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Google web search has exactly the same behavior. They are able to massively extract value from that flow.

by psadri 11y ago

samstave 11y ago
Reddit basically has the exact same behavior -- with deeply engaged user bases around each external link talking about it and forming rather cohesive "communities" around each topic... Yet they have a tough time monetizing that. Why hasn't a twitter or a reddit sought to get rev share from the traffic they drive from the resultant pages? (I don't know enough about adrev/rev-share to know if this would work) -- but reddit and twitter know exactly how many people click on each link. One thing I would like to know is the diff in % of users that click into a comments session without ever clicking on the actual link. I know that I do this as amajority of the way I read reddit and HN even. I get the gist from the title, some additional details from the comments and sometimes other, better links from users as well as commentary, corrections or what not. I also upvote an extremely few number of posts and stories. How many times have I clicked a link or read comments about a post without ever upvoting or down voting it? Probably about 90%
- jdmichal 11y ago
  > Why hasn't a twitter or a reddit sought to get rev share from the traffic they drive from the resultant pages? Why would I, as a site owner, ever pay Twitter or Reddit? There's only two ways they can motivate me: * Prevent linking to my site if I don't pay. This has obvious (and terrible) side effects on what those sites are and how they work. * Provide some sort of advantage to payers. For something like Reddit, this would be possible through rank boosting or "sticky" posts, likely on posts that I the payer create myself. Twitter could maybe have tweets distributed to random users, regardless of whether they follow the originator. (I believe Facebook does something similar to this.) Content and relevance is meant to be controlled by the users in these platforms. Both these options begin to abuse that implicit trust by placing the ability to pay on equal footing with the ability of users to naturally boost content. This will work for a while, until the users' trust is sufficiently eroded that they begin to leave.
  - samstave 11y ago
    I agree with you. All I was saying that monetizing link aggregation with commentary, twitter and reddit, is pretty hard. Vs google who is actually providing the conduit for people that are actually searching for something where suppliers will incentivize google (pay) to be a top result. sites like reddit, even moreso than twitter, have a user base who HATE the idea of a content provider paying to be a top of the frontpage or anything "sponsored" my suggestion is equally flawed in that you cant then expect reddit to have a yelp-like model where they extort money from content providers for traffic... But that was essentially what I mentioned, I guess. Maybe the real model is a super low cost fee for advanced customization features? Like i'd happily pay reddit $1.99 a month for more control over my experience -- even though we get that also from RES.
ThomPete 11y ago
No. When I search on google I am getting the results I am looking for and I am only there because I am looking for something. Google uses their knowledge of my intent to give me highly targeted results. It cannot be highlighted enough how big a difference that is from twitter. I am not passively looking at random search results streaming in. On twitter I am served with a combination of things most of them not really interesting to me and always depending on someone having tweeted them. The big difference is that google knows your intent at the very moment you are using it. Twitter don't. They are as different as day and night.

Google web search has exactly the same behavior. They are able to massively extract value from that flow.

by psadri 11y ago

Google web search has exactly the same behavior. They are able to massively extract value from that flow.

Reddit basically has the exact same behavior -- with deeply engaged user bases around each external link talking about it and forming rather cohesive "communities" around each topic... Yet they have a tough time monetizing that. Why hasn't a twitter or a reddit sought to get rev share from the traffic they drive from the resultant pages? (I don't know enough about adrev/rev-share to know if this would work) -- but reddit and twitter know exactly how many people click on each link. One thing I would like to know is the diff in % of users that click into a comments session without ever clicking on the actual link. I know that I do this as amajority of the way I read reddit and HN even. I get the gist from the title, some additional details from the comments and sometimes other, better links from users as well as commentary, corrections or what not. I also upvote an extremely few number of posts and stories. How many times have I clicked a link or read comments about a post without ever upvoting or down voting it? Probably about 90%

jdmichal 11y ago
> Why hasn't a twitter or a reddit sought to get rev share from the traffic they drive from the resultant pages? Why would I, as a site owner, ever pay Twitter or Reddit? There's only two ways they can motivate me: * Prevent linking to my site if I don't pay. This has obvious (and terrible) side effects on what those sites are and how they work. * Provide some sort of advantage to payers. For something like Reddit, this would be possible through rank boosting or "sticky" posts, likely on posts that I the payer create myself. Twitter could maybe have tweets distributed to random users, regardless of whether they follow the originator. (I believe Facebook does something similar to this.) Content and relevance is meant to be controlled by the users in these platforms. Both these options begin to abuse that implicit trust by placing the ability to pay on equal footing with the ability of users to naturally boost content. This will work for a while, until the users' trust is sufficiently eroded that they begin to leave.
- samstave 11y ago
  I agree with you. All I was saying that monetizing link aggregation with commentary, twitter and reddit, is pretty hard. Vs google who is actually providing the conduit for people that are actually searching for something where suppliers will incentivize google (pay) to be a top result. sites like reddit, even moreso than twitter, have a user base who HATE the idea of a content provider paying to be a top of the frontpage or anything "sponsored" my suggestion is equally flawed in that you cant then expect reddit to have a yelp-like model where they extort money from content providers for traffic... But that was essentially what I mentioned, I guess. Maybe the real model is a super low cost fee for advanced customization features? Like i'd happily pay reddit $1.99 a month for more control over my experience -- even though we get that also from RES.

ThomPete 11y ago

No. When I search on google I am getting the results I am looking for and I am only there because I am looking for something. Google uses their knowledge of my intent to give me highly targeted results. It cannot be highlighted enough how big a difference that is from twitter. I am not passively looking at random search results streaming in. On twitter I am served with a combination of things most of them not really interesting to me and always depending on someone having tweeted them. The big difference is that google knows your intent at the very moment you are using it. Twitter don't. They are as different as day and night.