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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

#301

Post by EpicEng »

KindOne wrote: post #92
aluminussoma wrote: post #34

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.

You can disable the redesign. Its also somewhere in the preferences. http://old.reddit.com

I have had to reset that flag NUMEROUS times now. I do it in my profile and a few weeks later, poof, back to slow/poorly designed UI.

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

#302

Post by sneakernets »

NegativeK wrote: post #234
brettgriffin wrote: post #5

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.

Reddit convinced me that showing topics based on time-decay does not promote in-depth conversation. Facebook semi-proved it.

Twitter seems to be the enigma to that rule, because I still get heated replies to tweets from years ago from time to time. Even though time has passed, the conversation is still as shallow as ever.

I can't imagine being a celebrity and getting dozens of hate tweets in my mentions because a tweet I made 8 years ago shows up as a link on a facebook group somewhere.

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

#303

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #255
vvillena wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Reddit is still a haven for the far-right. It really leaves a bad taste in my mouth that they are tolerated there.

While this may be true, Reddit's "free speech" ethos has been part of its DNA from day 1. Reddit has also gone a long way to getting rid of the most egregious content (I mean, jailbait???)

What would you suggest the alternative is? I think the real problem is that society is coming to terms with the fact that anonymous free speech isn't all it's cracked up to be.

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

#304

Post by marcosdumay »

NegativeK wrote: post #234
brettgriffin wrote: post #5

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.

Reddit convinced me that showing topics based on time-decay does not promote in-depth conversation. Facebook semi-proved it.

There is something to be said about StackOverflow perennial content idea, but maybe something already said it better.

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

#305

Post by lostlogin »

rjbwork wrote: post #251
IggleSniggle wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny, the web app used to be really good. Much better than the native app. Since then they have been making the web app increasingly worse over time, actively degrading its functionality and pleasantness to use.

You can just permanently set your account to use the old layout/view. I've noticed little to no changes other than user profiles, which are the "old new" ones. On my phone I use reddit is fun. I have no issues at all with reddit atm in terms of them fucking with my experience.

I agree, but it’s jarring going between devices (phone, iPad and computer) and the multiple interfaces. Then the repeated niggling to use the app. If I haven’t after several years, the chances are I don’t want to.

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

#306

Post by eeZah7Ux »

jandrese wrote: post #52
brettgriffin wrote: post #5

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.

Reddit is basically Usenet 2.0, this time with moderation! The same rules apply. The bigger the community the lower the signal-to-noise ratio. Also, the more political or religious the community the more strident the users will be. The echo chamber effect is huge. The biggest difference is that Reddit mostly has spam under control, something the Usenet could never claim. Also, it's much less efficient under the hood,…

> Reddit is basically Usenet 2.0, this time with moderation!

And without the quality conversation.

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

#307

Post by dangerlibrary »

vvillena wrote: post #122
gfwhuuku wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I welcomed that change. They had handpicked a few left-leaning subs like that one. I also remember there was one about feminism. I believe that was a bad idea, to position themselves like that. Maybe it was a good idea when reddit was a niche website. Now, as far as I know, they simply have an algorithm that shows the most popular posts of all subs, except a few ones that are banned (like the popular the_donald, a su…

/r/the_donald should have been closed a long time ago, due to their users and their mods breaking the rules (hate speech encouragement, mainly) that the rest of subreddits have to respect. Reddit has a dark incentive to keep it open, because it's a very popular community that helps Reddit make money, via ads and Reddit Gold.

It seems pretty clear that the only reason it's still open is because of a court order or an FBI surveillance letter.

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

#309

Post by wolco »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #259

I know someone worked for reddit for a while last year (they don't anymore because they hated every second of it) and from what I understand the engineering teams there are a nightmare of groups that don't talk to each other, constantly write the same code in completely different ways, have no common style and just shoehorn in whatever they want. Everything breaks pretty much all the time. All of that is aside from t…

You had me believing that reddit was a bad place to work. When you complain that the CEO gave drugs to an employee in a cabin I started to question if your opinion matches my value system. When you were shocked they hosted other points of view then I completely changed my mind because reddit is a place for all viewpoints and thought reddit is starting to sound like a great place to work. Sounds like teams are implementing new features like crazy. The hiring freeze but reaction to losing some great candidates makes sense. Freeze hiring across the board but if great candidates are available grab them. Every rule should be reevaluated based on the situation. Sounds like he wants leaders and risk takers.. people willing to stick there neck out and ignore the boss if they feel it's the right call.

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

#310

Post by solatic »

ben_jones wrote: post #51
Someone1234 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has 230 staff (as of July 2017). edit (removed wrong maths): $1.9m per month in staffing costs @ 230 employees/100K each. Although a reply below says the staff may have almost doubled and $100K may be a low guestimate for the area (inc. benefits, etc). My question would be: Why does Reddit have 230+ staff? What do most of them do?

I could easily see 100 engineers split between operations, front-end/back-end/mobile, DBA, etc. I could see a dozen each of marketing, HR (moderation + community management), project/product/team management, and C-level. The rest could easily be sales. Sure you could argue you don't need 100 engineers for that, but if you factor in on-call rotations and how they're constantly refactoring everything...

A hundred engineers for a site like Reddit is ridiculous. Scale is not an excuse - WhatsApp being the famous example of a hyperscaled product with many native clients and only a few dozen engineers. And who would Reddit be selling to? Are they going to run their own in-house ad platform?

I'm sure Reddit justifies it to themselves somehow.

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