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Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

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Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#111

Post by si1entstill »

replicatorblog wrote: post #14

It might soon be time for The Oatmeal to add a new panel to his famous "Digg vs. Reddit" cartoon: https://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter_2012/reddit_digg I love Reddit and have no problem with this move in principle, though I do wish there was at least one social platform that would try to follow the Craigslist ethos and stay "proudly independent." I'm not a big believer in crypto, but Reddit seems like one of th…

(on the crypto note) is something like https://steemit.com/ what you are envisioning?

It does seem like we are stuck in a cycle where we are super into platforms until they become large and too beholden to investors, then we swap. Some kind of truly community driven (open source) federated service does seem like a real answer to this problem. Maybe we will all end up on Mastodon-like services pretty soon.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#112

Post by dawnerd »

dx87 wrote: post #79
komali2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: "Download the app!" gates, banners, etc. Medium does this too. Why? What's the business reason? What does a native app provide the business that a mobile website doesn't?

Forcing people to use a native app means they can inject ads without having to worry about being blocked by a browser extension.

And don’t forget tracking scripts too. Another huge reason.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#113

Post by cm2012 »

jandrese wrote: post #68
callinyouin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this, too. If you have the right connections and can pull down a bunch of VC money year after year for your business it seems you could go your entire career without having to generate profit!

It seems crazy to me that Reddit can't figure out a way to become profitable. Facebook is hilariously profitable on a fairly similar business model for example. It's not like Reddit is without ads, nor are they lacking in data they could sell (albeit not as high of quality as Facebook or Google). They even sell "Reddit gold" for real money. Maybe they have exceptionally high operating costs? Or are they just really b…

I can answer this as an advertiser. Most reddit users don't log in or subscribe to subreddits, and thus reddit has a very small targetable userbase. Like, if I want to serve an ad to business owners, I can serve it to subscribers to /r/smallbusiness but that audience exhausts very quickly.

All of FB's users are logged in and can be targeted by interest.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#114

Post by gammateam »

minimaxir wrote: post #16

I've been a fan of Reddit for a very long time (as the amount of data science work I've done with their data can attest to), but lately it seems like the incentives between Reddit as a business and Reddit as a community leader are not aligned, and that is a problem. The increasing amount of dark patterns Reddit has been employing lately is concerning. (recent example: Reddit now gates content in mobile Safari to push…

they also hate TOR users

the captcha is not completable, and when it is, the next section says the captcha signature is invalid

but you can always circumvent that with a clearnet VPN, just need to isolate its use to just reddit, that session.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#115

Post by scrooched_moose »

KindOne wrote: post #92
aluminussoma wrote: post #34

Ever since the site redesign in May, popularity has been falling (source: Alexa Top Websites): https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com I hope that affected the amount of money they raised. As a reddit fan, the site redesign has not been pleasant. The mobile experience, too.

You can disable the redesign. Its also somewhere in the preferences. http://old.reddit.com

But "somehow" it forgets my preference constantly and I have to 'opt-out of redesign' several times a day.

And, if you follow any links, it sends you straight back to the new version.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#116

Post by jakebasile »

aluminussoma wrote: post #34

Ever since the site redesign in May, popularity has been falling (source: Alexa Top Websites): https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com I hope that affected the amount of money they raised. As a reddit fan, the site redesign has not been pleasant. The mobile experience, too.

At least we can continue to use old.reddit.com for now on desktop. On mobile, I refuse to use their own app since it's hot garbage and stick to Apollo, which works pretty well so far.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#117

Post by wyldfire »

wowzap wrote: post #17
brettgriffin wrote: post #5

I've given up most social media but have become obsessed with Reddit. No matter how much I use it, I'm constantly amazed that I can be immediately connected with the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic people on virtually any subject I care about. I'm not a fan of the redesign or their push to look at other social media platforms, but I understand the direction they have to go to build revenue.

Seriously? I just assume most people on there are in high school, it seems like a place where the lowest common denominator ideas get upvoted and everything else gets nailed.

Your reddit experience varies wildly based on which subreddits you subscribe to. If you don't have an account, you're likely seeing the unwashed masses.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#118

Post by nopriorarrests »

jandrese wrote: post #68
callinyouin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about this, too. If you have the right connections and can pull down a bunch of VC money year after year for your business it seems you could go your entire career without having to generate profit!

It seems crazy to me that Reddit can't figure out a way to become profitable. Facebook is hilariously profitable on a fairly similar business model for example. It's not like Reddit is without ads, nor are they lacking in data they could sell (albeit not as high of quality as Facebook or Google). They even sell "Reddit gold" for real money. Maybe they have exceptionally high operating costs? Or are they just really b…

Consider a few cases.

- you want to advertise B2B software to small/medium business owners.

- you want to advertise expensive fashion items to 20-35 y.o. women in NY/CT.

Will you pick FB or reddit? And then yes, lack of brand safety for non-targeted ads.

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#119

Post by MrMember »

joelthelion wrote: post #76
aluminussoma wrote: post #34

Ever since the site redesign in May, popularity has been falling (source: Alexa Top Websites): https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com I hope that affected the amount of money they raised. As a reddit fan, the site redesign has not been pleasant. The mobile experience, too.

That's good news. I hope it makes them rethink their relationship to their users. Well, otherwise, tildes is looking great.

Every time I see someone mention tildes as an alternative to reddit I check it out to see if I can create an account yet. For [edit] almost a year now the answer has been "no."

Re: Reddit is raising a huge round near a $3B valuation

#120

Post by anonytrary »

The HackerNews community is more appreciative of these problems than Reddit's. But Reddit will suffer from the same problems that Facebook and Twitter suffer from, if not already. Reddit users are easily manipulated by engineered content and engineering content on Reddit is not hard if you know what you're doing. Evidently, there are power-users on Reddit (e.g. /u/GallowBoob) who know exactly how Reddit ticks and can get practically anything to the front page in front of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

Reddit is huge -- I suspect they will be bigger than Facebook (maybe not in valuation, but usage) in the next 7 years and these problems will only be exacerbated. Facebook isn't what 12-13 year olds today are interested in. Reddit is a more apt model for online discourse and culture than Facebook ever was.

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