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Acquihire. "Our next challenge is to apply what we’ve built to improve the user experience for redditors" "we’ll no longer be signing up new commercial customers to the Spell service" https://spell.ml/blog/spell-joins-reddit-YqtKRhEAACMAgbU9
Do the founders get any money out of it or not much.
Reddit should prioritize their site working on the browser. Clicking a nested thread seems to crash whatever browser I use 1/10th of the time, the videos never work, and the time it takes to open a thread is almost unbelievable in 2022. (Never mind the times it won’t let me view content without the app.)
Reddit has an odd strategy. I have Apollo on my phone, which is a great Reddit app that doesn’t have ads. Sometimes, I go to Reddit in Safari out of habit. The experience is so terrible, that it forces me to go from the website, which has ads, to Apollo, which doesn’t. The performance of the mobile website is absolutely terrible as well. It’s like they’re trying to make a garbage website.
This acquisition is...unusual. I strongly suspect it's not a 10x exit. (last raised $15M in 2019: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/spell ) Reddit obviously has the data for robust machine learning, but not sure how an experiments-management startup aligns with it unless it's an acquihire.
It's definitely an acquihire. MLOps has been one of Reddit's weaker areas historically, so this acquisition makes sense to get a talented team in with a clear understanding of the space.
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Right now they are floating on viral momentum. They are a few stupid decisions and one neat alternative away from going the way of Digg.
I worked at Reddit for several years in the past - if anything, they have the exact opposite of viral momentum: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1360263618508521480?lang=en I do agree on the neat alternative piece, but all of the ones that have come up in the past had some sort of flaw (or in some cases deliberate slower growth) that caused them not to go viral (Voat, Tildes, etc)
I suspect in general the entire "thing" that is Reddit is on its way out - just like how craigslist killed classified ads and itself may be slowly dying, Reddit killed forums and now is slowly dying, there may be no replacement.
Search being an open joke? Not going to even look at it.
Purchase a few ML people? Oh that will surely increase our valuation.
Do something about toxic supermods? That's a feature.
Their investors are being taken on a wild ride.
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The redesign and the complete stonewalling of it by most of the community is telling.
The moment they kill/break old.reddit.com is the moment I quit reddit for good Unless they magically release a not horrible new UI, which I'm not holding my breath for
Video player fixes? Nope. Search being an open joke? Not going to even look at it. Purchase a few ML people? Oh that will surely increase our valuation. Do something about toxic supermods? That's a feature.
I got banned for a year from Armenia sub for criticizing an Armenian politician from the ruling party (who has been involved in a bunch of corruption scandals, including fake companies winning tenders under his grandma's name). The country subs, especially in post-USSR space, are run by ruling party representatives who tolerate zero dissent.
Reddit should focus on making their community less toxic, it’s hands down one of the most toxic places on the internet. These problems don’t need ML