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Reddit needs help

blog.reddit.com

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Re: Reddit needs help

#111

Post by ascott »

jedberg wrote: post #104
ww520 wrote: post #86

Time to hire some business folks? Really, now it is not the time to talk about server expansion or more page views. The highest priority now is monetization. They need to come up with ways to get paid sufficiently to expand. Here are the things they can do: 1. Place more ads. I don't buy the notion that many reddit users run ad-blockers. Even half of them do, you still get 140M/month page views. 2. Get Google AdSense…

Thanks for the suggestions. Some we have tried, others we would like to, and some are totally new. The big problem is that we spend most of our time just keeping the site up and don't have time to focus on these ideas, and Conde is unwilling to invest. We're hoping the reddit gold money gives us the flexibility to bring in the talent we need to make some of those ideas happen.

I wouldn't mind seeing single sentence google adwords in the comment sections, perhaps 1 for every 30 comments. Bonus points if they got worked into the pun threads.

Re: Reddit needs help

#112

Post by jedberg »

lvecsey wrote: post #33

Can any savings be had by committing to a data center instead of paying the amazon hosting rates? I fear if they're at yet another crunch point, the next one will be too much. Granted the pressure to "do more with less" is always there, but something has to give.

We actually moved from a datacenter to EC2. The problem is we all live in the Bay Area, where data centers cost a lot of money. We can't afford to hire a hand on person in a cheap place, so it turns out EC2 (and other cloud solutions) are just cheaper.

Also, one thing that is nice with EC2 is that we can spin up a lot of big iron when we need to absorb new kinds of traffic. I can't do that in my own datacenter.

Re: Reddit needs help

#113

Post by ilovecomputers »

nostromo wrote: post #77
blhack wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love it if totalfarke...(err, I mean, "reddit gold members") also got labeled (perhaps after a review by a mod or something) as "definitely not spammers". Just today I was being told to wait 10 minutes between postings...even though I'm definitely not a spammer, and have very positive karma (2000 after about 3 months). Personally, I would pay $5/mo for premium reddit.

This sounds like a great way to make money, but a terrible way to prevent spam.

Well how did Metafilter end up with paid membership?

Re: Reddit needs help

#114

Post by Devilboy »

jedberg wrote: post #104
ww520 wrote: post #86

Time to hire some business folks? Really, now it is not the time to talk about server expansion or more page views. The highest priority now is monetization. They need to come up with ways to get paid sufficiently to expand. Here are the things they can do: 1. Place more ads. I don't buy the notion that many reddit users run ad-blockers. Even half of them do, you still get 140M/month page views. 2. Get Google AdSense…

Thanks for the suggestions. Some we have tried, others we would like to, and some are totally new. The big problem is that we spend most of our time just keeping the site up and don't have time to focus on these ideas, and Conde is unwilling to invest. We're hoping the reddit gold money gives us the flexibility to bring in the talent we need to make some of those ideas happen.

You should really get a Flattr button too, it's starting to get traction now.

Re: Reddit needs help

#115

Post by jedberg »

ascott wrote: post #111
jedberg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the suggestions. Some we have tried, others we would like to, and some are totally new. The big problem is that we spend most of our time just keeping the site up and don't have time to focus on these ideas, and Conde is unwilling to invest. We're hoping the reddit gold money gives us the flexibility to bring in the talent we need to make some of those ideas happen.

I wouldn't mind seeing single sentence google adwords in the comment sections, perhaps 1 for every 30 comments. Bonus points if they got worked into the pun threads.

That was actually one of the things we already tried.

I think in a month we made enough for a cup of coffee.

Re: Reddit needs help

#116

Post by Zak »

jedberg wrote: post #105
Zak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a t-shirt from kn0thing at startup school a few years ago, but I can't really see paying for reddit now. I wish them luck in finding a business model that works for them.

> but I can't really see paying for reddit now. If I may ask, what did we do to lose you?

If I had to point to just one thing, it would be that you succeeded. When I joined reddit, I think there may have been more sockpuppets than real users. A great deal of what was posted there satisfied my intellectual curiosity, and when comments were finally added, they tended to be well-reasoned and insightful. The community was small, and mostly populated with people who had interests similar to mine (many came from comp.lang.lisp).

Today's reddit is pretty mainstream, and, aside from a few subreddits, the content doesn't interest me much. The subreddits that do interest me have similar content to HN, and I already find myself spending too much time reading and discussing stories here when I should be working on my product.

I don't think reddit can be "fixed" so that I would return to be a heavy user again, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

Re: Reddit needs help

#117

Post by collint »

Devilboy wrote: post #114
jedberg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the suggestions. Some we have tried, others we would like to, and some are totally new. The big problem is that we spend most of our time just keeping the site up and don't have time to focus on these ideas, and Conde is unwilling to invest. We're hoping the reddit gold money gives us the flexibility to bring in the talent we need to make some of those ideas happen.

You should really get a Flattr button too, it's starting to get traction now.

I really can't approve of this notion more.

Re: Reddit needs help

#118

Post by tb »

jedberg wrote: post #108
shawndrost wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't find a link for this, but one of the employees mentioned that it was related to Conde Nast's arcane rules about buying and managing servers.

It has nothing to do with that. It is simply that EC2 offers us the best bang for the buck for our requirements (one of the main ones being able to spin up a lot of iron very quickly).

May I ask why you don't use another cheaper provider for fixed base load and reserve EC2 for peak load capacity? Is it that the overhead of running on two different providers not worth the money you'd save? Or is this something you've considered doing but haven't had the time to implement yet?

Re: Reddit needs help

#119

Post by jrockway »

ilovecomputers wrote: post #113
nostromo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a great way to make money, but a terrible way to prevent spam.

Well how did Metafilter end up with paid membership?

Metafilter finds unique articles, but the comments are terrible. Non-threaded comment sections only work for 4chan.

Re: Reddit needs help

#120

Post by marilyn »

jedberg wrote: post #104
ww520 wrote: post #86

Time to hire some business folks? Really, now it is not the time to talk about server expansion or more page views. The highest priority now is monetization. They need to come up with ways to get paid sufficiently to expand. Here are the things they can do: 1. Place more ads. I don't buy the notion that many reddit users run ad-blockers. Even half of them do, you still get 140M/month page views. 2. Get Google AdSense…

Thanks for the suggestions. Some we have tried, others we would like to, and some are totally new. The big problem is that we spend most of our time just keeping the site up and don't have time to focus on these ideas, and Conde is unwilling to invest. We're hoping the reddit gold money gives us the flexibility to bring in the talent we need to make some of those ideas happen.

Have you looked into outsourcing some your advertising space to a service like http://buysellads.com ?
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