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The marketing on reddit is what gets me. Aside from the fact that reddit video is terrible.. if you spend enough time on reddit (which, sadly, I do) you start t

by morrbo 8y ago

The marketing on reddit is what gets me. Aside from the fact that reddit video is terrible.. if you spend enough time on reddit (which, sadly, I do) you start to see patterns emerging. These have gotten more and more blatant over the past few years to the point where it is ruining a lot of the larger subs. The particular case i'm thinking of is when the movie "IT" came out recently. There was so much guerrilla marketing everywhere it was just a real pain in the ass to browse around. In general though it goes like this: "TIL XXX did YYY" - fairly innocuous postings about a movie, game, product, or company seemingly out of the blue, a few weeks/months before anything happens (in the case of IT there was a load of stuff about Tim Curry or Stephen King a long time before any real announcement the movie would be releasing soon) "XXX has rumoured to release a YYY v2" - sparked discussion about the possible launch of something, be it a movie, game, etc. *maybe a few more TILs/related content/memes digging up old screenshots of said movie, game, etc.* "XXX has released YYY" - a hugely voted post which gains a lot of visibility very quickly (depending on the level of marketing) *Floods of memes relating directly to XXX or YYY which don't usually look like fan content* maybe i'm being overly paranoid, but there seems to be a definite trait in my head. Other than the occasional self-congratulatory Medium post, HN luckily doesn't seem to be falling to the same fate (HN funded incubators aside, which is fine). I guess thanks largely in part to the mods here. Gj dang!

yawgmoth 8y ago
These days the marketing game includes faking organic growth. Music artists do it all the time. Here's an example: https://dimelovi.com/# https://dimelovi.com/# From the page: > We at Dimelo VI offer a complete set of marketing product and creative services focus on you, the artist as a brand and your fans. You the artist, take care of the stage and your music and we take care of the rest. > Not only we work on the artist development, we also work directly with fans to create a big impact on the social engagement of the artist. Making the Fans Closer to the artist is the key to make a hit go viral and make the best ROI. Translation: We have the means to increase exposure for you, the product, through popular channels. Tangibly that means shill accounts on Reddit, YouTube, probably HN, Instagram, etc. Before I deleted my reddit account (10 years old), I would regularly get private messages about getting paid for shilling. It's a real problem and it's totally affecting how I interact with the internet. Is this really a group of people excited about something? Or am I being fooled? And it's fair to ask what the difference is, but regardless of the answer it's also fair to have a stance on the principle. For me, don't lie to me to get me into your music/movie/game/whatever. I will actively avoid things being marketed like that.
- tubbs 8y ago
  Did you have wicked reddit karma? I have maybe 50k combined on an 11 year old account, and I've never received such a message. I wonder if it had to do with your previous posting history or subreddits you frequented.
minimaxir 8y ago
I did an analysis of score/title trends a month ago and found that there really isn't a trend per se even among the biggest subreddits in terms of post performance and post titles, but selection bias can be hard to overcome: https://minimaxir.com/2018/09/modeling-link-aggregators/ https://minimaxir.com/2018/09/modeling-link-aggregators/ That said, I haven't been a fan of Reddit's Ad Units, which feel very /r/fellowkids ironically.
Karunamon 8y ago
Any community with anything to do with media is going to have completely organic hype posts, just because real people are actually excited for the thing to come out.
huhtenberg 8y ago
This depends heavily on your choice of subs. I kill a lot of time on reddit and I see none of what you describe. Literally - zero of it.
grecy 8y ago
/r/movies is shocking for this. For almost a year, every second post was "I just watched movie XYZ, it's great, you should watch it streaming on Netflix now". Every single post had that "Netflix" on the end. Now in the official [Discussion] Thread for any new release whatsoever there are hundreds and hundreds of comments that follow this structure almost to the letter: "Based on all the criticism online I really went into this not sure what to expect, but actually, I was pleasantly surprised, this movie is really fun with great character development, great action and cinematography to leave you gasping. You should see this in theaters. Highly recommend this movie."
- bliblah 8y ago
  Not only that but almost once every two week a random poster / trailer for a film is released and it just shoots up to the top of r/all with thousands of upvotes. Then the movie flops because it had no real interest. Here is an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/8t40nu/offical_poster_the_man_who_killed_hitler_and_then/ https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/8t40nu/offical_post... 55,000+ upvotes which is higher than anything I can see in r/all at this moment. Yet the movie has only 23 review on RT, and I can't find a single source of gross box office release. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_man_who_killed_hitler_and_then_the_bigfoot/ https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_man_who_killed_hitler_a... Maybe its the power of memes, but as someone who just browses the r/all once in a while I find it baffling how many weird movies just happen to prop up alongside international news and cute puppy gifs.
  - grecy 8y ago
    Yep, absolutely. The number of people buying upvotes is so transparent when you think for even 5 minutes, but of course Reddit are not going to stop it because it's good for them.
bionoid 8y ago
/r/HailCorporate documents some of this type of activity on reddit, in case anyone is interested

by morrbo 8y ago

yawgmoth 8y ago

These days the marketing game includes faking organic growth. Music artists do it all the time. Here's an example: https://dimelovi.com/# https://dimelovi.com/# From the page: > We at Dimelo VI offer a complete set of marketing product and creative services focus on you, the artist as a brand and your fans. You the artist, take care of the stage and your music and we take care of the rest. > Not only we work on the artist development, we also work directly with fans to create a big impact on the social engagement of the artist. Making the Fans Closer to the artist is the key to make a hit go viral and make the best ROI. Translation: We have the means to increase exposure for you, the product, through popular channels. Tangibly that means shill accounts on Reddit, YouTube, probably HN, Instagram, etc. Before I deleted my reddit account (10 years old), I would regularly get private messages about getting paid for shilling. It's a real problem and it's totally affecting how I interact with the internet. Is this really a group of people excited about something? Or am I being fooled? And it's fair to ask what the difference is, but regardless of the answer it's also fair to have a stance on the principle. For me, don't lie to me to get me into your music/movie/game/whatever. I will actively avoid things being marketed like that.

tubbs 8y ago
Did you have wicked reddit karma? I have maybe 50k combined on an 11 year old account, and I've never received such a message. I wonder if it had to do with your previous posting history or subreddits you frequented.

minimaxir 8y ago

I did an analysis of score/title trends a month ago and found that there really isn't a trend per se even among the biggest subreddits in terms of post performance and post titles, but selection bias can be hard to overcome: https://minimaxir.com/2018/09/modeling-link-aggregators/ https://minimaxir.com/2018/09/modeling-link-aggregators/ That said, I haven't been a fan of Reddit's Ad Units, which feel very /r/fellowkids ironically.

Karunamon 8y ago

Any community with anything to do with media is going to have completely organic hype posts, just because real people are actually excited for the thing to come out.

huhtenberg 8y ago

This depends heavily on your choice of subs. I kill a lot of time on reddit and I see none of what you describe. Literally - zero of it.

grecy 8y ago

/r/movies is shocking for this. For almost a year, every second post was "I just watched movie XYZ, it's great, you should watch it streaming on Netflix now". Every single post had that "Netflix" on the end. Now in the official [Discussion] Thread for any new release whatsoever there are hundreds and hundreds of comments that follow this structure almost to the letter: "Based on all the criticism online I really went into this not sure what to expect, but actually, I was pleasantly surprised, this movie is really fun with great character development, great action and cinematography to leave you gasping. You should see this in theaters. Highly recommend this movie."

bliblah 8y ago
Not only that but almost once every two week a random poster / trailer for a film is released and it just shoots up to the top of r/all with thousands of upvotes. Then the movie flops because it had no real interest. Here is an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/8t40nu/offical_poster_the_man_who_killed_hitler_and_then/ https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/8t40nu/offical_post... 55,000+ upvotes which is higher than anything I can see in r/all at this moment. Yet the movie has only 23 review on RT, and I can't find a single source of gross box office release. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_man_who_killed_hitler_and_then_the_bigfoot/ https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_man_who_killed_hitler_a... Maybe its the power of memes, but as someone who just browses the r/all once in a while I find it baffling how many weird movies just happen to prop up alongside international news and cute puppy gifs.
- grecy 8y ago
  Yep, absolutely. The number of people buying upvotes is so transparent when you think for even 5 minutes, but of course Reddit are not going to stop it because it's good for them.

bionoid 8y ago

/r/HailCorporate documents some of this type of activity on reddit, in case anyone is interested