Why not create a sub-community for subscribers only? I mean, normal users see subscriber and normal users posts but subscribers optionally only see other subscribers. Maybe this would create a tighter knit, higher quality group. As beaten as this dead horse is, we all know Reddit is infected with memes and nonsense galore, that's why many of use have graduated to HN.
Reddit needs help
171–180 of 258 posts
Re: Reddit needs help
#172make expenses completely transparent (+hosting +salaries -advertising). prominently display this per-month quota as some kind of health-bar, and next to that a payment button. if the health-bar drops below x%, the rest of the site disappears. there is no profit in this model. let the users finance their own addiction.
Re: Reddit needs help
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
The legal argument isn't that bizarre. :) Our lawyers fear foreign laws and will not deal with them. That being said, we are working on expanding into some of the other English speaking countries.
It's bizarre in the sense that it's a rare problem. I can approach any of a million US sites, give them some money, and put an ad on their site. I can head over to http://buysellads.com/ and do that right now. Being subjected to foreign laws can't be a huge concern, surely. Contracts for advertising (and, heck, almost any online service) specify the legal jurisdiction that applies to the transaction. If I live in Kaz…
The problem is that we aren't just selling ad space. We are running what might be considered an "auction" in some jurisdictions (it isn't in the United States), and that is what the lawyers fear. They want to make sure we won't get dinged for running an illegal auction.
Re: Reddit needs help
#174I don't know, I think paying money for nothing in return to a big corporation is a little bit insane, actually. $5, in the right hands, would go a long ways in Africa or various other places in the world where people have real, urgent needs. Or if that's not your thing, there are all kinds of real charities out there. Hell, if you want, you can send the money my way and I'll put it in my daughter's college education/…
ah yeah good ol' "but Africa" reasoning. You can apply that logic to almost everything. Sorry but why don't you return your freshly bought iPhone and donate the money to charity's? And do you really need a car, can't you ride your bike? Do we really need Reddit if we could buy food in Africa instead? Maybe that's a little harsh, but we spend money EVERY friggn day on things that could be invested in Africas problems.…
No. There's a difference: I believe very strongly in paying for goods or services received. I don't believe, however, in corporate charity, which is kind of what this is right now. They don't even turn off the advertisements, which is (ought to be?) about the easiest thing in the world to do for someone paying for "premium service".
If they offered a real premium service, I wouldn't make that argument. For instance, no one, least of all myself, complains about lwn.net being a for-pay service, despite their primary market being a bunch of open source guys.
Also, I don't have an iPhone, and do ride my bike a lot, thanks: no need for the hostility.
Re: Reddit needs help
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're not actually one of the most expensive. Yes it is true, they are more expensive than others, and if I were starting a new company I might not use them from the start, but they offer us one thing that no one else seems to be able to handle -- the ability to spin up a lot of heavy iron quickly to absorb sudden changes in traffic.
Just curious -- why don't you start a new company? It's obvious that your work isn't being respected by your current employers. Does reddit mean a lot to you personally?
> Just curious -- why don't you start a new company?
Stay tuned. :)
> It's obvious that your work isn't being respected by your current employers.
Hmmm, I've never really thought about it that way before.
> Does reddit mean a lot to you personally?
It does. I've worked for reddit officially for over 3.5 years, and I've been friends with Steve and Alexis for almost 5 years.
I've watched reddit grow from a tiny site to the huge site it is now.
And when Steve and Alexis left, the put it in our hands to take good care of it.
It's like watching your friend's kid grow up, and then one day becoming their guardian.
reddit's been a big part of my life.
Re: Reddit needs help
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has nothing to do with that. It is simply that EC2 offers us the best bang for the buck for our requirements (one of the main ones being able to spin up a lot of iron very quickly).
Surely the traffic/load isn't that variable? Seems like even a VPS provider (linode/slicehost/etc) would offer far more bang for the buck. The pricing for bandwidth alone on EC2 is simply insane.
Actually, it isn't so much the traffic. It's when something like Cassandra suddenly stops working correctly and we need to take emergency action to keep the site up by, for example, doubling our memcached pool temporarily.
None of the VPS's can give us that many nodes that quickly.
Also, bandwidth is by far our lowest cost. It is less than 5% of our total bill.
Re: Reddit needs help
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
It has nothing to do with that. It is simply that EC2 offers us the best bang for the buck for our requirements (one of the main ones being able to spin up a lot of iron very quickly).
May I ask why you don't use another cheaper provider for fixed base load and reserve EC2 for peak load capacity? Is it that the overhead of running on two different providers not worth the money you'd save? Or is this something you've considered doing but haven't had the time to implement yet?
> Is it that the overhead of running on two different providers not worth the money you'd save? Or is this something you've considered doing but haven't had the time to implement yet?
Pretty much yes to both of these. With so few of us, the overhead of running it and moving to it just doesn't make sense at this time.
Re: Reddit needs help
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> once you start charging me I'm going to gain some expectations. Downtime is going to be harder to excuse then it was before is just one example. One of the main reasons we hesitated so long. We didn't want to let down the community, especially those that paid. As always, we will do our best to keep the site up, and hopefully this new income will make it so we can afford the redundant servers we need to do a better…
Can't you find interns to help you with stability? Even I would help for free just to get some experience with a very large site.
Each time we've had a new programmer come on board, it takes about 6 months for them to become familiar enough with the code to make a solid contribution. In the mean time, it actually slows us down a bit.
That was the main reason we didn't seek programming interns this summer -- it's a great thought, but would probably take too long to ramp them up.
Re: Reddit needs help
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just curious -- why don't you start a new company? It's obvious that your work isn't being respected by your current employers. Does reddit mean a lot to you personally?
> Just curious -- why don't you start a new company? Stay tuned. :) > It's obvious that your work isn't being respected by your current employers. Hmmm, I've never really thought about it that way before. > Does reddit mean a lot to you personally? It does. I've worked for reddit officially for over 3.5 years, and I've been friends with Steve and Alexis for almost 5 years. I've watched reddit grow from a tiny site to…
Well, I wish you the best of luck. Reddit is awesome.
I wish it could just be taken non-profit and run it like like wikipedia with a fundraiser every year to keep it going.
Re: Reddit needs help
#180Is there any actual synergy at all with the rest of Conde Nast? Would it make sense for Reddit to work with some P.E. people to buy themselves out, and make a venture investment in improving the site?