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Reddit raises $410M in new funding

nytimes.com

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Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#61

Post by zozbot234 »

ren_engineer wrote: post #31
dcolkitt wrote: post #9

On a visitor perspective, this seems undervalued. This is a 50% or more discount to the market-cap/unique visitor ratio of Twitter, Snap, and Facebook.[1] And all the stats I've seen indicate much higher user engagement and time on site for Reddit compared to the other social platforms. The biggest issue is of course that their monetization is horrible. Like 95% lower per user than the other socials.[2] So the real q…

Reddit userbase is way more hostile to ads on average, more block ads, a lot of the content is non-advertiser friendly, they have less information on their audience for targeting, etc. Reddit is more forum than social network, they'll need to get creative to make more revenue from users. Winning strategy for them might be to try and get more older users who don't care about ads so much and have lots of money

> Reddit is more forum than social network

Reddit is mostly cat pictures and funny memes at scale, even calling it a "forum" is a stretch. More like a glorified image board.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#62

Post by Chris2048 »

ausbah wrote: post #8
fnord77 wrote: post #2

yet reddit feels like it is dying. non-political subs with very obvious political agendas. The illusion of popularity-based ranking of articles when in reality it is mostly curated Zero transparency on the moderators the big news and political subs Control freak moderators on special interest subs. Some big investors don't seem to be able to accurately gauge what an internet property is worth. Look at Verizon buying…

reddit has always been dying to people who have been using reddit for a long time, but don't see how that's even remotely true as someone who has used reddit for 7+ years now, the culture is definitely very different (not necessarily good) - but it has only continued to grow in terms of users

> it has only continued to grow in terms of users

accounts, yes - but how many of those are users? versus bots and marketeers?

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#63

Post by nradov »

wil421 wrote: post #54
gruez wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Winning strategy for them might be to try and get more older users who don't care about ads so much and have lots of money Isn't the most sought-after demographic 18-35 because they have the most disposable income? Afterwards disposable income drops off because of kids and/or retirement.

Not by a long shot. Boomers are still the highest in spending[1]. I was a broke college student forever and somewhat broke for the years or so after (no loans I worked through college). I’m in the 30-40 range with kids and I spend much more than my twenties. Lots of college students are spending their parents money for these kinds of things. [1] https://resources.datadrivenmarketing.equifax.com/dyks-equif...

While older consumers do have more money to spend, most advertisers prefer to target younger consumers. The thinking is that boomers already have established brand preferences and spending patterns so it's much harder to convert them into new customers.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#64

Post by kjax »

CodesInChaos wrote: post #59
Scoundreller wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And tracking/notifications. Which is of course why I don’t install it.

Tracking and driving engagement via notifications are some of the most important reasons why app users can be monetized better than anonymous web users (user sees more ads if they're spending more time, and tracking allows better targeted and thus higher paying ads)

There's another big factor with mobile app users: it's much harder to block ads in a mobile app.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#65

Post by zozbot234 »

covercash wrote: post #52
weavie wrote: post #4

So, pretend you are in charge of spending $410 million dollars at Reddit. What would you spend it on? From my amateur perspective I've got, 2 web devs, 1 backend engineer, 3 devops. Pay them very generously and that's $1.2 million spent. I have no idea what I would do with the rest..

Maybe a Reddit coin? Use that money to mine it and then seed the Reddit ecosystem at first with coin upvotes/awards, build a merch market for subreddit specific merch, allow advertisers to list items on the marketplace funneling sales there from Reddit ads/promoted posts, original content -> NFT… I don’t know the details but I think the core base of Reddit would be into a project like that.

They actually tried that in the past and it wasn't going anywhere, so they nixed it.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#67

Post by feudalism »

fnord77 wrote: post #2

yet reddit feels like it is dying. non-political subs with very obvious political agendas. The illusion of popularity-based ranking of articles when in reality it is mostly curated Zero transparency on the moderators the big news and political subs Control freak moderators on special interest subs. Some big investors don't seem to be able to accurately gauge what an internet property is worth. Look at Verizon buying…

reddit should just be killed off at this point. The only good thing about it are the smaller subreddits. The self-proclaimed "front page of the internet" has become the "cesspool of the internet" catering to the lowest common denominator of people out there. Tiktoks, tweets, fabricated AITA posts and more of the low brow variety abound.

reddit (in general) has a clear and obvious political/social agenda apparent to anybody with a functioning brain.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#68

Post by Cipater »

dcolkitt wrote: post #9

On a visitor perspective, this seems undervalued. This is a 50% or more discount to the market-cap/unique visitor ratio of Twitter, Snap, and Facebook.[1] And all the stats I've seen indicate much higher user engagement and time on site for Reddit compared to the other social platforms. The biggest issue is of course that their monetization is horrible. Like 95% lower per user than the other socials.[2] So the real q…

>Either way, Reddit should be throwing an insane amount of money and equity to get a Sheryl Sandberg like executive with a track record of juicing monetization.

You mean that they should spend as much money as they can on ruining Reddit.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#69

Post by Chris2048 »

DocTomoe wrote: post #46
fnord77 wrote: post #2

yet reddit feels like it is dying. non-political subs with very obvious political agendas. The illusion of popularity-based ranking of articles when in reality it is mostly curated Zero transparency on the moderators the big news and political subs Control freak moderators on special interest subs. Some big investors don't seem to be able to accurately gauge what an internet property is worth. Look at Verizon buying…

As a reddit user for more than a decade: Reddit has always been dying (for me personally, it was the digg exodus). Everything you describe has been around for at least 5 years. Reddit will die when there is something better (for the user experience) available. Right now, I do not see a better general-purpose forum alternative.

> Reddit has always been dying

I feel the choice of Ellen Pao as interim CEO revealed what direction reddit was headed. Moves towards a more sanitised, advertiser friendly Reddit - but with slap-dash choice of how to apply the new era of censorship.

2014 Nov - Pao became interim CEO

2015 July 2nd - large sections of Reddit were set to private to protest the dismissal of Victoria Taylor, Reddit's director of talent, known for co-ordinating the Ask Me Anything interviews

2015 Jun/July - Pao was the subject of criticism and harassment by Reddit users after five Reddit communities (subreddits) were banned for harassment and Reddit's director of talent was fired

2015 Aug 13th - "Watch reddit Die" was Created

I can't help feel that there is a trend of selling of online communities as "assets" to commercial buyers that have opposite incentive to the members of that community - just look at StackOverflow. The problem is that websites come to own the "commons" they inspire, and then sell it off as if the community are happy to work for free. We need stronger community data-rights; like a GPL for website content.

Re: Reddit raises $410M in new funding

#70

Post by CodesInChaos »

kjax wrote: post #64
CodesInChaos wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracking and driving engagement via notifications are some of the most important reasons why app users can be monetized better than anonymous web users (user sees more ads if they're spending more time, and tracking allows better targeted and thus higher paying ads)

There's another big factor with mobile app users: it's much harder to block ads in a mobile app.

Don't most users already use mobile browsers (e.g. chrome) which don't support extensions and thus ad blockers?
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