[mobilethrow]

So many comments here and not a single mention of "Slashdot Beta". It was a huge disaster, every single article had complaints about it while it was in effect.

They changed owners shortly after and it's still a running joke years later.

[SomeStupidPoint]

I was going to quip that reddit has gone full-Digg.

[endymi0n]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke

'nuff said.

Every brand that has a large enough following will run into pitchforks for large redesigns - a lot of people are fans for something.

If you want to do this successfully, take a slice from Facebooks playbook. Their site looks nothing like 10 years ago, yet they somehow did all those radical UI changes gradually over years, always one step at a time, (mostly) listening to their user base inbetween.

[khedoros1]

> Their site looks nothing like 10 years ago, yet they somehow did all those radical UI changes gradually over years, always one step at a time, (mostly) listening to their user base in between.

I remember being really annoyed at one of the changes in about 2008. Looking at the timeline of Facebook[0], it was probably the rearrangement of the site into tabs (and then into something like the current layout 2 years later). I think that it's telling that I remember being annoyed at the time (and a bunch of other times, after other changes) than I remember what those changes were. Sometimes it's hard to remember exactly what it was like in the early days. So, I went looking and also found a Cnet slideshow illustrating the different looks of the site over the years [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Facebook

[1] https://www.cnet.com/pictures/facebook-then-and-now-pictures...

[baybal2]

>Every brand that has a large enough following will run into pitchforks for large redesigns - a lot of people are fans for something.

That is false, "running into a pitchfork" is the better, and least likely outcome.

Very often things develop like this: user logs in, can't find the usual button, and abandons the website - a la Mozilla forefox redesign fiasco that halved their userbase in a single month.

Another famous case is Akamai - at around 2013 they had a relatively insignifican't redesign, yet a single button was moved. They did not realize that they quietly bled users for over a year until they got serious and researched the matter. They failed to understand that a double digit portion of their users were non-tech staff like marketing boys who were taught to work in a manner like "move mouse over red rectangle, and push the button"