Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by crazypyro » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

apercu wrote: post #152

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 have no idea why I care about the NFL, but I have been going to profootballtalk.com daily for years. NBC partnered with a bunch of independent sports blogs like PFT a few years ago. They then rolled 'em all out on a new redesign. I stopped visiting after the first couple tries, then PFT backed out of the redesign and went back to their previous (crappy, old) layout. The other blogs I used to go to (pro hockeytalk a…

PFT looks like one of those blogs that is just made up stuff, but it is a pretty good source. I feel like their layout actually harms their credibility though.

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

#212

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

apercu wrote: post #152

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 have no idea why I care about the NFL, but I have been going to profootballtalk.com daily for years. NBC partnered with a bunch of independent sports blogs like PFT a few years ago. They then rolled 'em all out on a new redesign. I stopped visiting after the first couple tries, then PFT backed out of the redesign and went back to their previous (crappy, old) layout. The other blogs I used to go to (pro hockeytalk a…

[deleted]

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

#213

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

apercu wrote: post #152

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 have no idea why I care about the NFL, but I have been going to profootballtalk.com daily for years. NBC partnered with a bunch of independent sports blogs like PFT a few years ago. They then rolled 'em all out on a new redesign. I stopped visiting after the first couple tries, then PFT backed out of the redesign and went back to their previous (crappy, old) layout. The other blogs I used to go to (pro hockeytalk a…

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by dpcx » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 8:55 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #177

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 fear this major re-design will be a mistake. HN is designed similarly to Reddit and if HN ever tried to do a major re-design, I think I would visit it less I've been a reddit user for 11 years now (and a lurker for a year before that), I think I was the first (and I think only) blogger from my country that wrote about reddit's rewrite from Lisp, I've seen the comments section implemented, the move to programming.…

I was there for most of that, as well as the shadow-ban days. I left and never went back because of that.

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

#215

Post by xster » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 8:55 PM UTC

conception wrote: post #157

herrkanin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never understand this romanticising of free speech on private platforms. Why would a service that cares about its members _ever_ implement free speech policies? That's just asking for assholes. If anything, popular services should have _more_ filtering and removal of asshole users.

Exactly. The best subreddits on Reddit are the ones heavily moderated like /r/science.

I think it's just an outcome of of the comparatively good state of the scientific community today which in turn doesn't necessitate contrarianism or radicalism. Galileo would probably think that r/science is among the worst of subreddits.

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

#216

Post by ryanmerket » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 8:55 PM UTC

cylinder wrote: post #145

celticninja wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah they should learn from digg. I still have thumbnails turned off on Reddit and hate the site when they are visible. Moving further away from a text heavy screen is a bad idea.

Same here. Nine year member, no thumbnails. I'm pretty sure the people running Reddit now aren't even aware that Reddit became prominent only because Digg bungled a redesign that sent users fleeing.

It was a content model change, not the pixels that sent users to Reddit. Digg started allowing brands who paid them to have a firehose (RSS feed) post ability.

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

#217

Post by virtualized » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 8:55 PM UTC

snowcrshd wrote: post #187

t0mbstone wrote: post #149

If you are going to re-design a site like reddit, your best bet is to keep the old version in place, but allow people to also view all of the same content in the "new" design. For example, release the new design on new.reddit.com and let viewers migrate over to it at their own pace. Once you have a lot of people using the new reddit instead of the old design, you can migrate the old reddit to old.reddit.com and put t…

I understand your point, but wouldn't doing what you suggest lead to the problem of maintaining two different code bases? This doesn't seem like a good idea at all. I think a better approach would be to commit to their new design, and do some sort of A/B testing to hone down the new UI until it replaces the old one. I don't think reddit will die because of the changes they propose. This is just silly. For starters, t…

You don't have to A/B test whether a good product is better than a redesigned crappy one.

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

#218

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 8:56 PM UTC

sebtoast wrote: post #79

rthomas6 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some alternative's I have bookmarked: https://hubski.com/ https://lobste.rs/ https://snapzu.com https://soylentnews.org/ and Voat. I don't really use them so I can't do a good review. I had some more bookmarked but can't find them at the moment.

[deleted]

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

#219

Post by xster » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 8:56 PM UTC

CM30 wrote: post #169

debacle wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free speech part of Voat is great. I don't think it's so much overrun as that the only people there are the ones with radical opinions. I wouldn't use Voat for other reasons, but that's just me.

> I don't think it's so much overrun as that the only people there are the ones with radical opinions. This is the issue with a lot of pro free speech websites, or a a lot of 'alternatives' to popular platforms in general. Unless the more popular site completely jumps the shark, only the more extreme users (read, those angry with the old service) move over. So the site gets more extreme due to them being the only one…

+100000. "Overrun" sounds too deliberate. It's just the result of a population biasing as you say.

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

#220

Post by paganel » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 9:00 PM UTC

simonswords82 wrote: post #151

chaostheory wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

making reddit more homogeneous for everyone will probably be a mistake. customization was really what made everyone flock to reddit post digg

Really? I can't stand the custom CSS, feels like every sub Reddit is a unique website. I've had custom CSS disabled for as long as I've used CSS, I thought it was a terrible idea.

The CSS customization really does work wonders for things like sports-related subreddits or national sub-reddits, where you can attach your hometown/county to your profile name, so that everybody can make fun of you and you can make fun or everybody else (the same goes for /r/europe).

I also found CSS customization extremely valuable for the /r/syriancivilwar subreddit, where users can attach the flag of a certain faction from that war to their username: Government, Al-Nusra (or whatever they're called now), the Kurds etc. At some point a couple of years ago there were several users who had the ISIS flag attached to their username. That was an excellent way of knowing where the other party was coming from when writing down their comments.