First there was Slashdot, but CmdrTaco insisted on picking the stories for us. He called it an "omelet".
Kuro5hin came along to fix this, but discouraged posts that were just links to pages elsewhere on the web. IIRC, this was called "link farming". How many users had the talent and time to create original content, and then survive the ridiculous Kuro5shin editing process? Not many.
Digg then encouraged links, but shot itself in the foot with a stupid redesign.
Nowadays, reddit is king because it avoided the obvious mistakes of its predecessors.
Kuro5hin came along to fix this, but discouraged posts that were just links to pages elsewhere on the web. IIRC, this was called "link farming". How many users had the talent and time to create original content, and then survive the ridiculous Kuro5shin editing process? Not many.
Digg then encouraged links, but shot itself in the foot with a stupid redesign.
Nowadays, reddit is king because it avoided the obvious mistakes of its predecessors.