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One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

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Re: One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

#21
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or just find a way to cover operating costs and let Reddit be, you don't need to push it into a billion-user company, SV profiteering style. Sure, if you can find investors willing to sink capital into a non-profit-making venture to replace those who currently are invested in Reddit, and who would probably prefer liquidating their holdings at a loss to have something to put into a profit-making venture than to let…

You don't need capital if you're not expanding. Running costs include the wages for those working there. I think $150,000 or so per employee is more than enough + volunteers. Of course you would have to give up the dream of being a billionaire. Off the top of my head I can think of less than 10 people to have done that, and none of them did it after 2001.

> You don't need capital if you're not expanding.

You don't need additional capital beyond operational maintenance expenses if you aren't expanding, but you do need the existing capital, and that means that either (1) the existing investors need to have their standards for profitability met, or (2) someone else who is interested in operating the assets without those profit demands needs to be willing to purchase the existing capital from the current owners before they decide that their profit requirements won't be met and sell it to someone with a desire to use it for something other than its current insufficiently-profitable use.

Re: One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

#22
post #2

It's a little bit ridiculous that a webpage serving millions of unique visitors every day cannot manage to turn a profit. A savvy business person would do a lot for a head start like that. I think that the whole website is pretty bad. It's old and crummy, easily one of the worst designed popular sites on the internet. Open a new one as a subscription service, leave the old one open for free as it is right now. I mean…

The value of Reddit is the userbase. Unless you can convince a critical mass to move over to your new Reddit it's dead, and how are you going to convince people to leave their established communities and pay money to start over somewhere new?

I made this prediction some years ago, that the Reddit userbase is change-resistant enough that any change that made it profitable would kill the whole thing. Frankly, I'm astonished it made it this long. But then again, thinking about how terrified the management must be, sitting on this huge treasure trove of active users, knowing that they could kill it with even minute changes... In a way it's not surprising Reddit has been in a kind of design stasis.

Re: One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

#23

Or just find a way to cover operating costs and let Reddit be, you don't need to push it into a billion-user company, SV profiteering style. Maybe there is something I'm fundamentally missing, but Reddit is great right now and has been the last couple years. Just cover costs (Reddit Gold is effective) and leave her be.

I think basically the only way to do that is to somehow sell reddit to their users and convert it to a non-profit entity at the same time.

Re: One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

#24

Or just find a way to cover operating costs and let Reddit be, you don't need to push it into a billion-user company, SV profiteering style. Maybe there is something I'm fundamentally missing, but Reddit is great right now and has been the last couple years. Just cover costs (Reddit Gold is effective) and leave her be.

Prior to taking on a $50M round? Maybe. Now they owe it to their investors to offer the biggest return possible. And there are some big names on the cap table: http://i.imgur.com/BSALe7M.jpg

Whoa, Jared Leto?

Re: One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

#25
post #5
post #2

It's a little bit ridiculous that a webpage serving millions of unique visitors every day cannot manage to turn a profit. A savvy business person would do a lot for a head start like that. I think that the whole website is pretty bad. It's old and crummy, easily one of the worst designed popular sites on the internet. Open a new one as a subscription service, leave the old one open for free as it is right now. I mean…

Badly designed? Reddit seems ok as a website.

I think it's decent, but quite a few people I know browse imgur for Reddit content instead of browsing Reddit. They say that the UI is "too confusing".

Re: One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

#26

Reddit faces the problem of competing in a marketplace dominated by businesses losing money that are being supported by VC money (well really the limited partner’s money). It is very hard to build a business in an industry where all your competitors don’t care about profit and are only interested in growth.

This is the essence of why it's incredibly difficult to bootstrap a profitable startup in a market that already has one of more funded players in it.

Re: One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

#27

Reddit faces the problem of competing in a marketplace dominated by businesses losing money that are being supported by VC money (well really the limited partner’s money). It is very hard to build a business in an industry where all your competitors don’t care about profit and are only interested in growth.

What are these competitors? From what I can tell, there aren't any viable "reddit clones" that it's competing with. Rather, it's the more controlled social media (Facebook/Tumblr/etc, profitable at this point), specialized forums (rarely profitable, but not very expensive to run) and anonymous imageboards (4chan/8chan, hardly profitable and no VC money either)

Re: One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

#28
Paying users or even just moderators is a dangerous idea due to the overjustification effect [1]. Once someone is paid for an activity they previously did for free, it shifts in their mind from a hobby to a job. The joy they previously got from participating in that activity is reduced and they will then reevaluate how they spend their time. I don't think Reddit really wants its moderators to think "I spent 40 hours on Reddit this month and that is worth $20." Because the next thought after that is "My time is worth more than 50 cents an hour. I should stop wasting it on Reddit."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect

Re: One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

#29

Or just find a way to cover operating costs and let Reddit be, you don't need to push it into a billion-user company, SV profiteering style. Maybe there is something I'm fundamentally missing, but Reddit is great right now and has been the last couple years. Just cover costs (Reddit Gold is effective) and leave her be.

Prior to taking on a $50M round? Maybe. Now they owe it to their investors to offer the biggest return possible. And there are some big names on the cap table: http://i.imgur.com/BSALe7M.jpg

They sold 16% of their company. Are you saying the interests of minority stakeholders--no matter how small-- outweigh the interests of all other stakeholders in the company?

Re: One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits

#30

Reddit faces the problem of competing in a marketplace dominated by businesses losing money that are being supported by VC money (well really the limited partner’s money). It is very hard to build a business in an industry where all your competitors don’t care about profit and are only interested in growth.

What are these competitors? From what I can tell, there aren't any viable "reddit clones" that it's competing with. Rather, it's the more controlled social media (Facebook/Tumblr/etc, profitable at this point), specialized forums (rarely profitable, but not very expensive to run) and anonymous imageboards (4chan/8chan, hardly profitable and no VC money either)

Reddit is competing for advertisers and hence eyeballs. In this space there are an awful lot of growth-without-profit oriented companies. Combine that with a product that is not particularly sticky (nor technically complex) and you have a very difficult problem. I would not like to be the CEO of reddit.
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