might want to factor in though is that the majority of Slashdot users tend to kill/disable tracking cookies, so third party tracking numbers may or may not be accurate.
@ Darren Void (post 8)
"You'll never be able to truly measure these people because they don't like what you do or read what you read or even like your website. They find your style of privacy invasive social media distasteful and they don't run spyware.
So whatever you're drawing here is on the most shakey of ground."
Really? I suppose the "rough estimate" in the Quantcast graph in the article is just some analyst throwing darts at a chart then right?
If you have the means, try comparing hard numbers from a large site (or two) against what Quantcast, Compete, et al come up with and you'll be surprised with what you find. They may not be right on the nose, but as far as trending goes, I'd trust the data produced by these companies any day.
FWIW, I do web metrics for a Fortune 200 company, so I've got a little experience in this field.
I started reading digg several years ago, and immediately noticed that the users and their comments formed a much friendlier community. In 2007 there was a funny post that in a very humorous summarized the problem with slashdot, and the amount of diggs it received confirmed I was not alone in my sentiment:
http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Best_Slashdot_comment_ever
Do you really think Slashdot should be classified as a regular social media website? Slashdot is somehow different. It is like to say that BoingBoing is a social media website.
Is Geeknet (LNUX)s SourceForge following in Slashdot's* foot(mis)steps?
SourceForge.net:GitHub slashdot:digg | reddit | del.icio.us | StumbleUpon | Hacker News?
GitHub has 13,863 followers on Twitter, 329,000 coders, 1,012,000 repositories. Launched February 2008.
SourceForge has 11,363 followers on Twitter, 2.7M registered users, >230,000 projects. Launched November 1999.
*Note: The Co-founder of slashdot, Jeffrey Bates, is now Vice President, Product, Geeknet. Jeff Bates has served as Geeknet’s Vice President, Platform since February 2008. He heads Geeknet’s core engineering and product teams for Slashdot, freshmeat, and Sourceforge. In this role, Jeff oversees the websites’ application development, interface and the overall content strategy for the sites. Source: Geek.net
Like a previous poster, /. is my first stop, Ars is next.
And, yes I have a problem with some of these "content merchants", see my only Journal entry:
http://slashdot.org/journal/216371/On-Slashdot-Becoming-Digg
Comments as a whole, almost anywhere, have become almost useless, like a bad IM thread.
As far as relevancy, it's quite relevant to those wishing to be informed.
~hylas
I read slashdot daily and have for probably 12-13 years. However, I've become much less interested since the comments have trended away from the intelligent to the leftist. If I want to see that, I can go look at the titles on Digg. However, the good thing about Slashdot is that it has only 12 new, interesting articles linked to, instead of 1000 irritating blogs and maybe 3 amuzing videos, like Digg.
I have been a loyal reader (via RSS) of Slashdot for at least 10 years. I am a nerd (my wife said so) and I really don't care if I am not the first to know that the iPad 3.2 is coming. I like to read "stuff that matters" so if that makes me a dinosaur, so be It.
My own blog powerpymes is pure tech stuff and only sports 4,000 daily readers. A friend of mine writes about jokes, Lady Gaga and scantily-clad women (I love'em) on his blog and has four times the readers that I have. I am OK with that too.
So all in all I love Slashdot and I'll keep reading It as long as there's what to read there.
I've been reading Slashdot for a very long time (just into the 6 digit ids) and it's still in the group of half a dozen websites than open up on my default browser. It may not be the fastest to get news, but it's worthwhile having because as a programmer and science nerd the stories it does get are very well targeted to those I'm interested in. In other words it's a nigh on perfect news filter for me.
However, I rarely contribute anymore. The succession of changes to the interface over the past few years have all pretty much seen a worsening of usability - it was at it's best around 2002/3 and it's just gotten worse since with the result it now feels both dated and clunky. Furthermore the moderation system broke for me - I have excellent karma but for some reason unbeknown it stopped giving me moderator points a few years back and questions as to why went unanswered - with the result I stopped treating it much like a community thing and moved to viewing it as a filtered newsfeed.
Posted by: cruachan.myopenid.com
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August 1, 2010 3:04 AM
Slashdot is not 'social media'. It is a source for retroactive discussion. Its comment moderation system is still by far the best on t'internet.
I never read comments on Digg or Reddit as you have to really dig to get past the garbage. /. has real people, proper experts, commenting on things they really know about. It's far and away the most informative.
So it doesn't recycle one Gizmodo or XKCD post per day. No worries. It still maintains variety and high-level discussion.
Woopra? Who? How is a 100k sample of a particular bit of interweb in any way representative? Can you say 'selection bias'. Nuff said.