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Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

reuters.com

121–130 of 441 posts

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#121
post #30
post #19

Saddens me how far the site has fallen. The abysmal mobile experience shoehorning you into using their low quality app is frustrating. It makes sense, need to monetize and appeal to the average internet user, but it bums me out there isn't a great replacement as of now. Many small communities that I like, but one of my favorite search queries is "_________ reddit" Need to understand timeshares? Want the best rice coo…

I think the app works great. And the conversations are usually pretty good too as long as each side is willing to be civil. Particularly in my local city/community subs. For example, my local city sub is like NextDoor only without the nut jobs and constant "my Pitbull got loose in the park again" posts.

My city sub is full of alt right trolls.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#122
post #107

Kevin Rose had a pretty epic Tweet about wanting to buy Digg and bring it back to its pre-redesign phase [1]. Mark Cuban wanted in on it and I seem to remember Alexis Ohanian responded in a new tweet. I don’t feel like going through his old posts to link to it. I’d love a return to the old. Even if its just the social web version of reruns. [1] https://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/1347747289511563265?s=2...

Would be hilarious if eventually we just had a slow stable oscillation where Digg and Reddit continue repeatedly raising money and relaunching as “old” whatever, stealing back each others users like some slow motion pendulum or sands in a spinning hourglass..

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#123
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately, I have found this increasingly less useful as marketers catch on.

I’ve wondered about this. Can you tell when it’s a marketer?

Perfect example I found the other day... the main post is clearly a bot, and all the replies are bots pretending to be users too.

Reddit USED to be amazing for finding recommendations for products/services but these days it’s just another bot-filled and paid-content dumping ground like the Google search results.

https://www.reddit.com/user/amily95/comments/fkm1rn/how_to_c...

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#124
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a company that made people moderate their content for free. You don't need to know sub names to get some use of it. I append "reddit" to probably 1/3 of my search engine queries. Especially useful when looking for product recommendations.

>looking for product recommendations This is the trick I use too; but I found the result still isn't great enough for a few reasons. 1. People seem have a tendency to recommend products/brands that are niche or "in minority". Like some obscure ones that scratch particular itch for that user (and often expensive and hard to find). This is totally fine on its own, but you want to have the big picture (i.e. learn about…

I've found that reddit tends to get pretty cargo culty around particular products/brands, like Sony mirrorless and the Olympus mju II for cameras, Denon DJ equipment, or Starting Strength for weightlifting. So many recommendations basically follow the form "I'm new to this hobby and bought one of these a week ago, I swear it's the best thing ever"

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit badges, btw, are a great example of native advertising. In addition to advertisers badging their native ads, I would guess that most badges on reddit are fake, either automatically awarded by the software to popular posts or given out arbitrarily by reddit staff, with the intent of giving users the impression that it's common for redditors to spend real money to "gild" or otherwise flair posts that they like,…

I think that the amount of gilded awards that are ironically given to posts on r/conservative from members of r/politics largely disproves the idea that people are unwilling to spend stupid amounts of money on what amount to shiny baubles. How much that makes of their revenue however, is only known by reddit.

> ironically given to posts on r/conservative from members of r/politics

A lot of this could just be reddit staff astroterfing, but to the extent that it isn't, it (giving actual money, even small amounts, to flair reddit posts) just validates the stereotype that reddit as a platform selects for users with lower than average intelligence.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#127
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a company that made people moderate their content for free. You don't need to know sub names to get some use of it. I append "reddit" to probably 1/3 of my search engine queries. Especially useful when looking for product recommendations.

>looking for product recommendations This is the trick I use too; but I found the result still isn't great enough for a few reasons. 1. People seem have a tendency to recommend products/brands that are niche or "in minority". Like some obscure ones that scratch particular itch for that user (and often expensive and hard to find). This is totally fine on its own, but you want to have the big picture (i.e. learn about…

I agree with all of the above but there are two good dynamics.

For small niche subreddits where you only get a few answers it seems less likely that those are advertisements (and user history is often telling)

And on bigger subs, it's much harder to manipulate the answer unless your product is already pretty decent and you're just fighting over some market spot. In other words, obviously bad products won't be able to advertise this way because of negative comments, but some covert brand building certainly can be done.

Re: Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round

#130

Most Reddit readers worth real advertising $ use ad blockers of one kind or another. I’m happy for the Reddit team, and hope they’re able to make a responsible revenue stream out of the fundraise.

They're monetizing the app and forcing mobile users onto it. The desktop site is just a way for them to acquire mobile users.

Glad they haven't restricted API access other than newer shit features. I'm going to be sad when Apollo stops working one day as it is an amazing iOS experience.
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