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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

#131

Post by nerfhammer »

petra wrote: post #83
nerfhammer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But what if Reddit, which has tons of great content, blocks access to Google search, focuses on building a really good search engine, and strongly marketing it via sharing search results in their platform, could this become popular ? And while $200M doesn't fit a design change, search engines are expensive.

If it were that simple Facebook would have tried it by now.

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

#132

Post by biggerbistro »

potatolicious wrote: post #54
uncoder0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately Voat got overrun with Reddit's least desirable people and content, as you've already seen. More than that though, Voat doesn't seem to have any significant funding or even team behind it, so even if people do end up flocking to a site primarily known for its ardent bigotry, it's unlikely Voat can withstand a large spike in its traffic and scale to even a fraction of Reddit-level.

Isn't it obvious that Voat would be filled with the more extreme forms of speech given that they are the ones not allowed on Reddit? Faulting Voat for that reason is kind of a clueless thing to do. If walking your dog becomes politically unfashionable tomorrow I'm sure they would be the next to migrate to Voat.

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

#133

Post by DanBC »

am1988 wrote: post #118
autokad wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what bothers me the most is: people downvoting an opinion that differs from their own. In a contrived example, if someone says jobs was nothing without wozniak, I dont think a person should be downvoted for voicing their opinion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

And this too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683

But then see these, which seem to acknowledge downvote to disagree is a problem:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057338

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403716

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

#134

Post by mrkrabo »

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…

If you click here (no need to be logged in) you get the HTML layout of the rewrite.

https://www.reddit.com/profile-beta-confirmation

https://www.reddit.com/user/kn0thing

Seems to be JS-heavy.

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

#135

Post by cylinder »

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…

Holy crap. This is going to kill Reddit. The digg moment is finally here. Where do we all go next?

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

#136

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

metaphorm wrote: post #12
phatbyte wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember Digg. Great community, but once they changed the UX and some features, everything went downhill.

the UX changes weren't the real problem, though they exacerbated the real problem. the real problem was a dramatic change in the content promotion algorithm that de facto transformed the front page of the site (which was much less cuztomizable than reddit's) into a corporate sponsored content billboard.

I don't care much either way about sponsored content - just relevance. I attribute Digg's downfall to when it started adding professional sports content to the front-page.

I'm looking at the Archive.org history and it's pretty telling what happened:

2004 - https://web.archive.org/web/20041214033211/http://www.digg.c... - Pretty much the same content as Slashdot, but with a cleaner UI.

2005 - https://web.archive.org/web/20050609031143/http://digg.com:8... - No significant change

2006 - https://web.archive.org/web/20060615092431/http://digg.com:8... New "Web 2.0" site design - less industry news, but still technology-centric.

2007 - https://web.archive.org/web/20070613060232/http://digg.com/ - Slight redesign, but note the addition of the Sports and Entertainment categories - but at least an article on the Double Slit experiment has six times as many diggs as a Sports Illustrated gossip piece.

2008 - https://web.archive.org/web/20080730182035/http://digg.com/ - Zero pure technology stories or industry pieces on the frontpage at all - it's all general interest - the site's content is unrecognizable from four years prior. 2009, 2010 and beyond continue this trend.

Notice the similarities with Reddit - albeit Reddit progressing at a slower pace: Despite similar ages, Digg took five years to go from niche to mainstream, Reddit's mainstream appeal came after eight or nine years.

Reddit has the advantage of making it easy to opt-out of irrelevant interest areas, but it can't keep everyone happy. HN is my go-to for news because the content is relevant even without me having to log-in, but Reddit's default homepage is no interest to me unless I login, which I'm less likely to do from a computer I don't own.

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

#137

Post by robszumski »

kilroy123 wrote: post #50
yoodenvranx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I agree, I have no idea how you use Reddit without it. If there people out there clicking on URLs/pictures, then going back to see the context/comments, I would love to hear how long this process takes you. This is my main negative to using Reddit on mobile, which I almost never do because it would lake about 200 taps to view a small amount of content.

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

#138

Post by iamatworknow »

sirtastic wrote: post #101
pmoriarty wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a single popular site redesign that actually made the site better. They're almost inevitably worse, usually much worse. A common failing is trying to make the design more shiny and pretty while decreasing functionality, dumbing the site down, adding bloat, and slowing the site down to a crawl. I really hope Reddit does not go down this road, because they really have a good thing going now. It would b…

I can think of one. Google's material design. I love it and feel it tied their apps together while making them easier to use.

It's all subjective, of course, but if a Material app starts getting more complex the bare bones nature of the UI actually starts making it more confusing to use in my opinion. Maybe I just haven't used it enough, but every time I look at a Google Cloud Platform console or something it takes me longer than I think it should to find what I'm looking for.

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

#140

Post by wott »

sireat wrote: post #108
autokad wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what bothers me the most is: people downvoting an opinion that differs from their own. In a contrived example, if someone says jobs was nothing without wozniak, I dont think a person should be downvoted for voicing their opinion.

HN in general will tolerate dissent, if you can provide good argumentation. Sure there's groupthink in HN as in any other forum, but HN is more open to different ideas than any other forum that I have known since the days of Usenet in late 1980s.

Yes, I came to realise that when it comes (among other subjects) to 'tech' criticism, it easier to have an open discussion with various points of view on HN than on my generic national subreddit. That takes the biscuit!

I just wish someone could come up with a new Usenet (instead of a dozen of open-source copies of damn Twitter). Something that doesn't depend on a company or a couple of individuals. In similar vein to what happens for the Twitter copies I ranted about, but for long, threaded discussions in Reddit/HN/Usenet style. Oh, and Reddit lacks proper hierarchies, so the discovery of subreddits is pretty bad. So, yes, more like Usenet.

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