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Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

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Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#41

Post by wiremine »

Seen a few comments focus on the "redesign" and comparisons to Digg, and wanted to add a few comments:

1. People may forget, but Reddit was a (the?) major winner in the Digg exodus.

2. I don't think Digg every got the subreddit style discussion boards down. I think the reddit "homepage experience" vs. the typical subreddit experience to be very different. Should be interesting to see which way they slide for the redesign.

3. The influx of new capital and the focus on the redesign sort of telegraphs that they want to grow reddit, which is a very large but idiosyncratic community.

If they do it right, the change will be very transparent and very incremental, ala the ebay background color change [1].

Should be an interesting thing to watch!

[1] https://articles.uie.com/death_of_relaunch/

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#42

Post by perryprog »

spike021 wrote: post #8

>An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into “cards” with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath. Not sure why this UX concept needs to be applied to every kind of interface nowadays. I think Reddit's current interface could be updated visually without cha…

Maybe even just some better default CSS, like r/LifeProTips is very pleasing to look at and still has the great “Reddit Feel”

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#43

Post by komali2 »

uncoder0 wrote: post #23
afro88 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they're doing a Digg. End of an era. What's the "reddit" that everyone will migrate to when they change the UX?

Voat ( https://voat.co/ ) is also an option I've heard of before but never used. However I just looked at their front page and the number 2 post is titled 'How to solve the Voat's antisemitism problem' and the image contains an antisemitic slur so that's not very promising.

I fear people are downvoting you for merely pointing out that alternatives already exist, even though you indicate your distaste at the site in your post.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#44

Post by rthomas6 »

afro88 wrote: post #18
stevenj wrote: post #3

>the company is literally re-writing all of its code Wow. >An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into “cards” with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath. >“We want Reddit to be more visually appealing,” he explained, “so when new users come to Reddit the…

So they're doing a Digg. End of an era. What's the "reddit" that everyone will migrate to when they change the UX?

Check out Hubski (https://hubski.com). It's got a great community, and a unique way displaying and moderating posts.

Instead of subreddits, you follow users and tags. When you upvote posts, you share them with whoever follows you.

It's sort of like a community web of trust. It works really well.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#45

Post by yoodenvranx »

tarr11 wrote: post #17
stevenj wrote: post #3

>the company is literally re-writing all of its code Wow. >An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into “cards” with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath. >“We want Reddit to be more visually appealing,” he explained, “so when new users come to Reddit the…

I still use i.reddit.com which I think is a better mobile interface. It loads very fast, I can scan through posts very quickly, and it uses very little mobile bandwidth. If I want to click through and see an image, I can easily do that. They keep adding more things to the default mobile interface (suggestions, ads, pictures) that slow it down and make me avoid using it. I think they don't realize how much of their co…

The old mobile page is awesome and the day they kill it is the day I will stop using reddit on mobile.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#46

Post by tanuki »

imjk wrote: post #24
afro88 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they're doing a Digg. End of an era. What's the "reddit" that everyone will migrate to when they change the UX?

Hacker News

Hacker News has its niche that's only interesting to so many people. Which is good, I hope it would never be inundated too much by people making lower-effort posts or just looking to be entertained.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#47

Post by giarc »

rottyguy wrote: post #9

surprised the valuation is so low for a top 5 destination (per alexa).

Likely because of their lack of profit despite being so highly ranked.

Personally, other than FB I can't think of a site I visit more often than reddit. Whether at home, on the bus or just sitting on the couch, it's the site I know I can open and find some useful content.

With the amount of engagement they have, they should be making more money.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#48

Post by baldfat »

afro88 wrote: post #18
stevenj wrote: post #3

>the company is literally re-writing all of its code Wow. >An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into “cards” with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath. >“We want Reddit to be more visually appealing,” he explained, “so when new users come to Reddit the…

So they're doing a Digg. End of an era. What's the "reddit" that everyone will migrate to when they change the UX?

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

I miss the early days of Digg before people starting getting concerned about their points and front page drama started.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#49

Post by nerfhammer »

raldi wrote: post #25
koolba wrote: post #15

> Still, he says making money is “not our top priority,” estimating the company spends only about 20 percent of its resources on its advertising business. Huffman declined to share revenue totals. The company is also not profitable. I can't imagine giving $200M to a group of people who publicly say they're not focused on ensuring I get it back. Is this a VC investment or a charity? Also, have they not achieved profit…

Brings to mind an article I read circa 2001 where a Google executive said, "Look, we could be profitable next month if we covered the site with annoying ads, but we're not going to do that. We're focusing on growth now." Worked out okay for their investors.

Search results pages turn out to be the most valuable possible place to put ads.

Reddit might not be nearly so.

Then again Facebook initially seemed like it would have that problem but they seem to have overcome it.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#50

Post by kilroy123 »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #40
stevenj wrote: post #3

>the company is literally re-writing all of its code Wow. >An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into “cards” with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath. >“We want Reddit to be more visually appealing,” he explained, “so when new users come to Reddit the…

> the company is literally re-writing all of its code The old and ugly mobile website is _perfect_ (apart from some bugs). The new one is a horrible piece of garbage.

I disagree. I use the extension reddit enhancement suite and _that_ makes it useable.
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