Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#431

Post by puranjay » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 6:07 AM UTC

ericd wrote: post #361

puranjay wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried Reddit ads. Not only do they don't work, they invite backlash from Redditors. And I say this as a heavy user of the site who knows exactly what kind of content formats work best on it.

We had the complete opposite experience - we ran a tiny ad buy when the platform had just opened up, and the effect was amazing. The community embraced us and for years afterwards, people shared it in comment threads throughout reddit. You have to make something they want, and you have to engage with them in the comments section as a redditor. If they feel pandered to, it's going to backfire. I see a lot of ads on th…

> It's certainly more difficult to use well than most ad platforms, especially for bigger companies.

I think this is going to be a big issue. Large advertisers want reach, not hyper-targeting a tiny sub with 3,000 subscribers.

While you can certainly make something that would appeal to, say, /r/edmproduction, would a large advertiser like P&G be able to create something for default subs (that have huge reach)?

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#432

Post by ericd » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 8:33 AM UTC

puranjay wrote: post #431

ericd wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had the complete opposite experience - we ran a tiny ad buy when the platform had just opened up, and the effect was amazing. The community embraced us and for years afterwards, people shared it in comment threads throughout reddit. You have to make something they want, and you have to engage with them in the comments section as a redditor. If they feel pandered to, it's going to backfire. I see a lot of ads on th…

> It's certainly more difficult to use well than most ad platforms, especially for bigger companies. I think this is going to be a big issue. Large advertisers want reach, not hyper-targeting a tiny sub with 3,000 subscribers. While you can certainly make something that would appeal to, say, /r/edmproduction, would a large advertiser like P&G be able to create something for default subs (that have huge reach)?

I agree that it's going to be a big issue for Reddit if it wants to be a multi billion dollar company. If, on the other hand, it wanted to be a community site that pays to keep the servers running, it wouldn't be a problem.

That said, our ads weren't targeted at a sub, and they worked well.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#433

Post by rmc » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 8:36 AM UTC

mustacheemperor wrote: post #163

onion2k wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it ain't broke don't fix it. What 'broke' looks like for a business like Reddit is a question about generating revenue rather than design (though the two things are intrinsically linked). If the company can't make money with the current design then it has to change.

Reddit does make money though - Gold sales alone started paying for the servers after the admins added a meter to the side of the homepage that showed a daily "goal" to pay for server time. At the time, it was posited as an opportunity for the community to fund their own party. Of course, the monetization train just kept rolling from there - starting with AMAs, now (according to some) with sponsored content embedded…

> Reddit does make money though

AFAIK Reddit has never been cash flow positive.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#434

Post by MrPatan » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 9:28 AM UTC

cyxxon wrote: post #367

apercu wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why I care about the NFL, but I have been going to profootballtalk.com daily for years. NBC partnered with a bunch of independent sports blogs like PFT a few years ago. They then rolled 'em all out on a new redesign. I stopped visiting after the first couple tries, then PFT backed out of the redesign and went back to their previous (crappy, old) layout. The other blogs I used to go to (pro hockeytalk a…

I also never get why these sites don't change gradually. I mean, Slashdot tried - their code was a mess, and it looked really old. But it took them ages to rewrite this, and they did it all in one go. Bam! Community was pissed. Why not move the broken old HTML to standard compliant one section at a time, and clean up things here and there, and maybe introduce a new font, or section images, ... instead of this huge ex…

Most likely Left Alt + Left Shift, if you're on Windows. I use it on purpose now, but man was it baffling when I didn't know what was going on.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#435

Post by nopatternhere » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 10:42 AM UTC

t0mbstone wrote: post #149

If you are going to re-design a site like reddit, your best bet is to keep the old version in place, but allow people to also view all of the same content in the "new" design. For example, release the new design on new.reddit.com and let viewers migrate over to it at their own pace. Once you have a lot of people using the new reddit instead of the old design, you can migrate the old reddit to old.reddit.com and put t…

Is the current user-base an asset or a liability? I guess I am asking is it a kind of technical debt?

I'm not sure, and Digg is obviously the cautionary tail here on the "don't tick off the user-base" side, but I'd wager that to continue to grow, they need a little more mass appeal.

Reddit as an anonymous FaceBook Feed might have some real value, as both a value prop for people, and as retargeting for Marketers. Reddit knows that you browse, say, /r/atheism as a Mormon, or /r/gonewildasian as a single guy, and those are not things FaceBook may know. There is a lot of value in anonymous, on both sides.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#436

Post by awkwarddaturtle » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 1:48 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #429

awkwarddaturtle wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would a service that cares about its members _ever_ implement free speech policies? But reddit did implement free speech policies. It defended free speech for many years. > That's just asking for assholes. Or open discourse. > If anything, popular services should have _more_ filtering and removal of asshole users. What's an asshole to you? Atheists? Muslims? Environmentalists? Trump supporters? Hillary supporte…

>> That's just asking for assholes > Or open discourse I think you're being naive. Certainly, most people will agree that open discourse should be allowed. Even if people disagree, they should be able to discuss their points of view. But there are plenty of assholes out there that abuse "free speech". There's a difference between defending a controversial point of view and telling people to kill themselves and simply…

> But there are plenty of assholes out there that abuse "free speech".

Yes. That's why free speech was created. To protect the "abusers". This is something you learn in your first year of college. At least I did. As my jewish philosophy professor said, free speech rights that doesn't protect neo-nazi speech is worthless. Think about it? What use is free speech rights if it doesn't protect "offensive speech". We wouldn't need it if free speech only protected "acceptable speech".

> There's a difference between defending a controversial point of view and telling people to kill themselves and simply slinging slurs and insults.

Not really. If you believe in free speech. If you were correct, atheists who insult the religious would be banned. The civil rights movement that insulted racists would have been banned.

> Generally, reddit tries to allow free speech while keeping out the assholes

It really doesn't. Reddit is an openly hyperliberal free speech.

> whereas Voat let the assholes have free reign.

Absolutely. Voat is where the rightist assholes reign free. Reddit is where the leftist assholes reign free.

That is the problem you get when you don't have free speech. You get echo chambers.

The only people who defend reddit are the hyperliberal people with an agenda. Just like voat is filled with hyperconservatives.

If you don't like voat, you really shouldn't like reddit either. They are fundamentally, the same kind of anti-free speech madness. Unless you have a bias and a hatred for free speech.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#437

Post by baybal2 » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:04 PM UTC

endymi0n wrote: post #180

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to quip that reddit has gone full-Digg.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke 'nuff said. Every brand that has a large enough following will run into pitchforks for large redesigns - a lot of people are fans for something . If you want to do this successfully, take a slice from Facebooks playbook. Their site looks nothing like 10 years ago, yet they somehow did all those radical UI changes gradually over years, always one step at a time, (mostly) listen…

>Every brand that has a large enough following will run into pitchforks for large redesigns - a lot of people are fans for something.

That is false, "running into a pitchfork" is the better, and least likely outcome.

Very often things develop like this: user logs in, can't find the usual button, and abandons the website - a la Mozilla forefox redesign fiasco that halved their userbase in a single month.

Another famous case is Akamai - at around 2013 they had a relatively insignifican't redesign, yet a single button was moved. They did not realize that they quietly bled users for over a year until they got serious and researched the matter. They failed to understand that a double digit portion of their users were non-tech staff like marketing boys who were taught to work in a manner like "move mouse over red rectangle, and push the button"

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#438

Post by iamleppert » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 3:18 PM UTC

Oh god. I had the pleasure of seeing one of their new executives speak. An ex-Microsoft guy.

I won't be surprised at all when they alienate their userbase with a pointless redesign that adds nothing of substance.

The kinds of people that are working at Reddit now are the kinds of people who are not creative and incapable of creating something original. They are the kinds of people who join a tech company solely to ride off the coat tails of those who came before them with original ideas and substance.

Naturally, since they don't understand the original desire and intent they are not able to contribute anything new or original. So how they contribute is instead by a route redesign of something that already exists.

Redesigns are generally not about improving upon something that was there before. They are a political process for who can get control over something popular that someone already made.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#439

Post by tptacek » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 4:24 PM UTC

hycaria wrote: post #370

guelo wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The people that are saying black people are bad, gays are bad, muslims are bad, women are bad, etc etc, are hateful, they're the definition of hateful. It's not "PC" to call them out as hateful. In fact, there's a new Political Correctness saying we can't call bigots bigots. If you want to make a safe space for hatefulness then nobody else is going to want to be there. These hateful people are terrorists in that…

What a simplistic point of view. People not often say "black people are bad, gays are bad, muslims are bad, women are bad". I am moderator on a national sub on reddit, and it's a very difficult question. A few examples : - What are you supposed to do with people who think it's unfair that men can be tricked in impregnating a woman and sued for child support ? Is this sexism ? - What are you supposed to do with people…

Since attempts to establish the genetic inferiority of specific races and ethnicities has been a bedrock of organized racism for centuries, yes, clearly abuse of race/IQ research can be "racial hate speech". Now, that's a term you didn't define. But whatever definition you choose, clearly articles from Der Stürmer will fit comfortably into it.

Obviously that begs the question of what "abusive" recourse to race/IQ studies would be. And again, I don't have to define the concept precisely to illustrate that research is routinely abused. For instance: if one makes simplified pronouncements about the genetic inferiority of black people and then adds a cite to J. Philippe Rushton, you're abusing the research in order to make hateful arguments about black people. Secondary and tertiary sources arguing the intellectual inferiority of other races based on work like Rushton's is, in fact, the modern equivalent of Der Stürmer articles.

Re: Reddit raises $200M at a $1.8B valuation

#440

Post by mcovey » Wed, Aug 02, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

asb wrote: post #75

The announcement on Reddit also says they are changing their privacy policy to remove support for 'Do Not Track' https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/6qptzw/with_...

Might as well, it's basically useless. Very few sites support it, major ad networks instead have an opt out [1] that nobody knows about and if you block 3rd party cookies, isn't relevant anyway. Blocking trackers remains the end user's prerogative.

[1] http://preferences-mgr.truste.com/ (one of many such opt-outs)