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Reddit raises $410M in new funding

nytimes.com

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Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#171

Post by warning26 »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #127
initplus wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that they do not seem to be taking advantage of is how specialized many of their communities are. It seems primed for letting advertisers target to specific audiences, but as a user I don't really feel like the ads I get are targeted to what I read at all? Maybe I am uninformed but it seems like an advertising goldmine that hasn't been taken advantage of. If you are a PC components retailer, users of /r/bui…

Sounds like a great way to prod those specialized communities to bail to the next diggredditetc. People are going to those specialized communities to get real information from real users, not lies and misinformation (ads and marketing).

Eh, I'd say most of the hardcore Reddit users have both old.reddit as well as an Ad Blocker, so I'm guessing that slightly better ad configuration tools wouldn't adversely impact the longtime users too much.

As for other users, they are already seeing incredibly random and irrelevant ads. Seeing actual photography themed ads on a photography themed forum doesn't seem that bad IMO (provided that they are clearly marked as ads, of course.)

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#172

Post by allochthon »

thisisnico wrote: post #19
dcolkitt wrote: post #9

On a visitor perspective, this seems undervalued. This is a 50% or more discount to the market-cap/unique visitor ratio of Twitter, Snap, and Facebook.[1] And all the stats I've seen indicate much higher user engagement and time on site for Reddit compared to the other social platforms. The biggest issue is of course that their monetization is horrible. Like 95% lower per user than the other socials.[2] So the real q…

I feel like extraordinary monetization of reddit would ruin reddit, and the reason why people actually like reddit.

Reddit is one of the sites I use the most. I hope they can figure out a financially sustainable model without becoming obnoxious or, eventually, being bought up by a private equity firm.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#173

Post by edoceo »

TchoBeer wrote: post #146
edoceo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> higher user engagement It's the dark patterns and having to reload pages multiple times to finally see the content. > and time on site Again, break your site so addicts have to try harder to get their dopamine hit The reddit "engagement" numbers are false.

If I'm wrong GP can correct me, but I think "engagement" means commenting/posting/voting, just viewing a page doesn't count as engagement.

View page: Something went wrong, refresh, refresh, scrolls, clicks load more, scroll, upvote.

Results: longer time and the user will now actually engage, because they had to "work" to get there.

Complete dark-pattern to "juke the stats". And it's too complicated for their stupid investors to understand why the numbers are bullshit.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#174

Post by gkoberger »

setr wrote: post #144
gkoberger wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not easy to run a company with as many users as they have. As a mod, they've put a lot of work recently into flagging trolls and astroturf accounts, and still have a lot of work to do. I run r/sanfrancisco, and wow there's a ton of bots and trolls flooding our sub about the Newsom recall. They also seem to really want to find a way to monetize content in a new way. They've flirted with crypto and awards, but I i…

>Their ads are the worst of all the big social networks, given how anonymous their base is. So they're forced to innovate, which I think is good for everyone The oddity is that their user's aren't that anonymous -- in fact, they very directly tell reddit what their interests are. Like a trade magazine, reddit really doesn't have to do any analysis at all to figure out how to map ads to the right target audience. It c…

My quick Google-ing shows that they make about $100M/year on ads. So they do this and it works decently well.

However, ads at other social networks have evolved way past this level of targeting (which is a bad thing, in my opinion, but alas). Social networks like Facebook know so much about not just your likes but the people you're friends with and how much your income is and what stores you've been to and what you do on Instagram and what your age is and what state you're in and... the list goes on.

I think most subreddits are tough to monetize. What do you sell to r/funny or r/politics or r/sanfrancisco? What does r/choosingbeggars want to buy? There's a few obvious ones (diets, hobbies), but I think eeking out $100M from that is already impressive.

Plus, Reddit's audience is way more against ads than Instgram/Facebook/etc.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#175

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

slugiscool99 wrote: post #162
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comments make perfect sense in light of the fact that Reddit is the world's largest free porn site, with just enough "social" sprinkled on top to keep you engaged between wanks.

The only information I could find claims that about 22% of reddit is NSFW. They calculated the percentage of NSFW subreddits with >100k subscribers. [1] That's far from a perfect way to measure this, but it's around the statistic that 30% of the internet is porn. My intuition tells me Reddit probably reflects the internet as a whole pretty well. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/f94j0y/oc_...

Well, just for the record, that doesn't invalidate what I said. I'm not concerned with what PERCENTAGE is porn. It still is the largest, most-easily-accessible, most searchable, free porn site. And also for the record, yes, I HATE that Reddit (and Twitter, et. al.) allow full-on NSFW content along with all the rest.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#176

Post by ska »

dcolkitt wrote: post #9

On a visitor perspective, this seems undervalued. This is a 50% or more discount to the market-cap/unique visitor ratio of Twitter, Snap, and Facebook.[1] And all the stats I've seen indicate much higher user engagement and time on site for Reddit compared to the other social platforms. The biggest issue is of course that their monetization is horrible. Like 95% lower per user than the other socials.[2] So the real q…

> And all the stats I've seen indicate much higher user engagement and time on site for Reddit compared to the other social platforms.

>The biggest issue is of course that their monetization is horrible.

It's possible that these two things are pretty tightly linked.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#177

Post by cwkoss »

initplus wrote: post #123
dcolkitt wrote: post #9

On a visitor perspective, this seems undervalued. This is a 50% or more discount to the market-cap/unique visitor ratio of Twitter, Snap, and Facebook.[1] And all the stats I've seen indicate much higher user engagement and time on site for Reddit compared to the other social platforms. The biggest issue is of course that their monetization is horrible. Like 95% lower per user than the other socials.[2] So the real q…

One thing that they do not seem to be taking advantage of is how specialized many of their communities are. It seems primed for letting advertisers target to specific audiences, but as a user I don't really feel like the ads I get are targeted to what I read at all? Maybe I am uninformed but it seems like an advertising goldmine that hasn't been taken advantage of. If you are a PC components retailer, users of /r/bui…

Reddit should charge for all commercial posts. It would clean up spam and generate revenue.

Make a special class of commercial account, include some 'verification' badge thingy. Let subreddits ban all commercial content, unpaid commercial content, or leave open (for commercial-specific subs).

Let mods profit share in commercial posts. (And fix the moderator system so "first to register controls the sub" is no longer the case)

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#178

Post by marcusverus »

vntok wrote: post #155
sushid wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was also down for a few hours this week. Can't think of many 11 figure companies that go down as often as Reddit does.

Shows that in the real world, users don't actually really care about having a five nines availability for a forum.

As all social media companies likely know, addicts make for a loyal clientele.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#179

Post by screye »

weavie wrote: post #4

So, pretend you are in charge of spending $410 million dollars at Reddit. What would you spend it on? From my amateur perspective I've got, 2 web devs, 1 backend engineer, 3 devops. Pay them very generously and that's $1.2 million spent. I have no idea what I would do with the rest..

Outside of what you listed: (not all will enhance the experience. Dark patterns also make money)

Data Scientist who can use seasonal and news virality patterns to predict hourly load and load balancing

Data Scientist for Ads targeting by subreddit

CDN person to improve content delivery and caching

A person to build a half-decent video player and native integration of widgets/content from commonly linked websites

Data Scientist that provides a more curated experience to first time visitors. Shadow profiles exist. Or just a 1st visit 10 sec poll.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#180

Post by Blikkentrekker »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #120
kiba wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what make reddit great. Certain reddit are heavily moderated and you get great content. If you don't like how moderation done, go start your own reddit.

> go start your own reddit. This is actually what makes reddit great, that anyone can start their own subreddit, mod it however they want, and compete with all the others based on the merits of its own content, community and moderation style.

However the platform lacks namespaces.

It is impossible to compete with the first one that claims the obvious name for the subject, such as, say r/startrek

The competing ones also censor heavily, so all it does is that one can now choose what particular opinions one can't express.

Competing on the merits of moderation style is insignificant compared to having the most straightforward name that everyone will try first; the subreddit with such name will always be the largest.

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