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Reddit Is Raising Funds at a Valuation of $1.7B

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Re: Reddit Is Raising Funds at a Valuation of $1.7B

#211

Post by shawnee_ »

Sophira wrote: post #195
shawnee_ wrote: post #175

Reddit has an opportunity to do right everything that Twitter has done (and continues to do) wrong. It took me about ten years to figure out that Twitter is a cesspool of useless noise and ego. Everybody tries to outdo each other with noise and follower count. What Reddit does right is focus on topics , primarily, not personalities. (Although I actually like the new user profiles, since they tend to be secondary focu…

> What Reddit does right is focus on topics , primarily, not personalities. I think they've been trying to change that recently; they've been focusing more on content creators - people like Shitty_Watercolour who are known Reddit-wide for the original content they post. As you noted, they launched a new type of profile which basically turns it into a subreddit, which they're pushing as a way for content creators to p…

I think they've been trying to change that recently; they've been focusing more on content creators - people like Shitty_Watercolour who are known Reddit-wide for the original content they post. As you noted, they launched a new type of profile which basically turns it into a subreddit, which they're pushing as a way for content creators to post their works easily.[0] The feature is still being developed but is now available to more people.

To me that feature just looks like a way to add RSS/ RSS-like functionality to links a user wants to share or posts a user has participated in... it can be used for self-promotional purposes, but it doesn't have to be.

Re: Reddit Is Raising Funds at a Valuation of $1.7B

#212

Post by p49k »

NewEntryHN wrote: post #202
SkyMarshal wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting observation, b/c one of the original value propositions of React's virtual dom model was faster rendering than most other frontend frameworks at the time. I wonder if it's gotten so complicated it lost that? If so, there are a number of other intentionally lightweight virtual dom frontend frameworks. Mithril, Riot, Preact, virtual-dom all come to mind, and there are a probably a few more.

Most of the performance loss is due to using a frontend framework at all. Differences in such frameworks is then little. You need two round-trips at each page-load because you need the base HTML page then the data and rendering in the browser is orders of magnitude slower than rendering server-side with a good rendering engine. I understand the point of frontend frameworks for SPA, not so much for Reddit profile page…

You can render React server-side on first page load, though, and there will be no lag waiting for the page to render and initialize. I think that most people don't do it because there is extra work involved, but IMO if you're a huge site like Reddit, there's no excuse for not doing so, it seems like laziness.

Re: Reddit Is Raising Funds at a Valuation of $1.7B

#213

Post by dorfsmay »

37 wrote: post #99
jknoepfler wrote: post #89

I stopped using reddit when they put a "USE OUR MOBILE APP OR DIE" message that cannot be closed conveniently on their mobile page. There is no possible advantage that can accrue to me by giving them app-level access to my device rather than running in my browser, which I trust far more than I trust them. They are literally a dynamic, partitioned page-ranking system, why in the heck would I ever let that escape the b…

I sort of believe that the push to mobile is to utilize technologies like GPS, and for tracking purposes / more information points. To get to know the [s]customer[/s] mark better than they know themself. Also, the ISPs may help this push since mobile data is more costly to the consumer than regular ethernet cable type data. wired > wifi /takes off tinfoil hat

I don't know the reasons, but it is getting really annoying. I book a flight in Delta, from a browser on my laptop and it kept saying "Download our apps, it will be such a better experience!"

I do not want to have to download a different apps for each vendor, that's why we invented browsers. If the your browser experience sucks, fix it, don't push your mobile apps on people!

Re: Reddit Is Raising Funds at a Valuation of $1.7B

#214

Post by rayuela »

agentgt wrote: post #197

What's interesting about Reddit is boutique consumer product companies that use it to create cult like addictics of their products. It would be interesting to see some potential marketplace addons or payment processing. Thus reddit could long term replace or absorb Etsy and maybe maybe Craigslist.

This would be a great idea! Some of the local subreddits already have some commerce going on.

Re: Reddit Is Raising Funds at a Valuation of $1.7B

#215

Post by omegaham »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #98
theprop wrote: post #95

Last I heard Reddit was doing less than $10 mn / year in revenues. It's highly under-monetized, but it looks difficult to grow in 5 to 10 years to generating $150 million in annual profits to justify this valuation. I'm surprised Reddit stays so popular. I stopped using it ~8 years ago. The habit didn't stick with me (beyond a year or two).

I don't understand how investors still think that "Step 1: get a lot of users, step 3: profit" is a great business model.

Especially since there will always be another group of investors that are currently on Step 1.

If Reddit's experience starts sucking once they try to monetize, there will be no shortage of people who are going to offer a superior (i.e. non-monetized) experience with the intent of somehow monetizing The Right Way in the future. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Re: Reddit Is Raising Funds at a Valuation of $1.7B

#216

Post by mbesto »

jacquesm wrote: post #76
austenallred wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear, to me at least, that they'll become one of the biggest websites of any kind, and with a massive amount of data around what people like and are interested in. Pretty simple to imagine that being worth far more than $1 billion. Their user growth recently has been astounding.

I agree with the first bit and the last bit. The bit that makes no sense to me is that their value should be predicated on them making at least that much in either profits or some kind of exit. Since almost all attempts to really monetize Reddit in the past have failed because of massive backlash from the users I wonder what the plan is. There has to be some kind of major change to either Reddit or to the audience to…

> all attempts to really monetize Reddit in the past have failed because of massive backlash from the users I wonder what the plan is.

Exactly this. Reddit has been around long enough that I don't foresee any experimentation that could yield this type of commercial turnaround.

Re: Reddit Is Raising Funds at a Valuation of $1.7B

#218

Post by chippy »

Reddit has a huge value I think which has not been mentioned - that companies, corporations, organisations use it to market and advertise themselves, for free.

Sometimes they do that under the covers, so to speak, and some users don't like it (e.g. hailcorporate) but often they will promote their products transparently, and often normal users don't mind. The most obvious example is Netflix on /r/movies. Multiple employees were observed continuously posting things to the site, via submissions, comments etc and users liked it.

By introducing a charge for these corporate users they can reap in a substantial income. Whether it would make sense for them to label these corp users as such is another option, but they certainly know about them. I find it interesting that most normal users find that they don't mind interacting with paid marketing employees and that they consider it organic and natural, very interesting. I also find it worrying.

Re: Reddit Is Raising Funds at a Valuation of $1.7B

#220

Post by ransom1538 »

Online communities die within months. Reddit isn't worth anything. This is insane - this community can disappear. Look at Digg, myspace, friendster. One wrong TOS update all the users will rebel and look towards the next cheaply made forum.

Disclosure: Worked in this space 10+ years.

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