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

Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

alexa.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 609 posts

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#21

Post by jimmies »

I have recently created a software package and wanted a forum to have my users post "fun" stuff that is not strictly technical since it's sort of a hobby. I have decided that it is way too tedious to host my own forums, so I chose a middle ground that is to create a subreddit. It is working out pretty well.

There are be several reasons that hosting a forum/fanclub on Reddit is better than on Facebook. Facebook mandates real name use, one username for everything that not everyone is comfortable with, I'm sure everyone on HN is already aware of that. But I think there is another subtle reason.

In the past, I have relied on Facebook to host another hobbyist project, and it was super active. I thought what is more convenient than having one place to notify users about the ongoings and stuff and plus having a mobile app that kicks ass, right? It turned out, after a while, the group died. No one would interact with our news anymore, even when we don't spam them with junk news. I think the subtle reasons is that Facebook is way too aggressive on interaction. Maybe something exciting is happening and many people flock to comment on it, and so Facebook spams everyone with notifications and emails about the current ongoing that many of the users don't care about. If a user gets annoyed and decides to mute the group, then I will lose a good, caring person forever. Reddit has no such jealous nudging mechanism, the user has to explicitly check that subreddit to know. So the participation becomes much more passive and the user can choose to update about the ongoings at their own convenience.

It turns out being more gentle for hobbyist groups wins over being aggressive. Not that I only have those two choices, though...

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#22

Post by SquareWheel »

falcon620 wrote: post #10
tammer wrote: post #5

I've recently been thinking that Reddit holds a lot of potential that has yet to be tapped or expired. The recent pivots post CEO change (mobile app, redesign, crackdown on garbage) speak to a future where currently fractured private communities such as those on Discourse or Slack can find a more publicly accessible presence. Facebook Groups, while immensely popular, currently falls into the same opt-in, zero-discove…

Reddit is getting so much usage because it hasn't been monetized yet. At the moment it's quite good free user forum/board/discussion/community-style site. The new design will drive the users who liked that away. They will either eventually scatter away to hundreds of different places, or one or two new companies will take Reddit's current place.

Most users of reddit do not have accounts. Those users have already been using the redesign for some time.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#23

Post by falcon620 »

exelius wrote: post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

Surely it should be possible to run something like Reddit at a profit? Run it with like 50 people. And not necessarily in SF. I think that's doable if you're happy with where the site is, product-wise.

Just googled quickly and found a figure of 250 employees from last year.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#24

Post by GAPAT »

exelius wrote: post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

>Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects

Almost as if toxicity of a person is an integral part of their nature and politically correct spaces are detrimental to the discourse.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#25

Post by woah »

wrinkl3 wrote: post #19
minimaxir wrote: post #7

Looking at Reddit data on BigQuery, the number of sitewide submissions has been growing steadily, despite the continual drama: https://i.imgur.com/V8AptYU.png Query to reproduce: #standardSQL SELECT TIMESTAMP_TRUNC(TIMESTAMP_SECONDS(created_utc), MONTH) as mon, COUNT(*) as num_submissions FROM `fh-bigquery.reddit_posts.*` WHERE (_TABLE_SUFFIX BETWEEN '2016_01' AND '2018_02' OR _TABLE_SUFFIX = 'full_corpus_201512') GR…

The continual drama bothers only a relatively minor group of power users. A lot of newcomers to Reddit are casual submitters who neither know nor care about it.

I think the continual drama mostly bothers non reddit users and reporters

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#26

Post by exelius »

falcon620 wrote: post #23
exelius wrote: post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

Surely it should be possible to run something like Reddit at a profit? Run it with like 50 people. And not necessarily in SF. I think that's doable if you're happy with where the site is, product-wise. Just googled quickly and found a figure of 250 employees from last year.

Right; if you run the Craigslist model.

Reddit has been more interventionist with content, which means they need more people to manage the community. I would guess they have all the developers they need...

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#27

Post by cwperkins »

Reddit is quickly becoming a tool for the majority on the site to suppress minority on the site's opinions. Until a viable solution is created to promote diversity of thought it will always suffer from this problem. Reddit is just as bad of an echo chamber as facebook. Please everyone who read stuff posted on reddit, engage in critical thinking after each article you read.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#28

Post by potatote »

exelius wrote: post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

As an immigrant with no family to rely on in the US, I always give credit to Reddit for helping me learn so many things from buying old/used car, applying to grad school, to looking for an apartment. Just like you said, its diverse user base means it has almost all the information one needs. I hope it never changes (although with the recent re-design, I'm afraid it might have unintended repercussions...)

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#29

Post by gitgacutils »

exelius wrote: post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

> Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free.

Reddit is none of those now. It's not anonymous ( they track your identity and feed it to the government ). You may be "anonymous" to fellow users, but not anonymous to authorities. It isn't information dense. It's propaganda dense. Almost all the content there now is government, media, ngo, etc propaganda. As for ads, check out the videos, movies, music, etc subs when a particular movie, album, etc comes out. The frontpage will be littered with ad-like submissions ( aka ads ).

Reddit is 80% government, politics and news propaganda and 20% ads ( movies, music, etc ). I think you are confusing the reddit of 2011 with today's reddit.

> It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom.

Actually reddit could and did monetize "toxic content". How do you think reddit has been around for nearly 13 years? And once again, you are confusing reddit of 2011 to reddit of 2018. Today, reddit isn't any more "toxic" than twitter, youtube, facebook, etc. Reddit is heavily censored. Besides, on social media, you don't monetize content, you monetize eyeballs/clicks/data points.

> I’m still skeptical of Reddit’s ability to turn a profit.

Do you really think reddit is unprofitable? Let me guess, you think that youtube is not profitable right? You think these companies have been around for more than a decade because they are not "profitable"?

Their "hollywood" style accounting may make it seem like they are not profitable, but these companies are incredibly profitable. It's why youtube has a valuation over $100 billion and reddit's valuation is in the billions.

> But as a community platform it’s the best out there IMO.

Have to disagree with you there. Any garden variety forum is better than reddit. Also, reddit stopped being a community a long time ago.

I've stopped using it because it's all political nonsense or advertisements.

Re: Reddit just passed Facebook as #3 most popular website in US

#30

Post by cuddlypsycho »

exelius wrote: post #15

Reddit works because it’s anonymous, information-dense and relatively ad-free. Change any one of those three and the user base will abandon you. It’s been Reddit’s dilemma since the beginning: you can’t monetize a toxic user base that has total freedom. Sure you can try to drive away the toxic users, but it turns out that those toxic users are also pretty influential in non-toxic aspects. I’m still skeptical of Reddi…

> Reddit works because it’s anonymous

Are you sure there? Anonymity doesn't really exist anymore on the internet for the average person. Reddit has the illusion of anonymity which gives its users a false sense of privacy so they can act the way they truly are (parallels to Westworld if you watch the show).

It would be incredibly easy for Reddit to de-anonymize its user base, the same way Facebook was trying to do with medical metadata, and sell that info (at least for the US users, given GDPR in EU now)

Post reply on HN