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Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

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Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#141

Post by shawnz »

pmoriarty wrote: post #92
stevenj wrote: post #3

>the company is literally re-writing all of its code Wow. >An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into “cards” with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath. >“We want Reddit to be more visually appealing,” he explained, “so when new users come to Reddit the…

I can't think of a single popular site redesign that actually made the site better. They're almost inevitably worse, usually much worse. A common failing is trying to make the design more shiny and pretty while decreasing functionality, dumbing the site down, adding bloat, and slowing the site down to a crawl. I really hope Reddit does not go down this road, because they really have a good thing going now. It would b…

> A common failing is trying to make the design more shiny and pretty while decreasing functionality, dumbing the site down, adding bloat, and slowing the site down to a crawl.

If you look at the new reddit profiles beta, you will see that it checks all these boxes.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#142

Post by Invictus0 »

I couldn't imagine a more futile investment. Reddit users are notoriously combatant. Ads on reddit have extraordinarily low CTRs. After bumbling around for the last ten years, reddit still doesn't know dollars from doge and is burning cash on ridiculous side projects like its gift exchange and its (already discontinued) entrepreneurship mini-series.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#143

Post by mark_l_watson »

When I talked with Alexis Ohanian (after his talk at Google), I asked him about the switch from Common Lisp years ago. I assume the rewrite will not be in CL! He is a very nice guy and his feelings for social responsibility came through nicely in his talk.

I find Reddit one of the most valuable web sites I use, covering news and tech interests. I wish them well on the infrastructure refresh.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#144

Post by iamatworknow »

mfoy_ wrote: post #4
huebnerob wrote: post #2

Frankly, I love Reddit. If you pick and choose the right communities, it can be an amazing resource for everything from tech discussions, to local news, to emotional support. However, I will strongly agree with the perception problem, there's also a lot of bad on Reddit and its structure as a series of echo chambers doesn't help.

They should invest in some PR to let people know it's a platform, not a monolithic community. Although some people identify as "Redditors" which kind of undermines that point...

I think the same could be said for many websites, especially once they hit a daily active user tipping point and you end up with CNN conflating 4chan's anime board with Anonymous.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#145

Post by cylinder »

celticninja wrote: post #31
stevenj wrote: post #3

>the company is literally re-writing all of its code Wow. >An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into “cards” with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath. >“We want Reddit to be more visually appealing,” he explained, “so when new users come to Reddit the…

Yeah they should learn from digg. I still have thumbnails turned off on Reddit and hate the site when they are visible. Moving further away from a text heavy screen is a bad idea.

Same here. Nine year member, no thumbnails. I'm pretty sure the people running Reddit now aren't even aware that Reddit became prominent only because Digg bungled a redesign that sent users fleeing.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#146

Post by dcole2929 »

virtualized wrote: post #55

But.. but I began to like Reddit. Now they want to take it away from me by destroying it. > It’s going on a hiring spree Ouch. > redesigning its website For no reason other than giving the unnecessary people from the hiring spree something to do. > Huffman would like to end 2017 with around 300 full-time staff The current number of 230 employees is already about ten times too many. What the hell do they need the addi…

For a site with the kind of traffic Reddit has from as many locales as reddit has, 10 people wouldn't even be enough to comfortably cover basic SRE requirements. Forget new features, they would literally spend all of their time just barely keeping the damn thing working. Their would be no admins. No Secret Santa, nor any of the various many things Reddit currently has that requires the support, and more importantly trust, that comes with a full time employee/contact.

Sure, could they do it? Absolutely. But I'd bet a large sum on money that they'd do so poorly.

Also it's important to note that whether you like it or not Reddit is and always has been a business. Being profitable isn't the most important thing right now for reasons, but somehow i doubt investors would be ok with them just punting on the issue forever. They rightly expect a return.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#147

Post by beepboopbeep »

stevenj wrote: post #3

>the company is literally re-writing all of its code Wow. >An early version of the new design, which we saw during our interview, looks similar to Facebook’s News Feed or Twitter’s Timeline: A never-ending feed of content broken up into “cards” with more visuals to lure people into the conversations hidden underneath. >“We want Reddit to be more visually appealing,” he explained, “so when new users come to Reddit the…

Didn't DIGG try a similar approach? I can't quite remember what killed DIGG off for most folks

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#149

Post by t0mbstone »

If you are going to re-design a site like reddit, your best bet is to keep the old version in place, but allow people to also view all of the same content in the "new" design.

For example, release the new design on new.reddit.com and let viewers migrate over to it at their own pace.

Once you have a lot of people using the new reddit instead of the old design, you can migrate the old reddit to old.reddit.com and put the new design up as the default.

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T GET RID OF THE CURRENT DESIGN, until you have adoption for the new design. Period. If you simply replace the old with the new, reddit is as good as dead.

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