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Reddit needs help

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Re: Reddit needs help

#201

Post by ritonlajoie »

jedberg wrote: post #178
silverlake wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you find interns to help you with stability? Even I would help for free just to get some experience with a very large site.

Each time we've had a new programmer come on board, it takes about 6 months for them to become familiar enough with the code to make a solid contribution. In the mean time, it actually slows us down a bit. That was the main reason we didn't seek programming interns this summer -- it's a great thought, but would probably take too long to ramp them up.

Hi jedberg,

First of all, thanks for your hard work on reddit. I'm myself quite addicted to some interesting subreddits for about 6 months.

I would like to answer on your issue with the 6 months problem that interns 'would have' if you pick one. If I'm right, you released a virtual machine with reddit installed, last month, on a blog post. I see no reason for _any_ intern for not being able to contribute to reddit from day 1.

Seriously, /r/programming and /r/coding are great, and I'm 110% sure you can find an intern which would know perfectly how reddit works (code related) and who would be very kind to help out.

This virtual machine already setup was a great idea, why not using it to your own goal ?

edit: s/internet/intern

Re: Reddit needs help

#202

Post by Psyonic »

zyb09 wrote: post #58
davidw wrote: post #32

I don't know, I think paying money for nothing in return to a big corporation is a little bit insane, actually. $5, in the right hands, would go a long ways in Africa or various other places in the world where people have real, urgent needs. Or if that's not your thing, there are all kinds of real charities out there. Hell, if you want, you can send the money my way and I'll put it in my daughter's college education/…

ah yeah good ol' "but Africa" reasoning. You can apply that logic to almost everything. Sorry but why don't you return your freshly bought iPhone and donate the money to charity's? And do you really need a car, can't you ride your bike? Do we really need Reddit if we could buy food in Africa instead? Maybe that's a little harsh, but we spend money EVERY friggn day on things that could be invested in Africas problems.…

His daughter's view is "pacifiers for all!" http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&source=imghp&q=pa...

He didn't even mention pacifism.

Re: Reddit needs help

#203

Post by illumin8 »

robryan wrote: post #191
tomjen3 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree with you about the general reddit.com, but some of the subreddits are still good or even great. However I doubt HN will follow, because unlike digg, slashdot and reddit, PG has shown no interest in gaining traffic at the expense of quality (indeed, he has called for the front page to be splashed with Erlang links, precisely so as to get those who wouldn't fit with the site to go elsewhere).

It depends, the tipping point is when currently undesirable behaviour gets rewarded, rather than downvoted as it currently does. In general I still feel hacker news as a community gets it right in which content and submissions are voted up and which down.

Great point. The tipping point for me on Slashdot was when insightful comments would get modded "overrated" just because they didn't agree with whatever pro/anti/MS/Linux/Apple/Democrat/Republican bias the moderators have. When the site gets so overrun by "average" users (whoever that is) with mod points that they can completely bury good comments and outright inaccurate comments get +5.

HN seems to be very good about accurate moderation. If the site ever reached the popularity of Reddit I think it would change.

Re: Reddit needs help

#204

Post by icey »

Zak wrote: post #116
jedberg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I can't really see paying for reddit now. If I may ask, what did we do to lose you?

If I had to point to just one thing, it would be that you succeeded. When I joined reddit, I think there may have been more sockpuppets than real users. A great deal of what was posted there satisfied my intellectual curiosity, and when comments were finally added, they tended to be well-reasoned and insightful. The community was small, and mostly populated with people who had interests similar to mine (many came fro…

This isn't a complete solution, but /r/TrueReddit is pretty good.

Re: Reddit needs help

#205

Post by ergo98 »

zach wrote: post #55

I have to say, this looks bad for the whole "users first, revenue later" mantra. Now, admittedly, the founders got paid on the flip. But there are users, and now it's later, so... where is the revenue? I heard this moment described as the "where is the land" moment. The crew has been sailing the ocean for a long time and they're running on slim hope. They grumble, then complain, and finally they confront the captain…

>I have to say, this looks bad for the whole "users first, revenue later" mantra.

I think you misunderstood the mantra. It really is "users first, flip it later". Let the next sap deal with it.

We've seen that play out time, and time, and time again. They got their payout, hang around for a while, and then split off.

Re: Reddit needs help

#206

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

moultano wrote: post #19

Every company/product with a strong community and few employees that I've seen try this has worked massively well. http://unknownworlds.com/ is a great example. When it was still just a halflife mod, and the creator wanted to work on it full time while bootstrapping the company, he asked for donations to get a special icon in game and playtesting access. There was an incredible outpouring of support and it kept them…

I can definitely see it working in "help the little guy" situations, but I'm much less skeptical that people will open their wallets when the little guy is backed by a mega-corporation.

Re: Reddit needs help

#207

Post by maukdaddy »

zach wrote: post #55

I have to say, this looks bad for the whole "users first, revenue later" mantra. Now, admittedly, the founders got paid on the flip. But there are users, and now it's later, so... where is the revenue? I heard this moment described as the "where is the land" moment. The crew has been sailing the ocean for a long time and they're running on slim hope. They grumble, then complain, and finally they confront the captain…

Those of us who lived through the first .com boom of the 90s have seen this too many times to count ;)

Re: Reddit needs help

#208

Post by davidw »

philwelch wrote: post #98
davidw wrote: post #32

I don't know, I think paying money for nothing in return to a big corporation is a little bit insane, actually. $5, in the right hands, would go a long ways in Africa or various other places in the world where people have real, urgent needs. Or if that's not your thing, there are all kinds of real charities out there. Hell, if you want, you can send the money my way and I'll put it in my daughter's college education/…

Reddit exists in a society where US dollars can relatively easily translate into better performance and service for a web site. The reason Africa and Haiti are poor isn't because they lack US dollars, but because they lack the basic social and political infrastructure that allows for currency to be effective (or to reliably end up in the right hands).

Ok, but your $5 aren't going to make the difference, and are a donation, rather than a payment for some particular service, so the optimal individual strategy is to free ride, no? At that point, why donate to Conde Naste rather than some charity.

I'm sure someone like Hernando de Soto has the sort of charity that works on things like political infrustracture.

They say:

"The big problem is that we spend most of our time just keeping the site up and don't have time to focus on these ideas, and Conde is unwilling to invest."

Sorry, but I'm not picking up Conde's slack without anything in return.

Re: Reddit needs help

#209

Post by ig1 »

megablahblah wrote: post #182
il wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had experience successfully monetizing all sorts of low-quality traffic, and I can tell you that it's possible to get decent CPM from any type of users, even users like redditors who don't click on ads as much. You should be able to easily pull at least $2 CPM from general/frontpage reddit traffic, and probably closer to $10 CPM from specific subreddits. At 280M pageviews, that's over $500K a month in revenue yo…

It's because they don't know shit about advertising. Take a look at their "sponsored link" system. It's impossible for an advertiser to predict what impressions or click-throughs they will get for their ad spend.

While I wouldn't have put it as crudely as megablahblah he has a point, the unusual ad pricing structure probably puts off quite a few potential ad buyers.

Re: Reddit needs help

#210

Post by risotto »

jedberg wrote: post #105
Zak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a t-shirt from kn0thing at startup school a few years ago, but I can't really see paying for reddit now. I wish them luck in finding a business model that works for them.

> but I can't really see paying for reddit now. If I may ask, what did we do to lose you?

I can't participate in reddit any more!

No submission I make gets any traction.

Any story I find interesting already has 500+ comments. If I add a comment, nobody replies or votes on it. It's just lost in the noise.

I'm not looking to be an karma superstar, I just want a place to actively engage with some other Internet folks from time to time.

Reddit got too big. Perhaps HN will one day too.

I still browse reddit all the time, I just can't use it.

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