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Reddit needs help

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Re: Reddit needs help

#71

Post by potatolicious »

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…

Good to see a fellow NS player! I've also gone for the "special edition" preorder - knowing full well that there's a non-negligible chance that the studio may well fold before they ever ship a product.

Sometimes the worth of something, and the spirit of those pursuing it, is worth reward/support in and of itself.

Re: Reddit needs help

#72

Post by mbreese »

city41 wrote: post #12

I think if any site could pull this off, Reddit could. Somehow, somewhere, someway, Reddit became a social news site that has a strong sense of community to it. Redditors feel good being "Redditors", and feel an affinity towards the site. My prediction is this actually works.

This has the same feeling as another Conde Nast owned site: ArsTechnica. They've had a subscription option for a while, and it seems to work well for them.

Re: Reddit needs help

#73

Post by potatolicious »

pavs wrote: post #17
jessriedel wrote: post #5

A user's willingness to pay is going to be based either off of charity (a la NPR) or as an exchange for a service/good. You can't have both, simply due to human nature.

You don't know reddit community. They will gladly pay monthly fee (which is not forced) just to get a gold icon on their "Trophy case". Its not because Reddit users has more expendable expenses compare to other online communities its because reddit community is more "involved" than other online community I have ever seen. Just compare reddit charity to Haiti fund and Digg doing the same thing. Reddit: http://dri.conv…

Reddit is the only online community I've ever been in where I've met and befriended fellow members in real life; I've been online for a fair while.

There's a connectedness there that simply does not exist for most online communities. Hell, I go to a weekly board games and hang-out night with fellow redditors in the area - no other internet community has ever compelled me to do that before.

Re: Reddit needs help

#74

Post by jordanb »

chriseppstein wrote: post #23
jackowayed wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like they are profiting. They just aren't having high enough profits that Conde Nast is willing to cut into said profits to either spend more on servers to speed it up or hire another engineer.

companies invest in their business units and let them run at an operating loss for long term viability all the time. I call bullshit. The reddit guys need to do a better job selling their plans to their bosses.

Conde Nast wants a return on their investment (rumored at $65m). So tiny and flat profits are going to be unacceptable to them.

Probably the situation is this: Advertising isn't very lucrative on Reddit, so Nast has told Reddit management that they must come up with some plan to steepen the profit curve, or they're toast.

And this is what they've come up with.

Re: Reddit needs help

#75

Post by shawndrost »

axod wrote: post #37
avar wrote: post #11

According to this talk they're paying around $250k/year for server hosting at EC2: http://pycon.blip.tv/file/3257303/ See the question at around ~27m into the video.

WTH are they using EC2 (One of the most expensive hosts around)?

Can't find a link for this, but one of the employees mentioned that it was related to Conde Nast's arcane rules about buying and managing servers.

Re: Reddit needs help

#76

Post by _pi »

axod wrote: post #70
_pi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest Reddit isn't that techie anymore, reddit's demographics have shifted to teenage and young adult males and girls who are "geeks". Not only that but the default reddits are becoming a cesspool like Digg. Essentially the community had so much Digg hate in the beginning but at least Kevin Rose kept his site running while the demographics shifted.

Sure, I think their demographic has shifted away from techie. Now it's anti-consumerist adblock loving pot smokin' gay marriage loving liberals.

I think the rise of humanistic interest sub-reddits with a low knowledge entry barrier killed it.

Re: Reddit needs help

#77

Post by nostromo »

blhack wrote: post #29
city41 wrote: post #12

I think if any site could pull this off, Reddit could. Somehow, somewhere, someway, Reddit became a social news site that has a strong sense of community to it. Redditors feel good being "Redditors", and feel an affinity towards the site. My prediction is this actually works.

I would love it if totalfarke...(err, I mean, "reddit gold members") also got labeled (perhaps after a review by a mod or something) as "definitely not spammers". Just today I was being told to wait 10 minutes between postings...even though I'm definitely not a spammer, and have very positive karma (2000 after about 3 months). Personally, I would pay $5/mo for premium reddit.

This sounds like a great way to make money, but a terrible way to prevent spam.

Re: Reddit needs help

#78

Post by JoeAltmaier »

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.…

...and the lamest thing is, it wasn't your last $5, right? So why aren't you sending money to Africa anyway?

Re: Reddit needs help

#79

Post by nostrademons »

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 think this is the "revenue later" part.

Re: Reddit needs help

#80

Post by nostromo »

shawndrost wrote: post #75
axod wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTH are they using EC2 (One of the most expensive hosts around)?

Can't find a link for this, but one of the employees mentioned that it was related to Conde Nast's arcane rules about buying and managing servers.

This is one of those cases where it's totally appropriate to just do what's right and lie to your parent company.
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