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Reddit raises $410M in new funding

nytimes.com

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Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#291

Post by whimsicalism »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #194
SkyMarshal wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes and no. That's great for niches but not for general, high profile topics, a country subreddit for instance.

Disagree - most city subreddits are pretty hands off and they get overrun by people coming from alt-right subs who don't even live in the city talking about crime.

Moderation often improves quality. It can also be bad, but is not universally so.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#292

Post by whimsicalism »

gkoberger wrote: post #138
barbazoo wrote: post #100

What the hell does a site like Reddit do with almost half a billion dollars?! That's insane.

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…

No offense - but the /r/sanfrancisco sub is basically a dumpster fire of trolls and stuff.

The endless crime-posting is exhausting, it is rapidly turning into nextdoor.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#293

Post by jasondigitized »

Why does Reddit need funding? Legitimate question. What are they going to spend this money on? A direct ad sales team? I would assume it takes a somewhat small engineering and DevOps team to keep it running. Is there a huge roadmap of features that requiring $100m in engineering?

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#294

Post by shitloadofbooks »

techrat wrote: post #270
themanmaran wrote: post #7

I'm honestly surprised to learn that Reddit is still VC dependant. Seems strange to me that a 16 year old company still isn't self sustaining.

> Seems strange to me that a 16 year old company still isn't self sustaining. Based on Reddit's own information, it would appear that they are. Picking just one frontpage sub, /r/News, you can check the guilded page and see: > gildings in this subreddit have paid for 142.83 years of server time pics? 291.80 years. funny? 364.09 years. aww? 624.43 years. askreddit? 724.03 years. politics? 314.93 years. That's 6 subs.…

You do realize reddit is a company that hires humans, right, and those humans need to be paid for their time with money?

You're making a huge leap about profitability based on a fraction of their running costs.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#295

Post by tpush »

bserge wrote: post #195
pageandrew wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been permanently banned from almost all of the top COVID related subs for daring to discuss disallowed topics, like the Wuhan lab, as well as expressing anti-lockdown sentiments. My appeals have been instantly denied as well. I understand the idea that subreddits are user-run communities and should be able to self-moderate, but there are a couple problems with this: 1. Reddit claims to be the "front page of the…

I wrote my suicide note on my own subreddit and got banned (site wide) for threatening violence. Err, OK, gotta find a safer place for that. Sadly, as you might be able to tell, I wasn't able to do it. It's terrifying. Also why should I die while worse people live? Gotta do something about them before going myself, d'uh.

Are you announcing a murder-suicide here? @dang

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#296

Post by easytiger »

jasondigitized wrote: post #293

Why does Reddit need funding? Legitimate question. What are they going to spend this money on? A direct ad sales team? I would assume it takes a somewhat small engineering and DevOps team to keep it running. Is there a huge roadmap of features that requiring $100m in engineering?

Pockets

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#297

Post by amanaplanacanal »

13415 wrote: post #129
zozbot234 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit is more forum than social network Reddit is mostly cat pictures and funny memes at scale, even calling it a "forum" is a stretch. More like a glorified image board.

I've started to add +Reddit in Google searches to obtain useful information when I need to know something. With all those fake top 10 list sites and paid reviews showing up in searches, Reddit is pretty much the only place left for getting reliable product information, for example. There are friendly and knowledgeable subreddits about all kinds of topics.

Yeah. Doing a Google search for best anything returns pages of content farms and Pinterest links. Remember when Google search used to be good?

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#298

Post by sjg007 »

mistermann wrote: post #287
sjg007 wrote: post #278

Cool. I remember when Reddit launched and everyone was trying to figure out how they would make money. It looks like they made $100m last year so as long as they keep engagement up and optimize I think things will go well. I was surprised at only 50m DAUs.. that means there is a lot of growth left especially internationally. One thing to ask is, what problem does Reddit solve? And to stretch an anthropomorphism: if R…

> One thing to ask is, what problem does Reddit solve? Possibly more interesting to ask: what problems might Reddit plausibly create? My first instinct for answers: social polarization and mass distortion of reality perception.

Well it certainly amplifies it but apart from comments it’s not an original content producer. Polarization in the US is manufactured by politicians and monetized by big business donors. This is why it’s Fox News entertainment. In the past we had yellow journalism etc…. It has certainly reduced the cost and effort to reach a lot of people and achieve critical mass. But any community has this. My local school board meetings are filled with covid deniers, anti maskers. These are akin to book banners and the whole critical race theory conspiracy. It’s all manufactured for political aim.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#299

Post by loktarogar »

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…

I wanted to run Reddit ads after to target users of a certain game after a big expansion launch. My site had a bunch of time-sensitive information that 1) was useful to the users of a specific subreddit, 2) would be useful for a week or so after the launch, 3) while it had a successful submission, I wanted to promote that submission for about a week afterwards to more people could see it.

I put up a reddit ad for that submission and Reddit took 4 weeks to approve it. At that point, there was no point running the ad anymore.

Another time I wanted to advertise to a new game that had a brand new subreddit to match but it was huge - 100k plus users in a week. Reddit simply wouldn't permit me to advertise to it because it was new.

In my (limited) experience it feels like Reddit isn't making the money it could be because it doesn't want to.

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