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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

#411

Post by dbbk »

sloppycee wrote: post #229
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #189

Within the context of redesigns I think there exists some value in looking at Facebook's failed card-based redesign back in 2013: https://dcurt.is/facebooks-predicament Essentially this big, beautiful design driven redesign ultimately never shipped because users spent less time on it. Certain design 'improvements' like increased padding between stories reduces density and as a result tends to reduce readership, for e…

Beauty is subjective; Usability is not. Good design must be usable; otherwise we'd call it art. That Facebook redesign for example, while very aesthetically pleasing it looks horrible or confusing to use: * Search box doesn't look like an input control * Low contrast for top right nav (how do I change to any other page?) * Where did my groups and apps go? * Large pictures, great for mock ups, but it just means more s…

They later changed the search box, but I recall at the time their motivation was "we want the title of the page to also be a search field, rather than just a search field". It sort of made sense.

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

#412

Post by dbbk »

virtualized wrote: post #233
dcole2929 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a site with the kind of traffic Reddit has from as many locales as reddit has, 10 people wouldn't even be enough to comfortably cover basic SRE requirements. Forget new features, they would literally spend all of their time just barely keeping the damn thing working. Their would be no admins. No Secret Santa, nor any of the various many things Reddit currently has that requires the support, and more importantly t…

I assumed that 10-20 people would not include anyone who ever physically touches a server. Now that I think about it, it might make sense to not outsource hardware issues at Reddit's scale. I don't know how many people you need to keep Reddit running, but more than a hundred sounds wrong for such a basic web site. I don't need Secret Santa and no support. What kind of trust do you mean?

> but more than a hundred sounds wrong for such a basic web site.

Reddit is not a basic web site though. It doesn't have static content. Almost every page is dynamically generated for each logged in user, of which there are hundreds of millions. That is the total opposite of 'basic'.

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

#413

Post by awkwarddaturtle »

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.

If you think /r/science is great, check out what is the top post of /r/science right now.

"Google searches for “how to commit suicide” increased 26% following the release of "13 Reasons Why", a Netflix series about a girl who commits suicide."

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/6qwdgo/google_sear...

Something that is societal/political rather than science.

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

#414

Post by astrodust »

tomelders wrote: post #401
virgilp wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't think of a single popular site redesign that actually made the site better. Seriously? How about Google.com? Google Maps? Gmail? Apple.com? CNN? Uber? Surely you must believe at least some of those made the site better...

Google maps is a disaster.

They killed the yellow person, which caused such an outcry they brought them back.

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

#415

Post by astrodust »

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.

There's few things in the world I hate more than Google's design. Maybe GoDaddy's control panels. Possibly Ubuntu's installer.

It's absurdly wasteful in terms of space on desktop applications. So many uselessly gigantic buttons with no effort to describe what they do other than an icon.

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

#416

Post by angus-prune »

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…

Reddit became popular because Digg pulled exactly this redesign and drove away all their users.

Who wants to join me in founding the next Reddit, ready for the exodus?

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

#417

Post by komali2 »

nl wrote: post #355
arca_vorago wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. There was a lot of Drama from TD, and I'm pretty sure a signifigant slice of TD was TRDT's data mining/scientist campaign using bots to amplify semi-organic user input. That said, there was a lot of fuckery from the admins and mods in that and other reddit sagas, and the spez drama never materialized anything more than a half-assed apology for essentially violating some core principles that should be beh…

TRDT?

I don't know but one of the top links on google for it is [1]this video, which is amazing.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSUkpVPJ1sQ

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

#418

Post by CM30 »

ryanmerket wrote: post #276
debacle wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge amount of reddit users (I think 70%+) use ad blockers.

Not true. Source: I was the ads PM not too long ago.

So out of curiosity, how many do block ads? I heard it's about that for gaming sites, but what's the rate like on Reddit as a whole?

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

#419

Post by arca_vorago »

nl wrote: post #355
arca_vorago wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. There was a lot of Drama from TD, and I'm pretty sure a signifigant slice of TD was TRDT's data mining/scientist campaign using bots to amplify semi-organic user input. That said, there was a lot of fuckery from the admins and mods in that and other reddit sagas, and the spez drama never materialized anything more than a half-assed apology for essentially violating some core principles that should be beh…

TRDT?

The real Donald Trump.

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

#420

Post by eridius »

HelloMcFly wrote: post #399
eridius wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that fueled Reddit's rise, because the Digg users flocked there.

I believe Reddit had already surpassed Digg by then. Digg's redesign may have been in part an attempt to respond to reddit's rise, rather than creating it.

Reddit was growing, but the Digg exodus gave it a significant boost. I don't know if Reddit was larger than Digg at that time, but even if it was, a near-doubling in users is a pretty big jump.
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