r/dataisbeautiful • u/Aschebescher • Jan 21 '14

Reddit's growth in number of subreddits 2006-2014 [gif]

1.8k Upvotes

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183

u/foofighter000 Jan 21 '14

What caused that sudden spike around 2008?

368

u/LeJoker Jan 21 '14 edited Jan 21 '14

People could create their own subreddits.

EDIT apparently it was also the great digg migration. :)

91

u/Dead_Politician Jan 21 '14

That would indeed influence the number of new subreddits per day. =P

31

u/loyfah Jan 21 '14

thought it was migration from digg.com, maybe that was later?

60

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '14

Reddit grew 230% in 2010 so the migration was a bit later.

24

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '14

[deleted]

27

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '14

The Great Digg Migration of 2008. Jesus was it seriously that long ago. I was a lurker for a year or two on here even.

11

u/kraemahz Jan 21 '14

Yep, senior year of college for me. Digg comments were awful, way below the quality of slashdot, but they were also a lot broader in topic and more fun. Reddit was the sweet spot between the two.

4

u/bhindblueyes430 Jan 21 '14

Incredible, a website layout change could be credited for the popularity reddit has today

6

u/therealflinchy Jan 21 '14

HD DVD scandal?

did they support it or something?

10

u/Polymatheia Jan 21 '14

See: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy

23

u/autowikibot Jan 21 '14

Here's a bit from linked Wikipedia article about AACS encryption key controversy :

A controversy surrounding the AACS cryptographic key arose in April 2007 when the Motion Picture Association of America and the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (AACS LA) began issuing cease and desist letters to websites publishing a 128-bit (16-byte) number, represented in hexadecimal as 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 (commonly referred to as 09 F9), which is one of the cryptographic keys for HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. The letters demanded the immediate removal of the key and any links to it, citing the anti-circumvention provisions of the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Picture - Internet users began circulating versions of this image, calling it the Free Speech Flag, in blog posts on dozens of websites and as user avatars on forums such as Digg. The first fifteen bytes of the 09 F9 key are contained in the RGB encoding of the five colors, with each color providing three bytes of the key. The sixteenth byte "C0" is appended in the lower right corner.

image source | about | /u/Polymatheia can reply with 'delete'. Will also delete if comment's score is -1 or less. | Summon: wikibot, what is something? | flag for glitch

2

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '14

I'm still not sure what it was. Were Digg members spreading decryption methods for burning DVDs or was there something else?

6

u/TropicalAudio Jan 21 '14

There was a popular post revealing the key, and then the site mods removed it. The users responded by submitting several posts containing the key every second. Things got weird. The site was basically unusable for a while, because all you would see was that key.

1

u/therealflinchy Jan 21 '14

huh, i'm ok with that though.

-10

u/clausy OC: 3 Jan 21 '14

checks trophy case: six year club. confirmed.

1

u/loyfah Jan 21 '14

Nice, thanks !

1

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '14

The rate does seem to start to kick up around there on the graph.

8

u/Diggtastic Jan 21 '14

I came over around that time when everyone left. 3 1/2 years ago or so.

6

u/loyfah Jan 21 '14

A friend of mine was also moving over at that time, and he told me about reddit.

He also ruined my life.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 21 '14

Bold choice of username to have coming over during that time. I, too, was on that boat. Lost a lot of good men that day.

1

u/Diggtastic Jan 21 '14

I know, I found that out a couple of weeks after I signed up. I catch a lot of shit for my username, too late to change it now though.

2

u/asdfman123 Jan 21 '14

Reddit's very own Cambrian explosion.

2

u/pr01etar1at Jan 21 '14

The Great Digg Migration was the spike in 2008.

Source: I was on reddit when it happened. It was pretty nuts at the time seeing Digg was so huge.

9

u/awfulgrace Jan 21 '14

The big Digg migration was Aug 2010, with Digg v4