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Reddit is still in turmoil

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Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#131

Post by gozur88 »

cerrelio wrote: post #124
gozur88 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As long as content is hosted on company-controlled servers where ad revenue is the model for survival, you're going to see slow declines and eventual busts like Digg. That's really not what happened at Digg. The problem at Digg was a structure which rewarded "power users" and allowed third party commercial interests to gain control of the site. It's bad enough that Digg had advertising - eventually we were looking a…

Digg failed because of attempts to monetize it better through ads. Users revolted and eventually it crumbled. Users weren't able to control their content. Regarding your second point, if you include Youtube comments, and not just the videos, it's definitely 90% crap.

I disagree on Digg. I didn't mind the ads. Not enough to stop using the site, anyway. What I minded was the transition of the content to advertising. Plus, at the same time they did a site redesign that made it look like one of those auto-generated news sites.

Comments on youtube... yeah, they're crap for most videos. I guess technically comments are user generated content, but I never really think of them that way. Even more so on a site like youtube where the videos are the important bit.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#132

Post by cerrelio »

a_small_island wrote: post #130
cerrelio wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see why they want to create their own curated content. A friend of mine has created and run several user-generated content sites and he said: "user generated content is worthless; largely racism and porn." It's driven by the lowest common denominator. As long as content is hosted on company-controlled servers where ad revenue is the model for survival, you're going to see slow declines and eventual busts like Digg.…

>"The future is probably something where people pay a small amount to access a forum that's somehow distributed on their machines (phones, PCs, etc) and not controlled by any organization. Data transfer (even mobile) and storage are getting cheaper. It'll be like bitcoin, but for discussions." No. The future is the next Digg, the next Reddit, etc. Just like a torrent site, when one goes down (for whatever reason), th…

With the advent of the cloud and the ubiquity of mobile devices, the next Digg won't be controlled by anyone other than the users. They will supply the storage and bandwidth. The community will truly be in charge, and also be responsible for policing it. When the cost (time) of policing it becomes too much (even with machine-learning bots to remove ads, child porn, hate speech, harassment, etc), then a new version of that model will appear.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#133

Post by nabnob »

anjc wrote: post #26

It's bizarre that a company seems to be struggling to administer diversity of staff, without being certain of its own medium-term success. There's no point in having your quota of "people of colour", as the article puts it, if the business model is unsustainable and leads to people being fired anyway. Why not focus on creating a successful company first, and then worry about things that carry an administrative and ma…

Having a successful company that appeals to a broad range of users is related to having a diverse staff.

Reddit has serious problems with blatant racism, sexism, and harassment on many of the larger subreddits. Until they start taking these issues seriously, they will have a hard time expanding their user base to include more women and minorities.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#134

Post by alexis »

jeiting wrote: post #31

Since Alexis and Huffman returned I've seen more happen with the brand than in the several years preceding. I don't know who made their mobile app but it is damn good. I resisted at first but am now using it as my primary means for consuming content on Reddit.

The team has really done a remarkable job -- shipping more in the last quarter alone than over years before.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#135

Post by codingdave »

minimaxir wrote: post #5

Reddit, from a business perspective, baffles me. During the Yishan Wong/Ellen Pao era, we had Reddit-Made and Reddit TV, both of which bombed especially. Under Alexis Ohanian, we had Upvoted and Formative which as the article notes were killed silently. Reddit released a native app and an image host years too late. (I just checked the data and it is not killing Imgur: Reddit image usage was 18% in the top image subre…

To have a successful business, there must be an underlying assumption one of your goals is to actually become a successful business. That would seem to be self-evident, but in the discussions I have seen regarding reddit ever turning a profit, their leadership says it is not a priority. I'm not sure why anyone would have expectations of business success in such a scenario.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#136

Post by brokenmachine »

zarriak wrote: post #108
brokenmachine wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an interesting idea that it is the censoring that makes Facebook profitable, but I'm not sure that I agree with it. I would say that the "made a platform that is much more easily advertised upon" is the important part, combined with the massive data-gathering so the ads can be targeted better.

Well I guess I should say that a part of the design is self censoring, as what one says with anonymity is varying ranges of difference from that which one says when they are sharing it with all of their friends and family.

That's why I personally have self-censored myself from using Facebook at all.

I've discovered that there are actually zero things that I want to announce to all my friends and family at once.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#137

Post by mark_l_watson »

I am surprised that the core Reddit functionality is not run mostly on autopilot.

I only subscribe to a few subreddits (lisp, Ruby, Haskell, AGI, and a few others) and the user supplied content is plenty good enough for me to visit the site once a day.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#138

Post by mgalka »

Mahn wrote: post #60
bane wrote: post #39

Why the hell is Reddit trying to make their own content when the entire point of the site is for the users to create the content? Don't make a Reddit podcast, make Reddit a podcast hosting network. Don't make a Reddit video show, make Reddit a video hosting site. Don't make a Reddit magazine, make Reddit a source for anybody to publish their own magazines. Why does Reddit have writers and editors and creative directo…

Right on the nail. To me personally, the moves Reddit has been doing the past couple years read as if they don't know exactly what Reddit should be or what they want it to be. I imagine it's not easy, Reddit is massive and somehow not quite killing it, but somehow it feels like there's a strange lack of focus.

The mobile version of the site doesn't work and they only just released a mobile app. That says it all about their lack of focus.

Re: Reddit is still in turmoil

#139

Post by brokenmachine »

bloaf wrote: post #114
brokenmachine wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine a situation where someone has beliefs that do not affect his actions in any way. I would agree that unexpressed values would propagate less.

Imagine that he never came into contact or communication with a person that he was racist against. E.g. a racist hermit.

In that case, then who cares what his ideas are?

If a racist hermit is racist in the woods, does he make an offensive sound?

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