A lot of people look at Reddit now and think "What current?", but it wasn't like that in 2005. The notion that cyberspace was some place you went to waste time was just getting started - Reddit didn't invent it, but they caught the early phases of the wave, and it wasn't at all obvious to everyone. There were no such things as FaceBook apps in 2005. FaceBook itself was limited to college students (or it had just expanded to high school students). There was no Twitter, and no Zynga, and YouTube was just getting started. Most people hadn't heard of Digg, and sites like StackOverflow or Hacker News were far off in the future. Casual games were around, but they didn't make headlines the way they do today.
Yes, there were people who wasted time online, but they were usually people in niche subcultures like fandom or gaming. Many of the early Web 2.0 successes still had a significant productivity bent to them, eg. del.icio.us was seen as a way to organize your bookmarks online, Flickr grew a large community of professional or semi-professional photographers, and blogs were often viewed as a way to increase your professional reputation.
People love wasting time online now, but that was not a mainstream view when Reddit started, and they are perhaps responsible for some of it. That's what PG means by pushing against the current.
I don't think that's really true. By 2005, online time-wasting was huge, mainstream big-business. MySpace was sold for $580 million in 2005. I mean, when even Rupert Murdoch thinks social media is the next big thing, it's not exactly a secret.
Yes, there were people who wasted time online, but they were usually people in niche subcultures like fandom or gaming. Many of the early Web 2.0 successes still had a significant productivity bent to them, eg. del.icio.us was seen as a way to organize your bookmarks online, Flickr grew a large community of professional or semi-professional photographers, and blogs were often viewed as a way to increase your professional reputation.
People love wasting time online now, but that was not a mainstream view when Reddit started, and they are perhaps responsible for some of it. That's what PG means by pushing against the current.