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Reddit raises $410M in new funding

nytimes.com

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Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#381

Post by whall6 »

loktarogar wrote: post #299
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…

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 tha…

Strange that they make it difficult to pay them

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#382

Post by jazzyjackson »

TchoBeer wrote: post #242
edoceo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have any data to suggest that a more frustrating viewing experience boosts engagement? Intuitively it should do the opposite.

It's "slot machine" psychology, sometimes it doesn't work so you have to pull it again. Being unpredictable makes the dopamine rush stronger when it works and gives you what you want. search for "slot machine social media" and you'll find a good deal of coverage.

This usually applies to what posts are in an algorithmic feed, but I guess not having the feed show up at all is a fresh innovation. Twitter and Reddit both do a lot of just giving up and saying "woops, couldn't load that link you just clicked" as if that was a real problem. Really? what, the database wasn't there when you looked? Try again yourself, why make me click refresh?

Another anecdata - search on facebook doesn't work for finding stuff in someone's timeline, so I've spent many minutes scrolling down someone's page trying to find a post. It's frustrating but I don't quit, and I'm sure metrics and impressions look great (no click through tho)

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#383

Post by dang »

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.

I'm glad you're here. If there's any chance that connecting would be helpful, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and I'll send you my personal email.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#384

Post by dang »

tpush wrote: post #295
bserge wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I understand how alarming it is when people post on such an extremely painful topic, but probably this is a place to recall the site guideline that says "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." I can think of other things bserge might have meant.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

p.s. @dang is a no-op, so if you want to alert me/us to something, please email hn@ycombinator.com. I just happened to run across your comment.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#385

Post by [deleted] »

tech_tuna wrote: post #327
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?

Hiring, they are on a hiring tear.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#386

Post by Seattle3503 »

heywintermute wrote: post #88
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…

>Or is there something intrinsic to Reddit traffic that makes it difficult to monetize? Reddit is also home to an enormous amount of porn and nsfw content in general which probably hurts this. They only just started preventing sexually explicit subreddits/content from appearing on r/all six months ago[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/lhnvok/removing_...

The NSFW part of reddit is becoming like backpage. people arent just selling videos and pics, but encounters too.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#387

Post by jazzyjackson »

paxys wrote: post #126
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…

There is a LOT standing in the way of monetization for Reddit: - younger user base (so less disposable income) - loose concept of user identity, so can't tailor ads - more corpoarate and mainstream advertisers tend to stay away due to the nature of the community and content shared - primary usage is on web rather than mobile apps All of these are fixable, but the question is can they do so without alienating their us…

Can't tailor ads? Loose concept of user identity? I would think having a list of every subreddit a user subscribes to would give you a good indication of what interests they have! But from reading this thread it sounds like Reddit makes it difficult to choose which subreddits you want to advertise to.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#388

Post by pitterpatter »

spookthesunset wrote: post #332
warning26 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 marke…

Naw. The new Reddit design is much nicer than the old. There, I said it. It is much easier to use. It took them a while to iron out the bugs but it is way better. Now their new mobile app video player… ho boy…..

> Naw. The new Reddit design is much nicer than the old. There, I said it. It is much easier to use. It took them a while to iron out the bugs but it is way better.

I'm curious what you like better in the new design? I personally find the floating bar at the top annoying. Not to mention the fact you have to click another button to actually see all the comments. Not to mention my biggest annoyance, clicking on the empty space on the sides when viewing a post will navigate to the subreddit?? Why?

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#390

Post by jazzyjackson »

PEJOE wrote: post #34
nickthemagicman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User Engagement is inversely correlated to monetization.

Can you please provide more evidence to support this claim? From where I'm sitting, TikTok's and Instagram's businesses would disagree strongly.

I would say, given a static audience of 1 million people, that user engagement goes down the more you advertise (if 1/4 of my feed is ads, that's 25% less actual content to interact with).

TikTok and Instagram have been able to grow larger and larger audiences despite the pressure of ads (and honestly I know when I tried TikTok last there weren't any ads yet, I wonder what portion of an hour is taken up by ads and how long is it til it reaches television levels of ~25%) - as long as audience growth outpaces users losing interest, you can keep introducing ads, but you can't do it forever.

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