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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

#151

Post by debaserab2 »

It amazes me the kind of sheer incompetency their product team has demonstrated over the past 2-3 years. (Edit - as pointed out in replies to this post, this is an unfair characterization fueled by my recent frustrations with the direction the site is going. I don't think it is unreasonable to point out that reddit is failing the expectations of their users, but I don't doubt for a minute that the individuals working at reddit are very talented)

10 years ago when reddit would go down, you rooted for them as the underdog to figure it out. Now when it happens, it's just sad. They still can't even handle the kind of traffic that the super bowl brings them. They've had years to figure this out.

What has the focus been if not stabilizing their infrastructure? It appears to be the introduction of a single page application that feels clunky, conceals ads better, and implements all kinds of dark UX patterns.

Meanwhile, there are still bugs that have existed for years that still aren't fixed. There's even a redirect loop that you can get stuck in during authentication in certain scenarios that will completely break the site and bring you back to the same page until your session expires. It's been there for at least a year now.

Reddit has gone full digg v4

EDIT: After thinking about this more, I'm not sure that reddit going full digg v4 means that they'll share the same outcome as digg. The internet now seems to be a small set of companies so entrenched in their position due to swallowing mass amount of users and raising enough funds to optimize all the various little corners that can be optimized. Reddit might not actually be dead, but as they continue to optimize the weird and cool ways that people used to use the site, I know it will be for me.

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

#152

Post by nopriorarrests »

jondubois wrote: post #87
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #8

Reddit has been raising money for almost 15 years! I wish I had the connections to VC's that reddit apparently does. I can definitely spend all the money a VC gives me, then raise more money, and then spend all that money, and never turn a profit for 15 or 20 years.

They could have funded 150 startups for 10 years and created 1500 highly motivating startup jobs with that money but instead it will just maintain the status quo, pay Reddit engineers to be corporate cattle and allow reddit to be as innefficient as ever.

>They could have funded 150 startups for 10 years

This round is 150-300mln. How do you fund 150 startups for 10 years with 2mln per startup?

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

#153

Post by rconti »

komali2 wrote: post #55
EnFinlay wrote: post #2

Fun, I deleted my 9 year old account last night. It's wasn't out of some high-minded thing about how they're turning more into Facebook or privacy or anything. That site just hits my dopamine so effectively I had to quit and block it in my /etc/hosts. I am spending more time on HN though...

>I am spending more time on HN though... Same boat. Twitter as well. Snipped reddit, went to twitter. Snipped twitter, came to here. Seems I just can't get enough of "talking with people on the internet." GF says I should try to find a book club. She's probably right.

Twitter is the absolute worst of all of them, though. Of all of the platforms, it creates the greatest incentives for antisocial behavior, prioritizing shouting, content-less attention-whoring-for-clicks over everything else.

If you want to be an "influencer" on twitter (which most folks seem to want to be), you just shout the most outrageous things you can to try to cast a wider net.

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

#154

Post by jandrese »

axaxs wrote: post #72

The only problem I have with Reddit from a valuation perspective is that it doesn't really offer much 'secret sauce.' The tech itself is not great, and I don't really know of anyone who likes the redesign. Point being, the value is all in the users and content. Users are fickle, and as we saw from Digg (and lesser extent, StumbleUpon), can flee en masse at any moment. That's a tough pill for me to swallow as a potent…

It seems like their big problem is monetization. They're probably reluctant to monetize too aggressively given past experience with companies like Digg, where the users saw the system turning against them and fled.

Somehow Facebook managed to do it, but you still hear grumbling about how big of a mess the news feed is and people searching for something that can replace it.

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

#156

Post by mort96 »

GordonS wrote: post #93
minimaxir wrote: post #16

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

Their mobile website has also started literally animating the "get the app" button; every minute or so, the button pulses for a bit in a deliberate (and in my case, consistently successful) attempt to make your attention move to the button they want you to click instead of the content you want to read.

The reddit community is great, but the company seems to not care about their users at all.

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

#157

Post by YeahSureWhyNot »

nopriorarrests wrote: post #118
jandrese wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Consider a few cases. - you want to advertise B2B software to small/medium business owners. - you want to advertise expensive fashion items to 20-35 y.o. women in NY/CT. Will you pick FB or reddit? And then yes, lack of brand safety for non-targeted ads.

genuine question. is reddit good place to advertise a B2B software? my startup offers B2B warehousing/ecommerce solution and I never thought about reddit in that way even if I visit its front page daily.

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

#158

Post by airstrike »

binarysaurus wrote: post #129
dx87 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing people to use a native app means they can inject ads without having to worry about being blocked by a browser extension.

Many users who use mobile adblockers will use one across the entire device (easy on rooted Android) instead of just a browser extension.

I'm pulling these numbers out of a hat, but I would wager users with rooted Android devices are below 1% of the mobile user base, and probably below 0.1% of the total user base including desktop.

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

#159

Post by lftl »

GordonS wrote: post #93
minimaxir wrote: post #16

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'm really amazed they still let the old mobile interface work for the most part. Just add ".compact" to any URL and browse almost annoyance free (newer features like video don't work, but that's not too surprising).

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

#160

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

blotter_paper wrote: post #100
ppod wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always thought that the day they crossed the line was when they arbitrarily changed which subreddits were default, removing some (such as /r/atheism) with no real reason. At the very early days of reddit, discussing atheism positively was still kind of unusual in the news. Then, over time, it became a very popular position and advocacy case especially among developers, and new users found the stridency and repet…

Another clear red line was when spez started editing comments.[0] It was childish and non-consequential, but should have resulted in an immediate exodus from the platform. I'm not politically aligned with r/The_Donald, but I think this sort of petty power abuse should not be forgiven; the platform needs to die, as an example to other platforms. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5ekdy9/the_admi...

That was beyond unacceptable because it didn't show the comment as have been edited with an asterisks. Which means they have and use special admin powers at will.

The only issue to Reddit it seems was that he was caught doing it.

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