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Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

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Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#141

I've given up most social media but have become obsessed with Reddit. No matter how much I use it, I'm constantly amazed that I can be immediately connected with the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic people on virtually any subject I care about. I'm not a fan of the redesign or their push to look at other social media platforms, but I understand the direction they have to go to build revenue.

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Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "somehow" it forgets my preference constantly and I have to 'opt-out of redesign' several times a day. And, if you follow any links, it sends you straight back to the new version.

They fixed that a few weeks ago.

I still get it constantly. Whatever they did doesn't seem to be universal. Don't know if it's accounts, platform, or something else.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this, too. If you have the right connections and can pull down a bunch of VC money year after year for your business it seems you could go your entire career without having to generate profit!

It seems crazy to me that Reddit can't figure out a way to become profitable. Facebook is hilariously profitable on a fairly similar business model for example. It's not like Reddit is without ads, nor are they lacking in data they could sell (albeit not as high of quality as Facebook or Google). They even sell "Reddit gold" for real money. Maybe they have exceptionally high operating costs? Or are they just really b…

reddit ads aren't very profitable as most of the userbase is probably logged out or just goes to /r/all.

reddit also houses tons of NSFW and controversial content which probably scares some companies away, even if their ads won't show up there.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#144
post #17

I've given up most social media but have become obsessed with Reddit. No matter how much I use it, I'm constantly amazed that I can be immediately connected with the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic people on virtually any subject I care about. I'm not a fan of the redesign or their push to look at other social media platforms, but I understand the direction they have to go to build revenue.

Seriously? I just assume most people on there are in high school, it seems like a place where the lowest common denominator ideas get upvoted and everything else gets nailed.

I've also yet to find a subreddit I like. I admit I haven't tried recently, but the "high school" vibe is very much the one I get. I don't even mean in a bad way, I just mean in a very naïve way. I came of age on the internet, as a teen in the mid-90s, and I just feel like, 20+ years later, I've moved beyond the "everything is new" phase, and reddit still feels like everyone discovering things for the first time. Whether it's a car subreddit where nobody knows how cars work, or a tech-specific subreddit where nobody has the background of my peers.. I'm all for helping people along, but on every topic it feels like 95% rehashing the same old things I rehashed as a teenager.

I think it's just that, ultimately, younger people have more time for online community than middle-aged folks, and the average tone of most subreddits clearly shows this.

Perhaps I'd have a different perspective if I was pursuing a new hobby, so I was the n00b, but I'm.. not.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#145
post #93

I've been a fan of Reddit for a very long time (as the amount of data science work I've done with their data can attest to), but lately it seems like the incentives between Reddit as a business and Reddit as a community leader are not aligned, and that is a problem. The increasing amount of dark patterns Reddit has been employing lately is concerning. (recent example: Reddit now gates content in mobile Safari to push…

2 things about Reddit's "use our app instead!" buttons: 1. They cycle through a couple of different messages, and the buttons get switched around 2. The wording is such that you read it twice and still aren't sure which button will just take you to the damn website I don't mind them promoting their app, but these dark patterns truely rile me

I do mind them promoting their app, it’s a horrible app and they’ve continually ruined their website. The only way I can stand to use reddit anymore is through Narwhal, at least until they kill their 3rd party apps API.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#146

I will often scope google searches for product reviews or food/recipe/diet/fitness knowledge to reddit. This is not the sole research I do but it does tend to be pretty high quality data. I would not be surprised if Reddit is an ML/AI dataset gold mine.

I take the same approach. Compared to something like amazon reviews the information tends to be more reliable.

I'm sure there are plenty of paid shills but my sense is that most people who post on reddit aren't trying to sell you something.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#147

I've been a fan of Reddit for a very long time (as the amount of data science work I've done with their data can attest to), but lately it seems like the incentives between Reddit as a business and Reddit as a community leader are not aligned, and that is a problem. The increasing amount of dark patterns Reddit has been employing lately is concerning. (recent example: Reddit now gates content in mobile Safari to push…

I'm probably the minority here but I wouldn't really call the way they're pushing their app a "dark pattern." It is an annoying pattern for sure, but I'm struggling to see what's unethical about it.

We should probably be cautious about using the term "dark pattern" so liberally, otherwise anything on the web that we don't like could eventually be categorized as such and the term loses its power.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#148
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had fiveish developers for the first fiveish years. Then it sort of exploded after that. To fair, five wasn't enough. We spent too much time firefighting and not enough time innovating.

>We spent too much time firefighting and not enough time innovating I honestly don't mean this in a back-handed manner, but what innovations have come about since that time? Reddit is great because of its momentum and user generated content. That model does best when the admins stay out of the way for the most part. Many (including myself) are not at all a fan of the more recently emerging dark patterns or the site r…

I stopped working there right as it exploded, so I can't list them all, but I know a ton of backend work was done after I left to make site more stable and faster.

And externally the biggest one was mobile support, which is light years ahead of what it was back then.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#149

The HackerNews community is more appreciative of these problems than Reddit's. But Reddit will suffer from the same problems that Facebook and Twitter suffer from, if not already. Reddit users are easily manipulated by engineered content and engineering content on Reddit is not hard if you know what you're doing. Evidently, there are power-users on Reddit (e.g. /u/GallowBoob) who know exactly how Reddit ticks and can…

Reddit played a big part in the 2016 USA elections that crowned Trump. Reddit had to change its front page algorithm to avoid having Trump content near the top of the page for almost the whole time. The subreddit in question organized itself to mass-upvote certain posts at certain times, and Reddit wasn't prepared for such massive, non-organic influence.

I wonder how big of a part the Russian bots and trolls played. I'd love to read an in-depth book about it.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#150

Ever since the site redesign in May, popularity has been falling (source: Alexa Top Websites): https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com I hope that affected the amount of money they raised. As a reddit fan, the site redesign has not been pleasant. The mobile experience, too.

At least we can continue to use old.reddit.com for now on desktop. On mobile, I refuse to use their own app since it's hot garbage and stick to Apollo, which works pretty well so far.

Yeah thank god.

Even if it's uglier, I much prefer the experience of using old website than the React redesign.

Not because it's a single-page app, but because it's slower and has many usability problems.

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