6 ms·

I gladly donated to reddit but I won't pay for it

38 points by aresant 16y ago

s810 16y ago
Disgruntled redditors will be coming here. As one of them, I genuinely hope we don't make you feel as though Eternal September has come at last for this place, but you can't say you weren't warned or that you couldn't see it coming.
- andreyf 16y ago
  When you get a chance, please read the guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - s810 16y ago
    >If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) I am genuinely not trying to start a flamewar (as stated in line 3 of the comments section of the 'guidelines'), but I don't think it's going to be an illusion for much longer. This site seems to be mentioned very often recently (along with metafilter and buzzfeed) as becoming the reddit refugee camp for those who don't like what they're doing over there for a variety of reasons. Anyone who frequents both can attest to this. P.S. my account here is more than a year old, having said that though, i never did read the rules until now. A good read. Thanks for listening.
    - andrewvc 16y ago
      In my mind, metafilter had the right idea years ago. Charge $5 per account. Keeps most of the scum out.
    - jquery 16y ago
      > I am genuinely not trying to start a flamewar (as stated in line 3 of the comments section of the 'guidelines'), but I don't think it's going to be an illusion for much longer. I see that line in the guidelines as a nostalgic reminder of more erudite times past. > reddit refugee camp I really can't blame anyone who flees Reddit for Hacker News, even if I begrudge the migration itself.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      There's nothing directly wrong with people coming from Reddit to HN. I never really spent a lot of time with Reddit as even when I transitioned I felt that Reddit was already in its downward spiral. My only fear would be that some of Reddit's mainstream users would make the transition but I feel this is unlikely, given the nature of the site. By having an established technical presence, along with progressive karma unlocks, new accounts have comparatively little influence on the moderation itself. In addition, while Reddit facilitates anonymous discussion, Hacker News has a substantial transparency in its population. My real name and address, for example, are trivial to find out using the information in my HN profile -- and that's kind of the point. You'll find that this practice is far more common on HN than on Reddit.
      - andreyf 16y ago
        In addition, while Reddit facilitates anonymous discussion, Hacker News has a substantial transparency in its population. My real name and address, for example, are trivial to find out using the information in my HN profile -- and that's kind of the point. You'll find that this practice is far more common on HN than on Reddit. I hadn't noticed this, but it's very true. As a side-effect of the "would you say this in person?" question, I treat HN users as I would people I would have no hesitation of meeting in person. On reddit, although someone could put in the effort to find/meet me in person, I assume no one will.
  - davidw 16y ago
    Also, please try and keep things mostly about hacking and startups. And please, please, please: no politics or other flamebait topics. I think the "intellectually gratifying" articles are ok if they're just random interesting things (the mating habits of the blue-bottomed oak warbler) rather than "interesting" because "it confirms my view of a contentious topic".
- tlrobinson 16y ago
  If they're only disgruntled because of Reddit Gold, and not the content of the site, then they're going to be disappointed. Aside from the format, HN and Reddit are nothing alike.
- rmc 16y ago
  I believe HN original goal was to be what reddit was years ago. Since then the content on reddit has changed a lot.
machrider 16y ago
It's funny, when I saw the reddit blog post about the new features, I immediately thought they're shooting themselves in the foot. When you use a donation model, people donate what they feel they can afford, and some will be quite generous. As soon as you give specific rewards, it switches to a value decision in the user's head. Are the new features worth the price? The result of adding these features might be fewer people making the switch to "gold".
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  Is that why Conde Nast instructed them to demand donations for nothing but a badge to start with and then later decided to add features. A sort of price differentiation, catching those who will donate first and then offering incentives to those who wouldn't donate with no return.
- kmak 16y ago
  This was mentioned in "Predictably Irrational", essentially, this is exactly what you don't want to do, changing a decision from social to being economical. Unfortunately, you can't change it back easily. I believe the example given was that of a daycare center. It used to be looked down upon when you pick up your kids late, and parents try to avoid it as much as possible. The center then added a penalty of some small monetary amount. This allows the parents to rationalize this as an economic decision, and many more chose to pay the fine. Even after they took the fine out again, they were unable to get the lateness rate down.
zackattack 16y ago
Has YCombinator funded any legitimately profitable companies?
- unavoidable 16y ago
  You know, this is a legitimate question that I don't think has been satisfactorily answered thus far: there have been the numerical analyses about 'successes' which was skewed towards 'success' because there were a lot of YC companies bought out (such as reddit), but are they profitable even for the company that bought them?
- patio11 16y ago
  Wufoo springs to mind.
  - apsurd 16y ago
    and I'd like to think weebly since it really is a pretty darn good value add. But the freemium approach ( you can omit the powered-by links if you know anything whatsoever about HTML, and it's like $30 bucks for a year of hosting) is the only reason why I would like to think rather than am sure about it.
    - drusenko 16y ago
      we don't openly disclose revenue numbers, but we're very profitable. there's lots more to the pro package than just removing the footer link :)
- amohr 16y ago
  When I interviewed at Airbnb, IIRC, I believe they said they were profitable or close to it. [citation needed]
- iamelgringo 16y ago
  Yes, but a lot of them don't find it necessary to openly talk about their balance sheets. I'm sure Wufoo and the Weeblies are profitable. Grapevine says that MixPanel is profitable already. AirBnb came out early in the press and said they were ramen profitable and then talked about the advantages of being "pizza" profitable shortly thereafter. I'd be very suprised if Dropbox wasn't making decent money, although they may be focused on scaling rather than maximizing profit. I could be wrong, but at the work at a startup event, a couple of companies said that they were profitable already. Listia, maybe? Don't quote me on this. From talking to YC founders, there's a pretty heavy emphasis to getting ramen profitable as soon as possible to gain leverage in fund raising negotiations. Starving founders tend to give away more equity and get worse terms than founders that can feed themselves and pay the rent. p.s. Nice to talk to you, Zack. How are things?
tommynazareth 16y ago
If I were in their position, I'd try to swing the donation model. Reddit offers value and should receive value in return. There is nothing wrong with trying to monetize an audience through advertising, but in some circumstances it is insulting to users. Reddit's value is derived from a strong sense of community and identification with that community: Secret Santa, University of Reddit, Reddit Island, and on and on. This spirit might not co-exist with aggressive advertising. There is also nothing wrong with a premium subscription, but I think the author of the linked post makes a clear case for why this is harmful to the Reddit community. Fundraising, however, would only tie the community together even more and intensify people's relationship with the site. Focus on the introducing the idea of ongoing donations into the culture, and focus on steering users away from the massive hive-mind sub-Reddits where there is less likely to be a sense of obligation to the site, and get more people involved in smaller Reddit communities where they are more likely to feel a personal connection. I'd hate to see Reddit die, but I'd really hate to see it ruined because they can't figure a congruous business model.
zbrock 16y ago
Reddit just needs to hire a sales/bizdev team. They have plenty of traffic, they just don't seem to have anyone creative or even competent trying to turn that traffic into cash flow. The first step might be actually selling some of their ad inventory. At least half the reddit pages I go to have ads for reddit. Digg has actually done some pretty innovative work around social ads that reddit could steal without too much effort. But again, they'd need someone to sell those ads.
thought_alarm 16y ago
Not me. I'm holding out for Reddit Platinum so I can look down my nose at those common Gold members.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  If the board of Conde Nast decide they want to have their cars washed in cristal again at next years board meeting instead of letting reddit have enough to pay for an extra engineer then it's sure to come along.
davidw 16y ago
Seems like backwards thinking to me. You'll gladly "help out" a billion-dollar corporation, but won't pay for some genuine extra services? I'm seriously thinking I should ask for donations for LangPop.com - people like it but don't click on the ads. Maybe I could have a donate-o-meter for different languages.
- vampirical 16y ago
  Speaking as a donor who isn't considering "subscribing", others probably felt as I did, that we were donating to help out the reddit team rather than Conde Nast. I have no interest in paying for reddit on a regular basis and cannot imagine any feature or service they could add that would make me change my mind. A donation to give the reddit team an opportunity to get their heads above water and start making positive progress was what I signed up for. The last 6 months to a year, reddit has had regular scaling/feature/etc. problems and the communication from the admins and devs has always had the same tone of overwhelm. I'd love to see a site I use so often and enjoy so much get out of that hole and though I don't see this as being the way I wish them the best of luck. (A bit off-topic but EC2 sticks out as the big money sink they need to fix, the last number I remember them quoting was $200,000 a year for their EC2/S3 usage. I would have loved to hear the money was going to outfitting a few racks and moving things back out of the cloud.)
  - davidw 16y ago
    > we were donating to help out the reddit team rather than Conde Nast. In other words, you and the other donors lost a game of chicken with Conde Naste, and are paying for something that they now do not have to. I suppose it's possible that they really would have shut things down or just let the site rot, but it seems a bit odd. Hard to know without more information though.

38 points by aresant 16y ago

s810 16y ago

Disgruntled redditors will be coming here. As one of them, I genuinely hope we don't make you feel as though Eternal September has come at last for this place, but you can't say you weren't warned or that you couldn't see it coming.

andreyf 16y ago
When you get a chance, please read the guidelines: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- s810 16y ago
  >If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) I am genuinely not trying to start a flamewar (as stated in line 3 of the comments section of the 'guidelines'), but I don't think it's going to be an illusion for much longer. This site seems to be mentioned very often recently (along with metafilter and buzzfeed) as becoming the reddit refugee camp for those who don't like what they're doing over there for a variety of reasons. Anyone who frequents both can attest to this. P.S. my account here is more than a year old, having said that though, i never did read the rules until now. A good read. Thanks for listening.
  - andrewvc 16y ago
    In my mind, metafilter had the right idea years ago. Charge $5 per account. Keeps most of the scum out.
  - jquery 16y ago
    > I am genuinely not trying to start a flamewar (as stated in line 3 of the comments section of the 'guidelines'), but I don't think it's going to be an illusion for much longer. I see that line in the guidelines as a nostalgic reminder of more erudite times past. > reddit refugee camp I really can't blame anyone who flees Reddit for Hacker News, even if I begrudge the migration itself.
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    There's nothing directly wrong with people coming from Reddit to HN. I never really spent a lot of time with Reddit as even when I transitioned I felt that Reddit was already in its downward spiral. My only fear would be that some of Reddit's mainstream users would make the transition but I feel this is unlikely, given the nature of the site. By having an established technical presence, along with progressive karma unlocks, new accounts have comparatively little influence on the moderation itself. In addition, while Reddit facilitates anonymous discussion, Hacker News has a substantial transparency in its population. My real name and address, for example, are trivial to find out using the information in my HN profile -- and that's kind of the point. You'll find that this practice is far more common on HN than on Reddit.
    - andreyf 16y ago
      In addition, while Reddit facilitates anonymous discussion, Hacker News has a substantial transparency in its population. My real name and address, for example, are trivial to find out using the information in my HN profile -- and that's kind of the point. You'll find that this practice is far more common on HN than on Reddit. I hadn't noticed this, but it's very true. As a side-effect of the "would you say this in person?" question, I treat HN users as I would people I would have no hesitation of meeting in person. On reddit, although someone could put in the effort to find/meet me in person, I assume no one will.
- davidw 16y ago
  Also, please try and keep things mostly about hacking and startups. And please, please, please: no politics or other flamebait topics. I think the "intellectually gratifying" articles are ok if they're just random interesting things (the mating habits of the blue-bottomed oak warbler) rather than "interesting" because "it confirms my view of a contentious topic".
tlrobinson 16y ago
If they're only disgruntled because of Reddit Gold, and not the content of the site, then they're going to be disappointed. Aside from the format, HN and Reddit are nothing alike.
rmc 16y ago
I believe HN original goal was to be what reddit was years ago. Since then the content on reddit has changed a lot.

machrider 16y ago

It's funny, when I saw the reddit blog post about the new features, I immediately thought they're shooting themselves in the foot. When you use a donation model, people donate what they feel they can afford, and some will be quite generous. As soon as you give specific rewards, it switches to a value decision in the user's head. Are the new features worth the price? The result of adding these features might be fewer people making the switch to "gold".

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
Is that why Conde Nast instructed them to demand donations for nothing but a badge to start with and then later decided to add features. A sort of price differentiation, catching those who will donate first and then offering incentives to those who wouldn't donate with no return.
kmak 16y ago
This was mentioned in "Predictably Irrational", essentially, this is exactly what you don't want to do, changing a decision from social to being economical. Unfortunately, you can't change it back easily. I believe the example given was that of a daycare center. It used to be looked down upon when you pick up your kids late, and parents try to avoid it as much as possible. The center then added a penalty of some small monetary amount. This allows the parents to rationalize this as an economic decision, and many more chose to pay the fine. Even after they took the fine out again, they were unable to get the lateness rate down.

zackattack 16y ago

Has YCombinator funded any legitimately profitable companies?

unavoidable 16y ago
You know, this is a legitimate question that I don't think has been satisfactorily answered thus far: there have been the numerical analyses about 'successes' which was skewed towards 'success' because there were a lot of YC companies bought out (such as reddit), but are they profitable even for the company that bought them?
patio11 16y ago
Wufoo springs to mind.
- apsurd 16y ago
  and I'd like to think weebly since it really is a pretty darn good value add. But the freemium approach ( you can omit the powered-by links if you know anything whatsoever about HTML, and it's like $30 bucks for a year of hosting) is the only reason why I would like to think rather than am sure about it.
  - drusenko 16y ago
    we don't openly disclose revenue numbers, but we're very profitable. there's lots more to the pro package than just removing the footer link :)
amohr 16y ago
When I interviewed at Airbnb, IIRC, I believe they said they were profitable or close to it. [citation needed]
iamelgringo 16y ago
Yes, but a lot of them don't find it necessary to openly talk about their balance sheets. I'm sure Wufoo and the Weeblies are profitable. Grapevine says that MixPanel is profitable already. AirBnb came out early in the press and said they were ramen profitable and then talked about the advantages of being "pizza" profitable shortly thereafter. I'd be very suprised if Dropbox wasn't making decent money, although they may be focused on scaling rather than maximizing profit. I could be wrong, but at the work at a startup event, a couple of companies said that they were profitable already. Listia, maybe? Don't quote me on this. From talking to YC founders, there's a pretty heavy emphasis to getting ramen profitable as soon as possible to gain leverage in fund raising negotiations. Starving founders tend to give away more equity and get worse terms than founders that can feed themselves and pay the rent. p.s. Nice to talk to you, Zack. How are things?

tommynazareth 16y ago

If I were in their position, I'd try to swing the donation model. Reddit offers value and should receive value in return. There is nothing wrong with trying to monetize an audience through advertising, but in some circumstances it is insulting to users. Reddit's value is derived from a strong sense of community and identification with that community: Secret Santa, University of Reddit, Reddit Island, and on and on. This spirit might not co-exist with aggressive advertising. There is also nothing wrong with a premium subscription, but I think the author of the linked post makes a clear case for why this is harmful to the Reddit community. Fundraising, however, would only tie the community together even more and intensify people's relationship with the site. Focus on the introducing the idea of ongoing donations into the culture, and focus on steering users away from the massive hive-mind sub-Reddits where there is less likely to be a sense of obligation to the site, and get more people involved in smaller Reddit communities where they are more likely to feel a personal connection. I'd hate to see Reddit die, but I'd really hate to see it ruined because they can't figure a congruous business model.

zbrock 16y ago

Reddit just needs to hire a sales/bizdev team. They have plenty of traffic, they just don't seem to have anyone creative or even competent trying to turn that traffic into cash flow. The first step might be actually selling some of their ad inventory. At least half the reddit pages I go to have ads for reddit. Digg has actually done some pretty innovative work around social ads that reddit could steal without too much effort. But again, they'd need someone to sell those ads.

thought_alarm 16y ago

Not me. I'm holding out for Reddit Platinum so I can look down my nose at those common Gold members.

pbhjpbhj 16y ago
If the board of Conde Nast decide they want to have their cars washed in cristal again at next years board meeting instead of letting reddit have enough to pay for an extra engineer then it's sure to come along.

davidw 16y ago

Seems like backwards thinking to me. You'll gladly "help out" a billion-dollar corporation, but won't pay for some genuine extra services? I'm seriously thinking I should ask for donations for LangPop.com - people like it but don't click on the ads. Maybe I could have a donate-o-meter for different languages.

vampirical 16y ago
Speaking as a donor who isn't considering "subscribing", others probably felt as I did, that we were donating to help out the reddit team rather than Conde Nast. I have no interest in paying for reddit on a regular basis and cannot imagine any feature or service they could add that would make me change my mind. A donation to give the reddit team an opportunity to get their heads above water and start making positive progress was what I signed up for. The last 6 months to a year, reddit has had regular scaling/feature/etc. problems and the communication from the admins and devs has always had the same tone of overwhelm. I'd love to see a site I use so often and enjoy so much get out of that hole and though I don't see this as being the way I wish them the best of luck. (A bit off-topic but EC2 sticks out as the big money sink they need to fix, the last number I remember them quoting was $200,000 a year for their EC2/S3 usage. I would have loved to hear the money was going to outfitting a few racks and moving things back out of the cloud.)
- davidw 16y ago
  > we were donating to help out the reddit team rather than Conde Nast. In other words, you and the other donors lost a game of chicken with Conde Naste, and are paying for something that they now do not have to. I suppose it's possible that they really would have shut things down or just let the site rot, but it seems a bit odd. Hard to know without more information though.