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Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

blog.reddit.com

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Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#21

Post by danso »

Whatever you think of @reddit's march towards decline...this was my favorite part of the blog post...and something I hope rings with other popular sites:

Here’s a list of things we don’t (and won’t) do for traffic:

We don't get traffic through ads.

We don’t participate in any traffic trading.

We don’t email our users (unless they choose to enter an email and then forget their password).

We don’t harass users to sign up.

We don’t harass users to invite their friends.

We don’t pester you to download our app.

We don’t use slideshows and other pageview gimmicks.

We don't know anything about SEO.

We don't integrate with Facebook.

We don't even link to our Facebook or twitter accounts.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#22

Post by bialecki »

raldi wrote: post #3

To put that in perspective, Flickr is at 1.5B. LinkedIn, 2.7B. Edit: I'd like to go on record with a bet that by the end of the year, reddit will get more traffic than LinkedIn (which currently has a market cap in excess of $6,000,000,000). Anyone want to bet against me? https://plus.google.com/u/1/109191382354704910211/posts/ZRiC...

A lot of LinkedIn's value isn't the ads (although their a revenue stream), it's the data they have. This is why they recently started offering an integration with Salesforce to offer more data on leads. Having higher quality on people and how you're connected to them in the social graph is incredibly powerful.

Reddit doesn't really have anything like that. They may be able to monetize in other ways beyond advertising, but LinkedIn is already generating revenue well beyond ads.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#23

Post by ig1 »

danso wrote: post #21

Whatever you think of @reddit's march towards decline...this was my favorite part of the blog post...and something I hope rings with other popular sites: Here’s a list of things we don’t (and won’t) do for traffic: We don't get traffic through ads. We don’t participate in any traffic trading. We don’t email our users (unless they choose to enter an email and then forget their password). We don’t harass users to sign…

If you're one of the 3-5 sites a user goes to everyday, you have a completely different set of rules from everyone else

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#24

Post by [deleted] »

fletchowns wrote: post #5
leak wrote: post #2

That's incredible. Congrats!! :) Are we allowed to ask how/if they're making money?

I'm guessing they are making money (ads & reddit gold) since they have been able to make a few hires recently. Unfortunately the overall quality of content on reddit has really gone downhill. Even after unsubscribing to the subreddits that were the worst offenders, it's really hard to find interesting stuff with meaningful discussions. These days I'm almost embarrassed to tell people I use reddit.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#25

Post by 27182818284 »

cryptoz wrote: post #10
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is the new Digg. Groupthink on an epic scale, linkbait headlines, and hordes of people that want to feel angry about things so they can at least feel something . (Just like old media!) Now, there is some good content on there, but there's way too much crap to wade through in order to find it.

Former and active NASA engineers hang out in r/space sometimes. r/askscience is full of incredible questions and smart answers. r/science recently started enforcing stricter standards and now has plenty of amazing discussion and knowledge moving around. r/physics is the same. It all depends on where you go, and I strongly disagree that finding those places is difficult.

This is a good point, you just have to leave the mainpageish universe completely. /r/linguistics has interesting stuff. Similarly the subreddit for creating your own language is also neat, but these are niche, small reddits. The big reddits have been taken over by group think and are difficult to read and often boring.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#26

Post by jonknee »

raldi wrote: post #19
jonknee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LinkedIn's audience/traffic is far more valuable though, so I'm not sure why you added the bit about their market cap. Reddit users by and large are there for entertainment and don't click on ads. LinkedIn's users are there for work and by and large are the ads.

Reddit doesn't discuss profitability, but note that the Cheezburger Network has been profitable since inception: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1857411 If they can make money off ads, what makes you think reddit can't?

No one said reddit lacks any revenue. Comparing LNKD's market cap to reddit based on page views is what I took exception to--they're in no way related.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#27

Post by nostromo »

jonknee wrote: post #17
raldi wrote: post #3

To put that in perspective, Flickr is at 1.5B. LinkedIn, 2.7B. Edit: I'd like to go on record with a bet that by the end of the year, reddit will get more traffic than LinkedIn (which currently has a market cap in excess of $6,000,000,000). Anyone want to bet against me? https://plus.google.com/u/1/109191382354704910211/posts/ZRiC...

LinkedIn's audience/traffic is far more valuable though, so I'm not sure why you added the bit about their market cap. Reddit users by and large are there for entertainment and don't click on ads. LinkedIn's users are there for work and by and large are the ads.

I don't think reddit is really trying so hard to monitize. (And given the nature of their user base, maybe it's the smartest thing to do.)

The banner ad unit on the right of reddit is almost never running a real ad. It's always an ad for a subreddit or a pretty picture. That one single spot at $1 cpm at 2b pageviews could net reddit $2mm a month. That's a lot of money to be left on the table.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#29

Post by alex_c »

[deleted] wrote: post #24
fletchowns wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing they are making money (ads & reddit gold) since they have been able to make a few hires recently. Unfortunately the overall quality of content on reddit has really gone downhill. Even after unsubscribing to the subreddits that were the worst offenders, it's really hard to find interesting stuff with meaningful discussions. These days I'm almost embarrassed to tell people I use reddit.

[deleted]

I know, I know, "things were better back in the day", but the Reddification of Reddit has really accelerated over the past year and a bit. Between rage comics, advice animals, and the Atheism subreddit, the default front page is a very different place than it was a year(?) ago.

There is still a lot of value in the smaller subreddits, and that's really Reddit's saving grace. As a whole, however, the site is pretty cringe-worthy.

Re: Reddit traffic doubles in less than a year, to 2 billion monthly pageviews

#30

Post by rudiger »

danso wrote: post #21

Whatever you think of @reddit's march towards decline...this was my favorite part of the blog post...and something I hope rings with other popular sites: Here’s a list of things we don’t (and won’t) do for traffic: We don't get traffic through ads. We don’t participate in any traffic trading. We don’t email our users (unless they choose to enter an email and then forget their password). We don’t harass users to sign…

Regarding the "decline" of Reddit: any site that gets 2 billion monthly page views is going to be wholly different from its incipient form of several years ago. Surely the users of Reddit who pine for its past have many alternatives today.
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