Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

recode.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 451 posts

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

#151

Post by simonswords82 »

chaostheory wrote: post #98
synunlimited wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the are already phasing out custom subreddit CSS so I don't think it will be part of the new design. https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/66q4is/the_web_red...

making reddit more homogeneous for everyone will probably be a mistake. customization was really what made everyone flock to reddit post digg

Really? I can't stand the custom CSS, feels like every sub Reddit is a unique website. I've had custom CSS disabled for as long as I've used CSS, I thought it was a terrible idea.

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

#152

Post by apercu »

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…

I have no idea why I care about the NFL, but I have been going to profootballtalk.com daily for years. NBC partnered with a bunch of independent sports blogs like PFT a few years ago. They then rolled 'em all out on a new redesign. I stopped visiting after the first couple tries, then PFT backed out of the redesign and went back to their previous (crappy, old) layout. The other blogs I used to go to (pro hockeytalk and pro basketball talk) didn't and I've never returned.

What I like about reddit and HN (more so) is the minimal, fast, low overhead experience. It's like the original slashdot.

I hate the new animated, ad heavy slow web.

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

#153

Post by kbenson »

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…

The moment they make reddit less of a bulletin board is the moment I imagine I'll end up using it less. Partially because it will be less useful for finding what I want on there easily, and partially because it will be less useful for what everyone else wants, so they'll post less, so there will be less to find. The subs that want more graphical options seem largely able to do so with customizations for their subreddits.

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

#155

Post by danielharrison »

scierama wrote: post #72

I don't get why a company who keeps the entire Internet talking on a daily basis is only worth less than $2B but a company that lets teens take snaphots and share them is worth many billions.

You don't understand? It's like this: valuation is based off how many users x how much each user is worth (in terms of targeted advertising).

Reddit has a lot of users but it's hard to build user profiles for targeted advertising as there's a lot of anonymity and shot posting.

Teen snapshot sites are worth more because because its real people, posting real things. That data is valuable.

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

#156

Post by JosephLark »

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'm not surprised about the total rewrite at all. I've mentioned before about how reddit appears to only be hiring for Node.js and React.

I am not enthusiastic about the redesign at all. From what I've seen so far, it will be uninspired, blocky, and slow.

There is a preview of the direction here, on the new profiles page [0]. This may be because I'm not logged in at the moment, but it does seem a little faster than it was when they first launched it at least, but it is still slow. As an example of the slowness that is to come, click from 'Posts' to 'Comments' and watch it blank out before loading in new content.

They "improved" something else (user reports) recently [1], and again the redesign is uninspired, blocky, slow, and more painful to actually use. What really gets me about reddit is that in a thread like that they get tons of (free) feedback, and don't bother responding to any of it. The admin that submitted that thread is down in the depths of those comments replying to a meme post instead of any of the feedback. Many mods are against the change, and they don't get a reply either.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/user/spez

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/6oi3jw/improvement...

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

#157

Post by conception »

herrkanin wrote: post #90
debacle wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The free speech part of Voat is great. I don't think it's so much overrun as that the only people there are the ones with radical opinions. I wouldn't use Voat for other reasons, but that's just me.

I will never understand this romanticising of free speech on private platforms. Why would a service that cares about its members _ever_ implement free speech policies? That's just asking for assholes. If anything, popular services should have _more_ filtering and removal of asshole users.

Exactly. The best subreddits on Reddit are the ones heavily moderated like /r/science.

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

#158

Post by danso »

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…

I'd say Facebook has done a decent job with redesigns, given the new features they roll out to such a huge user base. The advent of the timeline in 2011, and then the single-column simplification a couple years later, seemed to me to be pretty successful https://www.dailydot.com/debug/old-facebook-profiles-news-fe...

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

#159

Post by kbenson »

biggerbistro wrote: post #132
potatolicious wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately Voat got overrun with Reddit's least desirable people and content, as you've already seen. More than that though, Voat doesn't seem to have any significant funding or even team behind it, so even if people do end up flocking to a site primarily known for its ardent bigotry, it's unlikely Voat can withstand a large spike in its traffic and scale to even a fraction of Reddit-level.

Isn't it obvious that Voat would be filled with the more extreme forms of speech given that they are the ones not allowed on Reddit? Faulting Voat for that reason is kind of a clueless thing to do. If walking your dog becomes politically unfashionable tomorrow I'm sure they would be the next to migrate to Voat.

I think if there's a mass exodus from Reddit and the choice is Voat or something not Voat, the majority will choose not-Voat. If Voat hadn't absorbed much of the subreddits rejected for extreme and hate speech, then it would have a chance at growing with a more natural makeup. As it is now, any community that moved there would have to accept that there's a much higher percentage of extremist views there than present in reality. Initial adoption of a larger more general set of communities will be a hard sell for those communities.

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

#160

Post by arca_vorago »

Good. Its about time for reddit to wither enough for a more user focused platform yo take it place.

Its the ol model I see time and time again. Site pulls in users by being generally awesome and doing things like not advertising, not censoring, etc. Then the site grows. Businesses start astroturfing because they can't advertise. Then the company slowly starts walking back on everything that made it special, for example, advertising, all while rapidly expanding the personell while hardly doing anything to improve the site for users. Aaaand right when advertising dollars are the best, try to capitalize or take public, followed by a big sale/buyout, and finally within finite time users feel betrayed and it withers and dies, but not until a competitor starts where they did, and usually follows the same path.

I stopped participating in reddit about the time sockpuppetry really started killing my favorite sub's, and personally I think the first and most greiveous mistake was moving away from text only.

The problem as it stands is none of the competitors stand out. I think hn is best, but scope is limited, /. does something's interesting but failed and lost its user base. Voat is too much of a reddit clone, and I just don't get the appeal of steemit etc.

Personally, we need to sit down and figure a better way to measure user worth. Right now I am leaning to a Slashdot style moderation/tagging system, along with a limited input per user at varying thresholds. Something that really interests be is automating logical maps of comments too.

Post reply on HN