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What's fascinating to me is how Reddit is arguably at the tail end of "the pack" of major publishers. They struggle to monetize, yet possess one of the few rema
by shostack 7y ago
What's fascinating to me is how Reddit is arguably at the tail end of "the pack" of major publishers. They struggle to monetize, yet possess one of the few remaining bastions of decent quality reviews depending on what you're looking for.
Arguably this is because there is still "full" organic reach possible, and the users govern the subreddits. If there were to be a major throttling of organic reach such that the only way to get prominent visibility on Reddit was to pay based on reach, or mods lost the ability to control and curate their communities, I wouldn't be surprised to see Reddit drop in quality and user base.
- sireat 7y agoAnecdotally one gets better quality reviews using `foobar review site:reddit.com` than any other method. You can weed out the fake reviews on reddit better than say on amazon because of other users. Just use some common sense and if you see an echo chamber subreddit then take the review with some salt.
- piva00 7y agoI've been doing this for years now, it works even better for niche products (or not massively produced). The last example was the Smarthalo, a friend of mine asked me what I thought about it as I'm into biking, I had seen some ads and their Kickstarter campaign but didn't give much thought, the only way I could find reliable user reviews was by appending "site:reddit.com" after my Google Search as the other user reviews would be from Amazon or other e-commerce websites that I really don't trust.
- ralfd 7y agoAbsolutely! Yesterday I wanted to buy some inear headphones on Amazon and the user experience on the site itself is abysmal with countless no name China wares and suspect reviews. A search on fitness related subreddits what people actually use and how (water damage through sweating seems common) was much more useful.
- maest 7y agoI wouldn't say Reddit is all organic nowadays. Plenty of accounts gaming the website.
- shostack 7y agoMy point is they don't (or can't with the current setup) play games by restricting how many people see your post unless you pay up ala some other well-known sites.
- maest 7y agoMy bad - I saw 'organic reach' and thought you meant advertisers organically reaching customers. But you meant users reaching content.
- muddi900 7y agoOdd, I have only encountered clear SEO spam from smaller companies. It is very well disguised but just looking at a users history reveals that the review was spam.