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Reddit valued at $6B on a $250M round
- goalieca 6y agoReddit seems even better than Facebook at owning your mind.
- monsieurbanana 6y agoConsidering the enormity of what you're saying, more details would be nice.
- goalieca 6y agoReddit is a tool for promoting groupthink and is quite easily controlled. Some of it is organic where the mob mentality is grown through upvoting and downvoting independent thoughts and unpopular opinions. Some of it is brigading and bots from private organizations and governments aimed to shape that public opinion. And some it is from mods in a form of super powering that upvote and downvote. I do not believe it is that controversial to suppose that most non-niche subreddits are being manipulated by one of more of the above.
- monsieurbanana 6y agoMaybe, but... You're comparing it to facebook. There's whole countries for whom internet = facebook. Facebook could have very well been a major element in 2016 USA elections. It has a magnitude more users than reddit (although the number is gradually getting closer). It's much more opaque than reddit, who knows what really goes inside of it. I mean, it's Facebook. If you're arguing that something has bigger reach than Facebook, you need more than those arguments.
- radicalriddler 6y agoWe've literally just seen it with GME. Mods of a certain subreddit were able to manipulate a 3 million person sub to manipulate the stock market, and to make massive profits for themselves. Due to the nature of reddit, it also suckered millions of people who'd never bought stocks before to hold bags. If that's something that moderators can do, by curating the content on their subreddit, then what can admins do?
- ngokevin 6y agoI know people whose opinions entirely stem heavily from Reddit. What stocks to buy, what products are best, how to dress, how to do your hair, where to travel, where to eat, what music is good, what movies are good, etc.
- mberning 6y agoI have friends that are addicted to reddit and their world view is basically the reddit front page. There are many great subreddits, but the front page is completely gamed and owned by a small number of people. Even innocuous subs like pics or mildlyinteresting are coopted at a moments notice to push whatever the prevailing agenda is. There is almost no critical thought or countervailing opinions in discussion. A few years ago you could sort by controversial and see some interesting discussions. Nowadays if you do that there is nothing but toilet humor and other lewd content. I rarely use the site anymore as it is about as subtle as being hit over the head with a lead pipe.
- SkyMarshal 6y agoYou have to unsubscribe from all the default and front page reddits, they're mostly trash. But there are tons of niche subreddits that are actually interesting and have some expert commentary on their topics.
- pid_0 6y agoIt is, which is why I quit for good. Reddit free for a month now when I used to check r/all multiple times a day. Reddit is cancer.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nefitty 6y agoMy current internet samsara cycle is Reddit, HN and Twitter. I truly feel like there are hooks in my brain that compel me to mindlessly browse these three sites over and over again. The better I get at them, and the more positive feedback my comments get, the deeper the hooks go in.
- sanxiyn 6y agor/all is cancer, Reddit is not.
- _ink_ 6y agoSo you think on Reddit it might be possible that different groups try to manipulate the public oppinion by utilizing bots to upvote content? Even if that would be the case how is it worse in comparison to Facebook, where a single entity is manipulating the public oppinion?
- betwixthewires 6y agoIt is potentially worse because the experience gives a person the illusion or organic information spreading and popular opinion. This is very detrimental IMO. Sure, while your average grandma (to use a tired stereotype) has a hard time telling the difference between promoted content and organic content on Facebook, on Reddit most people believe that everyone they're interacting with is a unique human voice. I saw a study a few weeks ago that came to the conclusion that 50% of the accounts on big front page subs are bots, I don't have a link anymore unfortunately. Even if you know it is happening it is hard to remind that part of your brain that who you're talking to has a good chance of not being a unique individual with an opinion. Their UX is designed this way deliberately.
- valaryuvalaryu 6y agoReddit likes to think of itself as independent, free and unlike Facebook. I am starting to think this is not true anymore. I can observe this in myself, how quickly my opinion on something is formed the moment I see the first comment or the headline. Its quite impossible or hard to convince myself that this is the right conclusion/opinion to be made. I guess I should just accept I am just another monkey
- RobRivera 6y agoneat. wasn't minecraft acquired for 2B?
- garbagetime 6y ago> wasn't minecraft acquired for 2B? Yes, but what's your point?
- RobRivera 6y agoI am juxtaposing 2 distinct acquisitions to provide a reference point for the market value a platform like reddit provides by comparison to a multimedia product and derivative merchandising. buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuddy
- xeromal 6y agoand whatsapp was bought for 15B
- google234123 6y agoSeems low to me. Good deal for the investors.
- redisman 6y agoDoes it make any money though?
- h0p3 6y agoProbably. Will it make more? Probably. It is not even clear to me that Reddit's value to an investor is entirely in virtue of simply how much money it can make.
- buu700 6y agoFor comparison, at its peak last month, GameStop was worth $33.6B.
- jessaustin 6y agoThey'll have to go public in order to take advantage of the obvious synergies...
- dehrmann 6y agoIt wasn't really, though, since the price would (and did) drop like a rock as soon as people start selling.
- symlinkk 6y agoIs there any way to short this?
- jerry80 6y agoI would take a long-term short on it. I've been using Reddit for 12 years (just checked my badge), and it gets a little worse each year. I just don't see it being relevant in another 12.
- wyxuan 6y ago6 billion dollars seems cheap is my original thought but really it seems like a good amount. Reddit can't really expand a significant amount more(as evidenced by their moves into video) and the monetization is terrible(who wants to buy Reddit premium, or advertise on Reddit?)
- uDontKnowMe 6y agoCouldn't they expand outside of the anglosphere? Basically 99% of reddit is English, unlike Facebook etc.
- vmception 6y agoThey could take a cut on account sales in a marketplace, making it safer for buyers and sellers Instead all these networks choose pretend that accounts aren't sold and pretend that everything is organic I guess #ad would ruin the illusion
- bransonf 6y agoAdvertising is largely untapped on Reddit though. Forgetting about the main subreddits and meme communities and whatnot, you have captive audiences for small niches. Say you sell bespoke bike parts or audiophile-quality headphones, there are subreddits for that. Or say /r/pcmasterrace is an opportunity for Asus, Corsair, etc. I assume many companies are already active on Reddit, but there’s an opportunity for Reddit to better the experience for some fee Effective advertising relies on good market segmentation and intent, and Reddit happens to do both in a non-intrusive way.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoWell you also landed on the problem with this scheme: a lot of reddit communities are brand poison. Does Corsair want "master race" as part of its branding experience, even if it's meant as humor? Yeah, not so much. This is the same pit Tumblr fell into.
- wtf_is_up 6y ago
- logicslave 6y agoSeems really underpriced to me.
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoWhat do you even get out of posting this? Suck their dicks harder, faggot.
- xenihn 6y agohi user FriendlyNormie, I can't reply to you directly since you are banned, but I am really curious as to how you are still able to post despite being banned
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoEveryone involved in reddit should be executed. Users included.
- arthurcolle 6y agoSeems like it would make for a great Facebook acquisition ... he said, horrified
- paxys 6y agoIf that happens we may as well just hand over control of the internet to Facebook. Why even pretend anymore?
- devlopr 6y agoIt would be cheap enough. And would make a lot of sense on paper but this feels more like a yahoo buy and run into the ground kind of play if yahoo still existed. This doesn't give facebook what it wants.. a new platform with younger minds to lockin. vsco.co seems like a better bet as an instagram buy. Surprised they didn't make a play for tiktok but they seem to want more messaging platforms connecting people.
- jessaustin 6y agoThey're already in FTC's sights. The change in administration makes that more complicated, but not even a Biden nominee would be able to reign in the lawyers if FB did that.
- google234123 6y agoIt's probably too much of a hassle. I would imagine FB is not focused on getting more anti trust scrutiny.
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y agoCongrats to them big time. It seriously doesn't get the recognition it deserves as the most impactful social media platform. To me, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, and other social media today is less about connecting people and really about driving targeted and calculated impressions of X to audiences via a user's feed. This is astro-turfed to feel organic and botted to death by everyone because of how much influence it has to dupe people. Almost unusable. Even though reddit is extremely guilty of this too (just browse /r/popular not logged in for example), what I find awesome about reddit is its ability to connect people and really have group conversations on almost anything. On a positive side, it's easily the best platform for mobilizing like-minded individuals and finding historic and well documented people's experiences about literally anything. Most my Google searches on random subjects look like this: "buying a house reddit", "best board games reddit", "high protein vegan foods reddit".
- throwawaysea 6y ago> what I find awesome about reddit is its ability to connect people and really have group conversations on almost anything I see Reddit at its best in niche subreddits but it is far from a place to have conversations on almost anything. The site as a whole as well as most of the biggest subs have banned various topics or lines of discussion in a bid to align to progressive left political views.
- pjscott 6y agoIf a subreddit forbids discussion of a topic, you probably wouldn't have been able to have a good conversation about it anyway. Don't go to the biggest subs! Avoid the places that have been taken over by the most aggressive enforcers of mass culture! Reddit's great redeeming virtue is that it's big enough for groups with more liberal discussion norms to flourish, if you can find them.
- edgyquant 6y agoYes but downvotes are annoying and the sub threads aren’t a good place for real discussions imo. I’d take an old fashion forum any day. It’s a shame that outside of history and science fiction there aren’t too many large forums anymore as Reddit has basically replaced them all. Reddit has a serious meme problem (even on subs where they’re banned) and repetitive jokes often times derailing conversations as funny one liners get upvoted to the top (then replied to with funny one liners) as longer form posts get moved to the bottom.
- cheeze 6y agoSaddens me how far the site has fallen. The abysmal mobile experience shoehorning you into using their low quality app is frustrating. It makes sense, need to monetize and appeal to the average internet user, but it bums me out there isn't a great replacement as of now. Many small communities that I like, but one of my favorite search queries is "_________ reddit" Need to understand timeshares? Want the best rice cooker? Usually reddit has a post with actual humans responding.
- mberning 6y agoI think a lot of that has to do with changes in the google search algorithm. Years goneby forum posts and discussion boards were frequently featured at the top of many searches. Nowadays you have to give google a hint as you suggest. I don’t know why it was changed, but I suspect that the reason is that very few forums have ads on them and google would prefer to send you to ad rich sites.
- PurpleFoxy 6y agoThe much more likely explanation is that no one is using forums anymore. Forum posts still show up in google but they are always from 2009.
- mberning 6y agoI’m not so sure. There are many extremely active forums that exist, particularly for specific hobbies. In my case for example, if I google for “subaru brz forged wheels” I get nothing but vendors and product pages. But if I add “ft86club” to the query a great many forum posts appear. In the past those type of forum posts would appear ahead of vendor pages.
- clydethefrog 6y agoProbably "outdated" forum software that doesn't have much SEO bells and whistles.
- 6y ago
- Sherl 6y agoRidiculous the Gamestop saga alone 2B and change. Should be more!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pragma84 6y agoI imagine a great deal of Reddit's value comes from the fact that its front page is essentially a mass viral advertising engine under the guise of original content. I remember reading only a handful of moderators control all of reddit's most popular subreddits, the ones frequently hitting the front page. These I'm sure are just sock accounts for marketing firms to use when they mass promote content. I wonder how much of the front page is even "real" content these days, not just an advertisement. The smaller niche communities are what make Reddit great for me. I guess a rigged front page is the price we pay to have so many quality smaller subreddits.
- lawrenceyan 6y agoHopefully this doesn't come off as too aggressive, but can I ask why it was necessary for you to create a new account in order to make this comment?
- devlopr 6y agoThe person could have lost a password. Been at a different machine. Works for reddit. First time poster / long time reader. Some people have been on this site so long they just like to play a game where they try to get to 500 karma as fast as possible. Then they start over and try to beat previous best time.
- pragma84 6y agoI don’t normally post on HN or even read it that often. So it is necessary because I lurk and just wanted to share my thoughts. I don't wanna derail things but perhaps consider most of the people on HN are probably lurkers and sometimes we make an account to join the chat :)
- cercatrova 6y agoSeems quite expensive. Reddit doesn't make substantial revenues, so I'm not sure what investors will gain with yet another funding round.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xyst 6y agoUser data my dude. All of that unfiltered data, and conversations are gold in the data mining age.
- nlitened 6y agoThe conversations are all open, and anyone can mine them free of charge, as far as I can tell.
- torbital 6y agoPretty sure all conversations are public, so you can just scrape for free.
- h0p3 6y agoThey aren't all public. Let us say, instead, that most of it is public. Furthermore, let us consider that publicness, like privacy, comes in degrees (and perhaps kinds).
- AznHisoka 6y agoMaybe in pre-2019 valuations. If anything it’s too cheap now. Probably worth 5-10 times if this was a public company.
- ayemiller 6y agoAt some point, free Reddit is going to have to start to suck in order to make money. If they make premium Reddit simply behave the way that current free Reddit does and abandon the silly "awards-based" revenue model, I think they might stand a chance to turn a profit.
- throwawaysea 6y agoReddit is as bad as Twitter. It has turned into a massive echo chamber, especially after they went on their ban spree. They banned r/thedonald but allowed r/politics to remain, which is a mess of uncritical discussions, brigading, downvote trains, and worse. This has led to left-wing politics and perspectives dominating virtually all the top subs and you can’t really escape it whether you’re looking at r/pics or r/technology or even subs for your local town or city. Some smaller subs like r/moderatepolitics are a welcome haven for those seeking civil discussion but it is disappointing to see the much bigger front page subs turned into weaponized echo chambers. In general the site has had an ever expansive censorship policy, banning anything they consider “hate speech” without recognizing that there are two sides to many of these conversations. For example, Reddit also removed subreddits like r/gendercritical, which means conversations that challenge and critically explore modern transactivist views can’t happen. Whatever your stance on the issue, this is a live and controversial topic where everyone must be allowed to state their views even if activists and Silicon Valley companies disagree. The departure from their founding free speech principles is very disappointing. Reddit’s history of using dark patterns to push their app is also infuriating and anti-user. And the desktop website is also a mess that seems to be less functional than old.reddit.com and more geared towards “engagement”. It has reached the point that it is “bad for society” since millions of people can be manipulated by this site quite easily. Subreddits regularly see brigading on politically sensitive or popular topics, and it is easy to spot - a subreddit with a few votes on each typical story will suddenly see thousands of votes on a story experiencing brigading. I really hope they see viable competition, but with network effects being what they are, it’ll be tough. Many of the alternatives (https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/km9468/list_of_active_reddit_alternatives_v6/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/km9468/...) have only seen minor traction.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mhh__ 6y agoWell they banned CTH as well...
- kregasaurusrex 6y agoStill waiting for Crunchbase[0] to update it with the list of investors, which aren't mentioned in Techcrunch or the Reuters article. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/reddit https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/reddit
- paxys 6y agoI hope they invest some of that into a working search experience
- sanxiyn 6y agoIt would be really great if Reddit starts to index words in the linked page.
- perryizgr8 6y agoI wonder why Zuck isn't buying it. He dropped 19B on whatsapp. Surely reddit is a good deal at 6B??
- sanxiyn 6y agoI agree. Simply running Facebook ads on subreddits must be worth it.
- batiudrami 6y agoA lot of moderation trouble and not really a direct competitor to one of their products in the way WhatsApp threatened Messenger. Much higher risk of users abandoning the platform too due to weaker network effects.
- jessaustin 6y agoIf he wants this to go away, he should wait a while before buying a popular social media firm: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2020/12/ftc-sues-facebook-illegal-monopolization https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2020/12/ftc-s...
- perryizgr8 6y agoAnti-trust regulation is basically dead in the US at this point. And you can bet your top dollar that Zuck/Cook/Bezos/Pichai are only going to continue trying to cripple it more. So I don't think such lawsuits are a credible threat or deterrent. Just some minimal ongoing cost of doing business.
- paxys 6y agoZuck buys (and cripples) products that are a threat to Facebook, and Reddit doesn't operate in the same space.
- perryizgr8 6y agoReddit and similar websites are definitely a long-term threat to FB. A lot of the people I know use FB just for the messenger and almost all of the time they used to spend in FB has moved to reddit.
- rkho 6y agoReddit is an intentionally designed dopamine machine with some areas of usefulness. There are pockets of great, high signal communities on Reddit that have not been unbundled. Discovery, however, is a mess. Some examples of some great subs: - HomeImprorvement is great for repair advice - Keto was helpful in my weight loss journey - Posture for, well, fixing my posture I've also bought and sold various digital and physical goods through HardwareSwap, GameSale, SteamGameSwap, and others. One of Reddit's strengths is being able to tie a username to a post history across many interests, which has given me enough confidence signals in buying and selling things on there. I'm sure fraud happens, but I have personally not (yet) been affected by it when transacting on the platform. But the main, core "Reddit experience" as algorithmically produced by r/Popular is a complete dumpster fire. It's the noise of the entire internet, jam packed into a webpage. So many low quality posts and comments that encapsulate all the negatives about "internet culture". There's no room for thoughtful discussion and discourse on the majority of the site, just shitposting and low rung commentary. Because of that, having a productive/net positive Reddit experience comes with a high barrier to entry in knowing which communities to pay attention to and which time sinks to avoid.
- comboy 6y agoReddit is a company that made people moderate their content for free. You don't need to know sub names to get some use of it. I append "reddit" to probably 1/3 of my search engine queries. Especially useful when looking for product recommendations.
- frakkingcylons 6y agoWhat feels like a big missed opportunity for Reddit is having a front-page without the low-quality subreddits. People often say to just never visit /r/popular because of all the garbage, but it's unfortunately the only way to discover subreddits when you’re not looking for anything in particular. Sure, if you know what you're looking for, it's pretty easy to find the appropriate subreddit. But if you just want to wander around, you have to sift through the terrible crap that shows up on /r/popular. I'd love it if there was something that helped filter this content automatically. Currently I keep manually blocking these subreddits, which was a lot of work at first (my block list is currently ~200) but it's helped a lot. I'm trying to solve this for myself actually by starting with filtering low-quality comments on Reddit and HN. I made a Chrome extension that helps me label comments as I read and stores them in Google Sheets. Then I use those labeled comments to train a custom NLP model that can categorize comments (good or bad, hide the comment if it's bad). So far, I'm spending most of my time trying to build a good dataset for my tastes. It's not too bad so far (~80-90% accuracy).
- prvc 6y ago> having a front-page without the trashy [0] subreddits Whatever makes the front page "trashy" (whatever you mean by that) would also make your hypothetical modified front page so.
- frakkingcylons 6y agoYou’re missing the obvious point. It should be easier to customize what you see on the front page. Clearly everyone does not share the same tastes. And it’s a huge missed opportunity to not filter the obvious low quality comments which are effectively spam.
- h0p3 6y agoAmazing. Adore it. May the workers own the means of production, including picking out what is salient. What are your thoughts on F2F networks of salience classification? Can I leverage my trust in others to help me see what matters most, and so on?
- 57875786 6y agoReddit at this point is a native advertising platform (not just the "promoted" stuff; much of the content on popular subs is astroterfing/native advertising too) with some "niche" communities that are always inferior (worse information, less informed members) than the equivalent StackExchange or dedicated website and message board that's been around for decades. It's a garbage website.
- 57875786 6y agoReddit badges, btw, are a great example of native advertising. In addition to advertisers badging their native ads, I would guess that most badges on reddit are fake, either automatically awarded by the software to popular posts or given out arbitrarily by reddit staff, with the intent of giving users the impression that it's common for redditors to spend real money to "gild" or otherwise flair posts that they like, so that they might do the same (despite the fact that none of the money goes to the person who authored the post they like). For those doubting this, remember that Reddit was bootstrapped by Spez and Alexis (by their own admission) posting stories through many sockpuppet accounts to make the early community seem larger and faster-growing than it really was. EDIT: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddit-founders-made-hundreds-of-fake-profiles-so-site-looked-popular/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/reddi...
- markdown 6y ago> given out arbitrarily by reddit staff, with the intent of giving users the impression that it's common for redditors to spend real money to "gild" or otherwise flair posts that they like, so that they might do the same I received for the first time yesterday, 100 credits for free from Reddit. I had to spend it within 24hrs or lose it, so I guilded the most interesting comment I read that hour.
- dclusin 6y agoI think that the amount of gilded awards that are ironically given to posts on r/conservative from members of r/politics largely disproves the idea that people are unwilling to spend stupid amounts of money on what amount to shiny baubles. How much that makes of their revenue however, is only known by reddit.
- alexbrower 6y agoMost Reddit readers worth real advertising $ use ad blockers of one kind or another. I’m happy for the Reddit team, and hope they’re able to make a responsible revenue stream out of the fundraise.
- Gustomaximus 6y agoAs a marketer, Id position non-techy people are well worth advertising to also. That said on the bunch of times I've tested reddit paid ads its always has one of the worst ROI's. A good organic campaign is far better if you have the ability to engage people in a genuine way.
- colinmhayes 6y agoThey're monetizing the app and forcing mobile users onto it. The desktop site is just a way for them to acquire mobile users.
- darknavi 6y agoGlad they haven't restricted API access other than newer shit features. I'm going to be sad when Apollo stops working one day as it is an amazing iOS experience.
- alex-wallish 6y agoI'm curious, what makes the mobile app easier to monetize than their mobile web version? I get that push notifications can help bring people back, but other than that what benefit do they get by forcing people from web to native?
- dageshi 6y agoNo ad blockers in the app.
- jjcm 6y agoReddit is a top ten site in the US, but is valued at a fraction of its competitors. The main worry I have for reddit moving forward is how do you monetize a userbase that is HIGHLY resistant to change. They're pushing heavily into their new mobile app, which is a solid start as an ad platform, but the old crowd on reddit all came from Digg after Digg tried to change their model to support more revenue. Their users will jump ship if they push too hard / too quick. I love reddit and use it heavily, but I don't see how they become profitable without alienating their userbase.
- markdown 6y agoDigg users had an attractive alternative to run to. Reddit users don't.
- 1996 6y agoyet
- Clewza313 6y agoDigg never had individual communities on Reddit's scale. Reddit has subreddits for every obscure hobby, niche and fetish imaginable, and it's much harder to convince the users already there to jump ship. Also, once you're logged into Reddit, the friction of exploring a new subreddit is essentially zero. Compare this with needing to sign up and email verify etc every time you want to join some random phpBB forum.
- shmageggy 6y agoIt’s different now. As one of those Digg refugees who has now been looking to ditch reddit for a long time, there just isn’t a good, obvious reddit alternative in the same way there was a good, obvious Digg alternative. The internet is too grown up, too parceled out, the big players are too dominant.
- tayo42 6y agoWhat do you look for in an ideal reddit alternative?
- torgian 6y agoI still dont understand how something like Reddit can be worth billions of dollars. It feels like such a random, empty number
- paxys 6y agoA lot of people browse Reddit. The site/app shows them ads. Users click on those ads, and Reddit gets a cut. Reddit can also personalize the ads with information they collect about users as they use the site, thus getting more ad clicks and more revenue. It is a pretty straightforward business model. Reddit is far from the first company with that valuation to successfully capitalize on it.
- paulmendoza 6y agoStop raising money. Each time you do that you increase the pressure on the site to make more money to earn the valuation. If the company is valued at $6B today then it probably needs to get to at least $18B valuation in two years. How? By trying to extract even more money from the users.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI couldn't agree more. We need to build companies that are sustainable and stable, it's almost as if its a lost concept - What's wrong with a profitable company with no growth? Most companies shoot themselves in the foot and die while growing. Hey, I guess its like a forest - a tree falls down and small seedlings take up the space. Ah, the endless cycle of human struggle.
- tjs8rj 6y agoI just watched a video on Apple’s “cash problem”, with one of the video creators core point that “people expect the stock price to go up, and that can’t happen unless Apple does something with that cash and makes more with it!”. Got me thinking: isn’t one of the core premises of investing that you’re purchasing ownership of cash flow? Is the ideal company one that it’s never profitable because it so perfectly allocated its money to never return a dime, but always to reinvest in itself? There’s a time and a place for re investment, but returning profit to investors is marginalized these days. Apple probably doesn’t have a money problem, the culture does. Startups don’t sell growth except secondarily, they sell profit.
- systemvoltage 6y agoNo, classic companies like Coca-Cola pay dividends to their shareholders. A company can also buyback their shares.
- wtf_is_up 6y agoAAPL pays a dividend and has a substantial buyback program. Their cash problem, if you want to call it that, is that they bring in so much revenue with nice margins that it is impossible to allocate it all. So they return some value back to shareholders through divvies and buybacks, spend what is reasonable on R&D, and keep cash on hand for flexibility. They don't seem that big on M&A, but that is probably a good thing (looking at Cisco for example)
- awak3ning 6y agoWhile I would never be one to question the value and power of internet forums to facilitate meaningful social interaction, I do question that this value can (or should) be realized by financial markets. This makes me very concerned that the social capital harbored on the site will be transmutated into revenue via advertising models and thereby be diluted or even extinguished.
- theNJR 6y agoKevin Rose had a pretty epic Tweet about wanting to buy Digg and bring it back to its pre-redesign phase [1]. Mark Cuban wanted in on it and I seem to remember Alexis Ohanian responded in a new tweet. I don’t feel like going through his old posts to link to it. I’d love a return to the old. Even if its just the social web version of reruns. [1] https://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/1347747289511563265?s=21 https://twitter.com/kevinrose/status/1347747289511563265?s=2...
- rrdharan 6y agoWould be hilarious if eventually we just had a slow stable oscillation where Digg and Reddit continue repeatedly raising money and relaunching as “old” whatever, stealing back each others users like some slow motion pendulum or sands in a spinning hourglass..
- bibinou 6y agoDigg was being astroturfed like hell, that's one of the reasons they wanted to redesign. Doubt it would fare well today.
- DebtDeflation 6y ago>I’d love a return to the old Bring back Usenet, IRC, and Listserv and get rid of everything else. Only half-joking. And yes, I'm aware those things still technically exist.
- strngeattractor 6y agoIt was actually a YC listacle posted on here that brought to my attention the fact that Reddit is a YC seed(spring '05 I think)..and while reading that it all weirdly made sense. Though they may only coicidentally both be orange-banner headed forums...there is an uncanny,hmm, hackernews-iness to discourse on reddit.
- easton 6y agohn was designed as a way to replicate reddit pre-subreddits, so the similarities were intentional.
- mrnobody_67 6y agoSame as Dogecoin
- ihuman 6y agoThere are more discussions on the post for the press release, but it was bumped off the front page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26072765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26072765
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago94 billion to go!
- kraemate 6y agoSo, do its main revenue generators (i.e., users) get a share of the profits?
- kraemate 6y agoSorry, why is this downvoted? There is a serious argument to be had about the source of income for surveillance and tracking driven websites. If the oft-used line of "users being products" is true, then where's our profit?
- cft 6y agoThat's about 10% of Pinterest valuation
- swarnie_ 6y agoI imagine because the data gained is such low value. I need to maintain three or four different semi-fully anonymous accounts just to make the site bearable.
- wtf_is_up 6y agoPINS has $1.6B in sales and impressive growth quarter after quarter. Reddit has been trying to do... something... for the last 5 years to drive any growth. Crappy webapp, crappy mobileapp, crappy video, angsty, toxic community resistant to change.
- dmode 6y agoReddit to me feels very undervalued. As witnessed by the GameStop saga and previously through the influence of r/D_T, Reddit has tremendous influence on modern society and shapes a lot of our narratives. They should be valued way over $6bn
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- betwixthewires 6y agoWell you've got to have a concrete metric to come to that number. And while reddit is still hugely influential, it isn't what it used to be and it's importance is waning. A lot of the discourse is happening distributed across the internet nowadays, which I personally think is a good thing.
- stopChanging 6y agoI agree, but only if I compare to airbnb ($120B), doordash & roku (59B), or maybe the more directly comparable snapchat at 95B. Perspective is skewed by the stock market doing crazy things lately. Reddit doesn't get the benefit of that.
- dmode 6y agoShouldn’t the hyper inflated stock market valuation spill to private valuation as well
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- qznc 6y agoRecently, i realized my reddit frontpage is full of self links. It isn't a link aggregator anymore for me. Not primarily. It is a forum.
- jakuboboza 6y agoReddit has one thing going for it. Not much competition just like Facebook. It is a hard market to break into (social media) and people just don't try. We have new startups focusing on newest hottest shit like AI driven solution to mashing potatoes. But rarely we see startup tackling good old social media. Maybe because it is high fail area while current AI fueled rush is not yet branded high fail area ? Anyway good for them at reddit do push good numbers. I bet the covid fueled traffic also helped a lot.
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- ausbah 6y agoclubhouse and yubo spring to mind
- tomerico 6y agoReddit ads suck - and that's exactly the reason why the company is worth so much (and probably more). The predominant consumption pattern is similar to the other major social networks - scrolling through an infinite feed of dopamine inducing content. This indicates that its earning potential could be closer to that of Facebook and Instagram with the right ads in place. This also brings the point that Reddit would be an amazing purchase for Facebook if it could pass regulatory scrutiny. And if not - that they should at least collaborate on their ads
- isatty 6y agoEveryday reddit user of 12 years here, Facebook buying them would be the event that'd force me to leave. Their redesign almost did it, but Apollo saved me.
- sprite 6y agoThey are purposefully making Reddit absolutely terrible on mobile web browsers. They constantly try to force you to download the app, don't let you read full threads without it, etc. It seems it just constantly gets worse and worse.
- christkv 6y agoI just use old.reddit.com instead
- motogpjimbo 6y agoOn mobile? It renders a desktop view and is therefore almost unusable. i.reddit.com is the mobile equivalent, but is also terrible.
- oneweekwonder 6y ago> On mobile? try http://reddit.premii.com/ http://reddit.premii.com/ there also https://hn.premii.com/ https://hn.premii.com/ .
- clydethefrog 6y agoOr even better for mobile browsing - i.reddit.com. Although the new functionalities are purposely not working there.
- Triv888 6y agons.reddit.com is the same as old.reddit.com, I think ... and I use the Redirector addon to make sure that I never see the new reddit.
- Neil44 6y agoThe Apollo app is better than the official one.
- betwixthewires 6y agoI've found this criticism and similar are sadly the norm with most modern internet products, platforms, web apps, etc. I'm sure some of it is resistance to change, but I can't just chock all of it up to that. Most of the changes on most big internet sites over the last few years have hurt UX and been contrary to user interests. Netflix, github, YouTube, Google, reddit, Facebook, you name it, they all are constantly making decisions that inhibit rather than empower users. it's the story of the internet for at least 5 years.
- cblconfederate 6y agoReddit (and discord) seem to me ripe to be unbundled. They are benefiting enormously from the free labour of moderators, and their network advantage depends highly on google's asinine decisions to block out anything but the top 10 sites on their search results. Due to aging moderators, overcrowded communities and meme fatigue, we re more likely to watch their communities break off independently.
- collyw 6y ago> They are benefiting enormously from the free labour of moderators A lot of people leave Reddit because of the heavy handed moderation and groupthink.
- optimalsolver 6y agoWhere do they go?
- collyw 6y agoTo the pub.
- dageshi 6y agoThe direction of travel has been opposite of that for 10+ years. Small forums that used to exist on niche subjects are being absorbed into reddit.
- cblconfederate 6y agowere. i see communities breaking off
- betwixthewires 6y agoWait, has Reddit never been profitable? I'd love to see the number of decade or near decade old tech and social media startups that are still relying on VC funding.
- burgerquizz 6y agowhich subreddits do HNers find the most useful ? I know there is many subreddit gems but it's not easy to discover them. I love browsing those where I find excellent advices: https://www.reddit.com/r/awardtravel/ https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/ (I think more human than HN for advices / feedbacks ) https://www.reddit.com/r/books/ ( found great non-mainstream books to read )
- OmegaPG 6y agocheck https://www.reddit.com/r/space https://www.reddit.com/r/space https://www.reddit.com/r/science https://www.reddit.com/r/science https://www.reddit.com/r/programming https://www.reddit.com/r/programming too
- jC6fhrfHRLM9b3 6y agoIt's worth alot more as a leftish propaganda machine.
- jC6fhrfHRLM9b3 6y agoDown voted for posting a fact.
- mcintyre1994 6y agoIt always worries me when Reddit tunnels deeper into the VC neverending pit that they'll be under even more pressure to kill third party apps and make their platform as bad as their own app is on mobile.
- SaaSdom 6y agoReddit is one confusing machine with an ever-changing algo! I've been using the platform for quite some time now and trust me it's been driving me insane ever since! I mainly use it to engage with meaningful subreddits such as SaaS, startups, entrepreneurs, growth marketing, marketing automation, etc. since I work at WebEngage - a leading full stack marketing automation stack! But, duuuude! I think another 5 years down the line I'll still say, "I am new to Reddit!"
- sschueller 6y agoWouldn't the reddit model perfectly run as a federated setup? Each community (subreddit) being a federated instance? Edit: There seems to a project that does this exactly: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
- obayesshelton 6y agoThey could have raised that from the people from Wall Street Bets if they sold at the high of the GME craziness
- freebuju 6y agoMy problem with Reddit is it's algo. The content recommendation is terribly bad. Subscribe to r/pic, r/funny and r/popular then mix these with other high quality or niche subs. No matter how much upvote, engagement data you give their algos as to your personal preferences,, your front page will always suck. Case in point, when several high profile Twitter accounts were hacked and used to solicit bitcoins from users, none of the threads were immediately visible on their front pages. And I discovered this borked content recommendation is worser on some platforms than others. E.g reddit front page on a browser sucks 100x compared to their official app. And 50x compared to a 3rd party app. Most of this is eerily intentional. To push you towards using their clients.
- Havoc 6y agoReddit is exactly one drama away from zero valuation. Hero to zero like digg. Just way too much diverse communities under one roof that don’t really fit with their corporate need to be PC
- mschuster91 6y agoReddit has weathered countless dramas over the last years without noticeable negative after-effects. Basically, once or twice a year they get some outrage, shed the outermost layer of bullshit and that's it. And since it's almost always either far-right stuff (t_d, chimpire, incels, greatawakening, pizzagate), morally obscene stuff (jailbait, watchpeopledie, gore, deepfakes), discriminatory stuff (fph, gendercritical) or legal hot topics (sonygop, gunsforsale, creepshots, darknetmarkets) that get banned, the reactions from general society to the bans are usually positive. Not many are willing to defend pedophilia, Nazi stuff or LGBT-haters.
- Havoc 6y agoThe fact that you can name that many controversies off the top of your head kinda proves my point though. Only a matter of time until they get hit with a big freak wave one, or they severely mishandle one
- mschuster91 6y agogotta admit, I cheated and copied the list from Wikipedia. Anyway, they managed to get rid of the two largest threats to their business model (jailbait w/ all the issues that come with hosting borderline pedophilia content, and the entire t_d clusterfuck with the threat of an unhinged President looming) without any major issues other than a couple conservative talkshow people whining. As long as Reddit flows with the "zeitgeist", there isn't much that can threaten them.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoThe reddit community loudly and confidently accused an innocent person of being the Boston marathon bomber, which directly led to the deaths of several people and a campaign of harassment against the accused's family. That didn't shut them down. I shudder to think of what drama would be big enough to pull it off.
- ppf 6y agoReddit is trash. Just look at the direction it is going (eg, browse to "reddit.com" without logging in), and realise that you should not be giving this company your precious attention. I recently had a "digital purge", and my last reddit account was one of the many things to go.
- OmegaPG 6y agoI am a digg refugee and using Reddit for 12 years. Reddit has some serious lack of moderation issues and too much politics now a days. Most of the country based subreddits are hijacked by the political ideologies of just 1-2 moderators. For example, /r/India is hijacked by the moderators with political affiliation to Congress and AAP and they ban users immediately with any opinion which doesn't fit their narrative. I have messaged the reddit admin team to change the mods and stop calling them official subreddit of India but they obviously don't care. Too much politics may cause Reddit downfall.
- Triv888 6y agoagreed... for example, /r/politics is 99% democrat
- abstractbarista 6y agoThat sub is a mean place. You are treated as Hitler if you do anything other than parrot the sub's accepted norms, many of which are highly dissonant when compared with real life American perspectives.
- dustingetz 6y agor/politics is an influencer sockpuppet botnet
- f430 6y agonot only that but there are still far right leaning moderators running subreddits like r/canada and r/vancouver its impossible to elect moderators in a democratic fashion so we are stuck with the political bias of the people who created the subreddit first and it leads to all sorts of censorship and is a big source of misinformation. for instance we see a single user /u/maxwellhill responsible for most of the headlines posted on r/worldnews. Many redditors and people in general can't be bothered to practice critical thinking and will gladly skim over headlines which are also optimized to get upvotes. In addition, the over supply of awards, the availability of farmed reddit accounts for sale are all used to manipulate and trigger herd mentality. For example the wallstreetbets and GME short squeeze that they are still waiting to happen. It's insanely easy to create these pseudo realities and brainwash people simply by gaming something as trivial as scores in a database because people simply trust numbers, doubly more so if they are awarded on reddit. I argue that without Reddit, crypto, bitcoins, meme stocks wouldn't see its insane market prices.
- lolive 6y agoI have never used Reddit ever (nor Usenet). Anyway I have discovered Reddit while searching for i3 faq and help. (i3=the window manager). They simply use Reddit as their stackOverflow/support forum. Tell me Reddit is the Usenet+StackOverflow of everything and the rest, and I create an account RIGHT NOW!!!
- beervirus 6y agoDon’t bother.
- MildlySerious 6y agoSlightly off topic, but can someone explain to me what factors play into reddit being valuet at $6B while Snapchat is valued >10x that at $100b?
- vfclists 6y agoThe most pressing issue of a time is seriously undermining reddit as place of free discussion - https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/ldz09x/why_is_reddit_overwhelmingly_prolockdown/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/ldz09x/... Covid-19 claims another victim
- theXspidy 6y ago## Reddit's valuation doubles to $6 billion after new $250 million funding  Reddit Inc. announced on Monday that it has raised over $250 million in a new round of funding (series E), doubling its valuation to $6 billion, reports [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-reddit-funding/reddits-valuation-doubles-to-6-billion-after-new-250-million-funding-idUSKBN2A9056 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-reddit-funding/reddits-va...). The big picture: Reddit said in a statement that it plans to make "strategic investments" in the video, advertising, and consumer products, and expand into international markets. - The platform has 50 million active daily users. 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Of note: The platform recently drew attention for this 5-second static-image ad during the Super Bowl, per [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/08/reddit-raises-250-million-in-series-e-funding/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/08/reddit-raises-250-million-...). ## Headlines - Uber Founder Launches [Luxury Airline](https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3gkk7/aero-luxury-airline-uber-founder-garrett-camp-covid-vacations?ref=upstract.com&curator=upstract.com&utm_source=upstract.com&utm_medium=web https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3gkk7/aero-luxury-airline-u...) 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Get Daily News Like This *[CutThroughTheNoise](https://CutThroughTheNoise.co https://CutThroughTheNoise.co)* ## After three months, WhatsApp Pay registers slow growth WhatsApp Pay has processed just 1.6M of the 6.7B+ UPI transactions in the country since its launch in November, writes [The Economic Times](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/after-three-months-whatsapp-pay-not-in-full-play/articleshow/80756294.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/after-t...). Between the lines: WhatsApp insiders say this slow growth has been due to choice; as the company wants to get the technology right and ensure a smooth user experience before marketing the service. - However, market observers feel that current concerns about the ownership and privacy of digital data and big tech firms' power could be part of the reason. - Also, WhatsApp Pay went live after months of regulatory hurdles, and that too for a restricted user base of 20 million. 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- TheRealDunkirk 6y ago308 comments at the time of this writing, and no one has talked about the fact that -- given the relative user counts and traffic -- all of normal subs are just a legitimacy-conferring facade over the NSFW content? Reddit is the largest non-MindGeek porn site on the internet. I would guess that the revenue from this side is what makes the whole thing work.
- wrinkl3 6y agoReminds me of Tumblr. I wonder if it'll have to do a similar crackdown if new legislations get passed.
- TechBro8615 6y agoWhat revenue? I'm pretty sure NSFW subs don't have ads.
- TheRealDunkirk 6y agoI don't have any inside information, but I've always guessed that this is how Reddit makes most of its money: paid manipulation of the allegedly-organic page composition. You DON'T think that the various *hubs AREN'T paying Reddit for placement for their clips and have links to the full video?
- Anon1096 6y agoHonestly, I have no idea how the New York Times took issue with Mindgeek over child porn on PornHub, but failed to ever mention Reddit. Reddit is the single largest child porn distributor on the Internet, and the nsfw subs are a ticking time bomb just waiting for a horrible media expose to be written. I'm sure in the meantime though they're a major driver of traffic so Reddit will act willfully ignorant.
- wilsocr88 6y agoReddit essentially gets users addicted, then surrounds them with what appears to be an environment driven by a kind of democratic consensus (everyone can vote!) but which is actually very tightly curated and edited toward political and social ends. This is so sinister. You don't get that valuable being a popular platform for link-sharing and comments. You get that valuable by wielding an appreciable amount of power over a large group of people, which Reddit unquestionably does, and then making that power known to other powerful people who have available capital. If you can't continue real growth, gather power instead, and the growth will be artificially infused into your organization instead (like YouTube). The things Reddit's home office decides to promote to the top of the front page versus what gets insta-buried starts to make a difference in how people think. That's the true malignancy of social media: it warps minds with fictitious, intentionally curated peer pressure. Addiction-first UX design plus frequent "thinking past the sale" on important issues (Reddit posts usually treat only one side of an issue as though it's the obvious foregone conclusion and work from there), and add a few artificially promoted user comments below, and now you have a company that is able to leverage something akin to peer pressure toward its own private ends. "Not only are you supposed to like X and Y in polite society, but all of your friends already think that. Don't you?" Facebook has been doing that for years with the fake "your friends liked the pages of Walmart and Pepsi" messages. There needs to be an easier way to talk about how some companies wield entire generations full of hormonal young people and that they can, will, and DO use them to create social upheaval at will. Edit: typos
- flavius29663 6y agoI wholeheartedly agree. It's also more addictive than Facebook or Instagram, and (for me at least) it's a more negative mental experience. Probably because of all the dopamine. I don't remember it being like this in the beginning. Not sure if it was because I wasn't hooked on it yet, or because they changed their algorithms. Also, since Trump in 2015, it went even more downhill pretty fast. I am pretty sure they intentionally made it such that you get angry at "the other side" - it was so easy to do that with Trump.
- wilsocr88 6y ago
- valuearb 6y agoIronically the GME debacle has raised the value of both Reddit and Robinhood.
- f430 6y agoI think we are headed for a major market correction. The economics are completely removed from the insane multiples that the market is placing on tech companies. Just like 2000.
- wiremine 6y agoMy theory with Reddit is this: 1. The value of the _content_ goes up as the community gets bigger. r/BetterEveryLoop is great because of the content, not the silly comments. 2. The value of the _community_ goes up when the community is smaller. I'm into board games, and the various subreddits for specific games are useful and interesting. Same with some of the cooking subreddits. (This assumes the community is good intentioned) Of course, that's a rule of thumb, and there are lots of exceptions in both directions. But in general, active and small communities tend to be the most truly useful parts of reddit.
- vardhanajay 6y agolinkish valued at $8B
- DataWorker 6y agoReddit is a net negative for the internet. Facebook isn’t wonderful but at least it’s better for society, and less dishonest to its users than Reddit.
- cwhiz 6y agoOn the surface, a cesspool dedicated to efficiently, and effortlessly, building and curating your own bubble. Terrible for humanity, and for everyone involved in the "discussions." Dig deeper, and it's mostly porn. If you zoom into any random community, it's probably porn. If it's not porn, it's some curated and heavily modded bubble forum for like minded individuals to reinforce what they already believe. It's unfortunate that Reddit ever added comments, or karma.
- downvotemore 6y agoIn the same way that you described reddit communities, HN is essentially a tech bubble. On these platforms, anything that challenges the echo chamber’s status quo gets flagged or downvoted into oblivion. It has nothing to do with rules or content guidelines, and everything to do with opinions and emotions. The downvote button needs to be removed entirely, because high karma users don’t know any more than the rest of us (other than how to be addicted to a screen).
- nunez 6y agoI can't wait and am terrified when Reddit eventually goes public. Honestly, I'm surprised that this hasn't already happene.d
- ossusermivami 6y agor/linux is the best linux forum since comp.os.linux
- aussiegreenie 6y agoWho remembers when Reddit was sold to Condé Nast? The guys got t-shirts saying they built something people want