What happened to the old Nibbler? (badges etc.)

The previous version of Nibbler (2012-2014) had a range of extra social features, including login, badges and leaderboards.

Unfortunately they weren't as successful as we would have liked, and from August 2014 we re-launched Nibbler without them. These are the main reasons why:

  • Our leaderboard of the 'best websites' was overwhelmed by people trying to game the system. This put us in the awkward position of passively endorsing websites we didn't necessarily like.
  • The social features were never particularly popular. Relatively few people shared their portfolio pages or reports. The site gained visitors, but few became users.
  • Our comical tone - especially badges - was undermining the credibility of our results, especially as our customers proved larger and more mature than we expected.
  • Supporting these extra features takes time away from other features that we think people will appreciate more.

We'd like to thank all the people who took the time to create a profile and collected badges.

We decided to make the new Nibbler focused on doing one thing - testing websites quickly - really well. We hope you understand our reasons for changing.