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Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

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Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#31

Post by DanBC »

kami8845 wrote: post #26
markdown wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. NYT on the other hand... The latter should be worth far more than it is.

>Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. You don't understand the value of reddit. As I've written in other posts in this thread. It's the community and that's impossible to replace (as evidenced by the hundreds of other forums that have shit communities) Reddit is far and above many, many online communities in terms of breadth & depth.

People would have said the same about MySpace or text-only Usenet at one time.

Imgur has some voting stuff now, and it'll be interesting to see if that helps it take off or not.

And there are other sites trying to develop good communications. Hubski, for example.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#32

Post by onedev »

danso wrote: post #5
cremnob wrote: post #3

In recent years I've really grown to despise Reddit, so I'm going to get a kick out of the angst that Redditors will feel when they gradually realize that their interests and Reddit's interests diverge.

I can understand that the community may not be as appealing due to its growing popularity, but what has Reddit done company-wise that conflicts with users' wishes? The interface is still as minimal and the advertising virtually non-existent

I think he's saying that Reddit will eventually reach a point where the interests of its community and the site itself WILL diverge to some extent.

It's something that has to happen and will happen to the best of em, and it just depends on how Reddit chooses to handle the situation.

A really great example of good monetization I think is Ultimate Guitar. The site used to be completely free and the community of musicians was and still is unparalleled on the internet. They've monetized pretty heavily over the years by offering paid tools and more features/premium-content for musicians (even making their own mobile apps for things like tuners, tabs, etc). I think it was a great way to monetize the community on top of ads. However, it benefits from having a very specific focus (music) and a very focused and passionate community which makes the process of monetization a little easier.

The problem Reddit will have I think is that the community is extremely open, unfocused, and unrestricted (as well as having multiple sub-communities). Its very user-driven so it becomes difficult to creatively monetize without infringing on their "freedoms" or "openness". For example, I think /r/iama would be a great outlet for brands to come and have a conversation with the community (for example, before a movie release). However, that subreddit is ALREADY used like that, and it's very open. Anyone (including any brand) can come in and do an AMA so any type of monetization would have to to be a complement to the community (can't monetize the community itself without killing it or pissing people off). So how can Reddit monetize without just resorting to ads and promoted content? It's a difficult question and I don't see a clear answer.

If they do decide to do stuff like "featured" posts, I think they will have to be very very careful to not clutter up the user-upvoted content and hopefully they'll work hard to make the "featured" stuff interesting to the community. They'll have to make some important decisions when monetizing and I wish them the best of luck.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#33

Post by drivebyacct2 »

For what? I hate to be that guy, but I have seen a huge increase in "OP is a faggot" style posts being upvoted in the main subreddits (just in the last 4 weeks). I've always championed finding niche subreddits, and I do, but the result has been me spending increasingly little time on reddit. I check /r/rust, /r/golang, etc but that's about all I can stand.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#34

Post by clobber »

loganfrederick wrote: post #14
kami8845 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the NYT this wholy grail, that no company ever can aspire to be worth more than? For me personally Reddit is much more important than the NYT will ever be. If the NYT disappears tomorrow I couldn't care less. There's other publications that will fill its place. Reddit has allowed me to meet great people, have in-depth conversations on topics that no one in my near vicinity cares about and expand my knowledge i…

NYT is one of the very if, possibly only, newspaper media companies with a worldwide brand recognition to actually have value/goodwill in its own right. That is why it is considered to be worth more than other media companies; it is due to its brand and reputation. Not to say this couldn't or won't change at some point.

And now Mark Thompson, who is tied to the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal at the BBC, is CEO of NYT.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/11/mark-thompson-ceo-n...

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#35

Post by shardling »

onedev wrote: post #32
danso wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand that the community may not be as appealing due to its growing popularity, but what has Reddit done company-wise that conflicts with users' wishes? The interface is still as minimal and the advertising virtually non-existent

I think he's saying that Reddit will eventually reach a point where the interests of its community and the site itself WILL diverge to some extent. It's something that has to happen and will happen to the best of em, and it just depends on how Reddit chooses to handle the situation. A really great example of good monetization I think is Ultimate Guitar. The site used to be completely free and the community of musicia…

They could, perhaps, have special AMA's where comments follow different moderation rules.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#36

Post by OriginalSyn »

lwat wrote: post #18
onedev wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think has happened to Quora?

Quora does the dodgy 'Experts Exchange style' answer blurring crap when a google search links you to them. I've blocked them from my google results because of this nonsense.

Is domain blocking working for you or are you using some other extension? Domain blocking mysteriously disappeared for me a while ago. It was a real buzzkill when the likes of Experts Exchange, W3Schools and Quora started showing up in my search results again.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#37

Post by kami8845 »

DanBC wrote: post #31
kami8845 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. You don't understand the value of reddit. As I've written in other posts in this thread. It's the community and that's impossible to replace (as evidenced by the hundreds of other forums that have shit communities) Reddit is far and above many, many online communities in terms of breadth & depth.

People would have said the same about MySpace or text-only Usenet at one time. Imgur has some voting stuff now, and it'll be interesting to see if that helps it take off or not. And there are other sites trying to develop good communications. Hubski, for example.

Hubski looks interesting. I'll keep an eye on them, though do they do still look very tiny.

I don't think Imgur will ever take off. There is no fostering of individual subcultures like there was with subreddits. Basically their entire content revolves around funny images. Their comments never become thoughtful like reddit's.

MySpace started in 2003 and lost the battle to FB in 2008. Reddit was founded and has been growing steady and strong for 7 years, killing competitor Digg along the ride (Digg mainly caused it's own decline but I find the easy availability of a close competitor made it much easier).

I stand by the above statement. Reddit's community grew slowly and organically while the admins went through great pains to remain as "hands-off" as they could. They have major respect for their community and understand that that's the make-or-break aspect of the site.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#38

Post by robryan »

paulrademacher wrote: post #23
kami8845 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-- Lost a lot of trust in the userbase when they did the ridiculous "Matt has viewed the following questions" stunt. -- Kicked one of the 2 co-founders, Cheever off, rumour has it he didn't want to go as aggressively after growth as D'Angelo & other powers wanted. -- Widely sneered at in SV as being the company to look at if you want to know what "taking it too far with forcing growth" means. Their "sign-on to view t…

But you don't know that these were to satisfy investors, against the wishes of the company leadership.

Doesn't matter that much who thinks it is a good idea. It is still a straight sacrifice of user experience in the name of capturing more user details and monetization.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#39

Post by natrius »

kami8845 wrote: post #26
markdown wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. NYT on the other hand... The latter should be worth far more than it is.

>Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. You don't understand the value of reddit. As I've written in other posts in this thread. It's the community and that's impossible to replace (as evidenced by the hundreds of other forums that have shit communities) Reddit is far and above many, many online communities in terms of breadth & depth.

When I actively read them, I valued the communities of Slashdot, Fark and Metafilter just as much as I value the Reddit community. Reddit is less unique in that regard than you might think. It is absolutely more replaceable than the New York Times. It's mindboggling that I even had to type that last sentence.

Re: Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

#40

Post by kami8845 »

majormajor wrote: post #29
kami8845 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit has a unique and incredibly community. If you take the time and actually explore all of the amazing small subreddits that have developed their own cultures & rulesets and the content they've created, I doubt you would make this statement. There are great people in the specialist subreddits. Reddit is only worth as much as its community and that is _incredibly_ hard to reproduct and immensely valuable. Just loo…

I'm a part of other great non-Reddit communities, some pre-dating Reddit, some that came later. Some of them have moved across forum software changes, URL changes, and ownership changes. What is it that makes you think Reddit communities are a different animal? Were Reddit to disappear, I'm sure those communities would find new homes. From where I'm sitting, the problem with basing Reddit's valuation on those communi…

>If the steps Reddit takes to try to make a big return on investment anger those communities,

Yes, but that won't happen. They've been incredibly hands-off for the past 7 years. They basically worked their asses off on too few engineers for years, and during all that time kept showing almost no ads, and if they did they did it on the far right where almost no one notices.

Just because they're raising capital now, doesn't mean they'll go out and fuck it up. Whatever outside money they take on, they'll be extremely conscientious about retaining control or their future stakeholders sharing their values.

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