181–190 of 376 posts
What if Google required signing in to search?
(G) Google way to restrict search to signed-in users: If you're on Chrome (biggest market share) and you're signed into Chrome (big share also) then you auto-sign into your google account. PS: Not sure if they rollback on this change.
Why the (G) way works? Because it's non-obtrusive way to force user to login.
Hmm, I just checked myself, and I was able to read comment threads perfectly fine without being logged in, on both a desktop computer and a smartphone. Obviously old.reddit.com doesn't have these issues, but I'm pretty sure the session on smartphone used the new site, and that let me keep reading without any interruptions too. Either way, if Reddit does this, that's it. Not returning to the site. The internet doesn't…
Unfortunately the way things are going I can see them getting rid of old.reddit.com and i.reddit.com, at which point I think I'll also stop visiting the website (the mobile website is atrocious and I'm not going to install a dedicated app in order to read a forum).
I use Reddit mainly on phone, via browser because I use tabs and old.reddit.com because its the most content dense view and and is the fastest view (no stupid js loading icon thankyou). I'm not there, like I'm not here, for the design. I'm visiting for the content.
Reddit.com front page takes about three seconds to load with stupid blocking js, old takes about second before I can start consuming. Apps are no better.
If you have a reddit account and go to the site not logged in the site looks like trash. The articles seem worse than what you see when logged in. Similar to YouTube if you aren't logged in you see the trashiest videos on the "unlogged in" main page. I don't know if that's on purpose or it's just like that. But there seems to be a big difference in the quality depending on whether you are logged in or not. As for the…
> As for the reddit site itself I wonder what is the ratio of old.reddit viewers vs reddit viewers are. I moderate a top 100 sub and if the built-in stats are to be believed, the recent breakdown is something like: = Pageviews = 40% apps 28% old reddit 17% mobile reddit 15% new reddit = Unique visits = 41% mobile reddit 27% new reddit 24% apps 8% old reddit This doesn't really capture the ratio of contributors who us…
I guess I shouldn't be so afraid of old going away soon then :)
I'm using old Reddit, on mobile.
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I wish Reddit had gone the way of VLC -- keep your core product, the thing people liked, and stop chasing profits. Why do so many of these companies fall to the profit motive and lose their "soul"?
Paying staff? Hosting costs? Recouping money for the time they spent on it?
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> because that content can be a bit salty. AKA the fate of every site that is a collection of usergenerated content with an ad based business model. If you want to get serious about monetization then you need to actively curtail any content that is not "advertiser friendly" which in most cases means alienating your core content generators, case in point, Tumblr.
YouTube is starting to do this as well. For example they've made it so that accounts with less than 1000 subscribers can't do live streams any more. Not coincidentally, 1000 subscribers is the threshold for monetization (i.e., when ads start getting shown on all the account's videos). A lot of smaller channels are upset about it, since live streams were one of the ways they were /getting/ to 1000 subscribers in the f…
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> but I'm not sure what people could move to if Reddit becomes non-viable. but I'm not sure what people could move to if Reddit becomes non-viable. In the past, a lot of non-technical people posted to usenet newsgroups and connected to IRC for online chat.
How non-technical are we talking here, though?
IRC and USENET are simpler than that.
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Paying staff? Hosting costs? Recouping money for the time they spent on it?
They could have followed the Craig's List model of monetizing just enough to cover all the costs and keep the site running, without overly focusing on revenue growth sacrificing what made the site great in the first place.
https://www.businessinsider.com/craig-newmark-craigslist-fou...
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It's the same thing that happens to all "free"/ad-sponsored/VC-backed services. Unless you're FB or Twitter or YouTube, your ads aren't profitable enough to run your business. The business model is unviable unless you get that big. So you lose a bunch of money until you find a way to monetize or close. This always takes the form of user-hostile anti-features. Currently that's forcing users into your special apps, whe…
I call this the dismal equilibrium . Anything free that provides value is, in brute economic terms, mis-priced. Thus, it tends to degrade due to attempts at monetization until a balance is reached between its inherent value and the pain one must endure to use/access it.
Is this necessarily a bad thing? Or are you saying this is basically an arbitrage opportunity waiting for someone to exploit it?
How would we structure something free that provides value, and keep it free in the long term without degradation?