I wonder how the original founders of Reddit feel about selling out so early. They sold to Conde Naste for $20m. Now, it's worth 1000x more. I'm sure there are ways to rationalize it as a good decision -- i.e. $10m is a life changing sum of money. But, I wonder if, as a general rule, it's better to only sell half your stake to avoid upside regret.
Reddit files to go public
401–410 of 834 posts
Re: Reddit files to go public
#402Good! I‘ll go long on them. Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session. Heck, I get my HN updates from Reddit now. Facebook/Instagram/TikTok are nothing like this in that the info you get is wholly dependent on your social graph. Twitter has very high quality content…
Genuinely curious...are you old enough to remember Digg and what happened to it?
I don't mean that to be patronizing...but I remember being on Digg and Reddit being a weird alternative. And after a series of huge mistakes, almost overnight Reddit was flooded with users and Digg relegated to nothing.
It really opened my eyes to how quickly an empire built only on its users can disappear.
Re: Reddit files to go public
#403Good! I‘ll go long on them. Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session. Heck, I get my HN updates from Reddit now. Facebook/Instagram/TikTok are nothing like this in that the info you get is wholly dependent on your social graph. Twitter has very high quality content…
Problem with Reddit is being very replaceable. People don't want to lose their facebook/instagram/linkedin page because it has their content and also personal connections. Profiles on Reddit are more like Digg / Slashdot / Kuro5hin - few care about losing their post history and connections so when a competing site comes in with better features (fewer ads / different site-wide moderation approach / not looking so awful by default ) people will just move there.
Re: Reddit files to go public
#404Good! I‘ll go long on them. Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session. Heck, I get my HN updates from Reddit now. Facebook/Instagram/TikTok are nothing like this in that the info you get is wholly dependent on your social graph. Twitter has very high quality content…
I have less rosy predictions about what this IPO will do. I doubt it will fund better search. In fact, I’m thinking it will push it more into the ‘relevancy’ territory where you get a slurry of slightly related results, incoherent reco sys content curation, and deviation from vote and time decay ranking in favor of inscrutable algorithmic content feed ordering. All these things will make Reddit more successful from a…
> I doubt it will fund better search
While I think better search would be great for users, I'm convinced Reddit doesn't actually want better search.
Good search means I can easily find an old post with the answer to my questions. Bad search means I end up going to a subreddit and posting the same question that's been asked 15 times. Even if it's removed by the mods, it'll likely get one or two comments and votes before it does.
Bad search drives more engagement.
Re: Reddit files to go public
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a lot lower than I expected. I can't stand the new UI. I guess most traffic is from people without accounts though.
One of the most important lessons about mass-use computer tools is that overwhelmingly people use defaults . I first realised this back in the 1990s when shitty default monitor resolution and refresh rate would literally inflict pain (headaches and eyestrain). MS Windows 95 / 98 shipped with a default of 800x600@60Hz. This was on CRTs, many viewed under office flourescent lighting, which gave rise to a bloody awful f…
I agree with your general point, but the specific example isn't as egregious as you make it out to be. In the mid-90s, protocols for determining supported monitor resolutions were just coming out. The first widely-adopted protocol was DDC2, which wasn't standardized until mid-1996. Had Windows 95 or 98 defaulted to 1024x768@72Hz, a significant fraction of users would upgrade and find their display didn't work. To get a usable system, they'd have to figure out how to boot into safe mode and manually tweak the display settings.
Re: Reddit files to go public
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
My personal last strands of hope for Reddit are - their API which is still available to public without hoops to jump through. The downvote button. And the usabillity of old.reddit. Some communities that are still well moderated and strikes a good balance between open to questions and not open to stupid questions. Beyond that I stopped using mainstream reddit as a value source.
I only last as long there as old.reddit.com does.
I don't know how anyone enjoys the new design, old.reddit.com I can browse so much more effectively.
Re: Reddit files to go public
#407Good! I‘ll go long on them. Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session. Heck, I get my HN updates from Reddit now. Facebook/Instagram/TikTok are nothing like this in that the info you get is wholly dependent on your social graph. Twitter has very high quality content…
Genuinely curious...are you old enough to remember Digg and what happened to it? I don't mean that to be patronizing...but I remember being on Digg and Reddit being a weird alternative. And after a series of huge mistakes, almost overnight Reddit was flooded with users and Digg relegated to nothing. It really opened my eyes to how quickly an empire built only on its users can disappear.
> It really opened my eyes to how quickly an empire built only on its users can disappear.
Reminds me of the Freenode IRC network which pretty much stopped existing[1][2] overnight.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenode#Ownership_change_and_...
[2] https://gist.github.com/prawnsalad/4ca20da6c2295ddb06c164679...
Re: Reddit files to go public
#408I can see this as a bad thing in the following way:
1. They will most likely start making their API unusable similar to what Twitter did. Their Chat is already not available via the API and they are no longer open sourced.
2. They will most likely start banning porn or make it very hard to access (though Twitter seems to still allow porn accounts so maybe I am wrong here?).
3. MORE dark patterns in design. Their website is already super slow, tons of white space requiring extra scrolling (so more ads), needs extra clicks and too many ads which look like posts. Their site on mobile is useless and keeps asking to open in app. Ad blocker and 3rd party app solves this which gives them more incentive to break the API.
4. More censorship of anything remotely offensive.
Re: Reddit files to go public
#409Good! I‘ll go long on them. Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session. Heck, I get my HN updates from Reddit now. Facebook/Instagram/TikTok are nothing like this in that the info you get is wholly dependent on your social graph. Twitter has very high quality content…
> Reddit is the ONLY place on the Internet where you can simultaneously watch garbage recycled content from TikTok and visit extremely-niche and highly knowledgeable communities in the same session. Sounds similar to Twitter and YouTube.
I have yet to find any quality content on twitter.
Re: Reddit files to go public
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
My personal last strands of hope for Reddit are - their API which is still available to public without hoops to jump through. The downvote button. And the usabillity of old.reddit. Some communities that are still well moderated and strikes a good balance between open to questions and not open to stupid questions. Beyond that I stopped using mainstream reddit as a value source.
The new largest share holders will likely coerce the removal of all three along with any other vestigial remnant that is enjoyable and is still maintained in the name of eventually maximizing their profits. For me the biggest loss will probably be when the board of directors demand that the RSS feeds stop working.
Just don't remove old reddit and I will be fine