coit

Looks like Digg users are overwhelming your server.

ian

Yup, working on it….

ian

Ok, its back up.

digg_user

Not working for me… :-(

another_digg_user

neither for me…

ian

Yep, went down again, back up now.

Digger No. 3

back down again

ian

Nope, we are still up, a bit slow, but definitely up.

another_digg_user

so, is it normal? I mean is it how thoof works on a daily basis?

Scott Miller

No, this is due to the Digg traffic. We’re constantly tweaking and monitoring to stay ahead of it, but on normal days we have impeccable uptime. And better user targetting as well.

another_digg_user

ok. well then, if (hypothetically) you had, say, half of digg users. do you think you’d be able to handle that? I mean on a daily basis.

A Wicket Diary » 2007 » October » 02

[…] wondering if this was a load test they were expecting. It would be interesting to read a blog entry on the effects of being […]

Dan

At least Digg has an RSS feed.

ian

Dan, RSS feeds assume that the most recent stuff is presented at the top, which isn’t the case with Thoof. Rather, we try to put the most interesting stuff at the top. Sometimes this will be recent stuff, but not always.

Because of this, RSS feeds aren’t as easy for us to implement, but we will do it in due course.

Ivan

Why would it matter if the ‘most interesting’ items were at the top on the RSS feed? There’s no real reason the RSS feed has to mirror the front page… Instead, users can simply view the newest items in the RSS feed and whether they ‘favor’ those stories or not will determine what is on the front page when they visit.

Bill

I came over on the digg wave. I’m really looking for a new place to get my news as digg is no longer the site it was two years ago. I figure a smaller community will have less fanboyism, trolls, etc. However your front page is overwhelmed with celebrity ‘news’ which holds no interest for me what so ever.

The site’s concept is interesting, but it looks like you need a different batch of users before it becomes geek chic. Good luck.

Scott Miller

another_digg_user: Easily. Once we figured out where our choke points were yesterday, we were handling the digging with about 50% capacity to spare. And thats with only two machines. We’re obviously prepared to add more as needed as well.

another_digg_user

Comeon Scott, I was just kidding about the capacity.
Nevertheless, I would agree with Bill about your front page with celebrity news as a “default” behaviour.
Now, I understand you guys have developed some algorithms to “adjust” to what a particular user likes, but that user has to teach the machine first before it gets any better for s/he.

Instead, you could take the most interesting areas from the most popular news websites, blogs, social networks (e.g. via rss) and display your news from the same categories (if any) at your front page as a “default” behaviour.
Anyway, this is just an idea.

another_digg_user

oh btw, I liked the thing you pull out that it “loads more news” when you scroll down to the end of the page. nice.

DuB

um, your video’s sound like your an information site.
Digg is a news site submitted by average users.

A more accurate video would be Thoof and Google… but your not that dumb are you? ;)

Steve

Looks like a great site, but quick tests show that it doesn’t even load in Konqueror.

As a result, you are instantly loosing a huge sector of the tech community that would otherwise champion your site, and its algo’s over Digg and similar Social News sites.

If you need debugging in Konqueror Assistance, just let me know, I’d be glad to help.

ian

Hi Steve, we do test in Safari which I believe uses the same rendering engine as Konqueror. Nonetheless, we will investigate.

Edie

Congratulation! I love that you spoof about Digg made it popular on Digg. Clearly it’s sending you a shit-load of traffic too. So I know that’s why the site is buggy now. Just going through the same growing pains that Revver did. But now Revver is awesome! So I know thoof will be too. Also you picked the perfect guys to may the commercial. I love there stuff!

5 Marketing Tools Every Startup Should Use : Instigator Blog

[…] with their lip dub video. Humor works best, as we see with the Freshbooks video job ad. The guys at Thoof did a great job with an Apple spoof ad, comparing themselves to […]

5 Marketing Tools Every Startup Should Use « SLO Entrepreneur - In Video

[…] with their lip dub video. Humor works best, as we see with the Freshbooks video job ad. The guys at Thoof did a great job with an Apple spoof ad, comparing themselves to […]

Birmingham Small Business.com » Marketing & Sales Starting a Business » 5+ Marketing Tools For Startup Small Businesses

[…] with their lip dub video. Humor works best, as we see with the Freshbooks video job ad. The guys at Thoof did a great job with an Apple spoof ad, comparing themselves to […]