5 ms·

Reddit 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 use

by jjcm 6y ago

Reddit 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 ago
Digg users had an attractive alternative to run to. Reddit users don't.
- 1996 6y ago
  yet
  - Clewza313 6y ago
    Digg 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 ago
    It’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 ago
      What do you look for in an ideal reddit alternative?
      - markdown 6y ago
        Reddit, but with a hivemind that agrees with my political views.
  - riantogo 6y ago
    My covid side gig is a modest attempt at starting something: https://discoflip.com https://discoflip.com
    - edgyquant 6y ago
      I went there and thought it looked interesting, but quit after it wanted me to login to view the technology channel. Allow people to view (but read only) and it would go a long way to helping you grow I think.
      - riantogo 6y ago
        Login is only required to create a channel or post. What actually happened is that #technology channel does not exist (you clicked it from a list of channel names recommended for you to create). The list right below it are the ones that exist (called recently active). My design skills (rather lack of it) is to blame. Apologies and huge thanks for the feedback. I will improve it this week.
  - Dirlewanger 6y ago
    Nah, I think we're fucked now. The Internet is a completely different place than what it was in 2011. Any reddit alternative that springs up now is immediately populated with spammers, conspiracy nuts, identity politic types...you know the types; all the ones that reddit banned. They instantly bring the quality down which makes it unattractive to most people who want to switch. And then it gets shut down e.g. voat. Rinse and repeat. With each passing day, the Internet looks more and more dire.
- wraptile 6y ago
  Reddit is really not that special under the hood. Given the opportunity it can be replaced. It just suffers from people moving issue most social networks suffer. A decentralized alternative Lemmy[1] is already quite feature complete and in many ways even better than reddit itself. It's just a bit of a ghost town and many of the instances are aimed towards and/or controlled by political/social rejects.
  - markdown 6y ago
    It just suffers from people moving issue most social networks suffer. "just"? Reddit is the community, not code. Users aren't going to run off to Lemmy or any other site. It just isn't going to happen.
    - Kbelicius 6y ago
      Are you saying that Digg wasn't a community?
    - RichEO 6y ago
      The community came VERY close to jumping ship when a beloved low (mid?) level employee was terminated back in 2015.
      - markdown 6y ago
        But they didn't because there wasn't an alternative, as there isn't now. The alternative site (and it has to be one site, nor multiple, topic-specific sites) has to either already be massively active when the triggering event occurs.
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  That's actually not true, its just that the days of the big platform are over. It took a big company innovating to provide the value then that small dev groups are building left and right now. Those leaving reddit (and Facebook and YouTube and everything else) aren't migrating to an alternative site, they're spreading out into a diaspora. You've got software like Lemmy and Ruqqus and notabug.io and others and people are using them. There are lots of attractive alternatives, not just one.
- rataata_jr 6y ago
  It stops being fun once there are more users. Decentralized solutions are the future or image boards.
throwaway1777 6y ago
That's such ancient history I would bet most of the kids on there now never used digg.
- jachee 6y ago
  Eternal September continues unslowed across decades.
  - csin 6y ago
    Ironic how you are getting downvoted because most hackernewers aren't old enough to know what Eternal September is.
ausbah 6y ago
you're probably over estimating the percentage of redditors that are old vs new. if reddit's growing evaluation is a signal, the amount of users gained in the past couple years is much higher than the years before that. this means your average user is now more likely to just be another average internet user, not some ex-Digg user who jumped ship all those years ago or some ideological diehard who thinks reddit should be X. the average user is therefore more likely to be a mobile user and less upset about any UI changes
nunez 6y ago
Given that /r/WallStreetBets went from ~1M to 7M subscribers over the course of a week, I'm going to say that there is strong overlap between the average Reddit user and Facebook users.

by jjcm 6y ago

markdown 6y ago

Digg users had an attractive alternative to run to. Reddit users don't.

1996 6y ago
yet
- Clewza313 6y ago
  Digg 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 ago
  It’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 ago
    What do you look for in an ideal reddit alternative?
    - markdown 6y ago
      Reddit, but with a hivemind that agrees with my political views.
- riantogo 6y ago
  My covid side gig is a modest attempt at starting something: https://discoflip.com https://discoflip.com
  - edgyquant 6y ago
    I went there and thought it looked interesting, but quit after it wanted me to login to view the technology channel. Allow people to view (but read only) and it would go a long way to helping you grow I think.
    - riantogo 6y ago
      Login is only required to create a channel or post. What actually happened is that #technology channel does not exist (you clicked it from a list of channel names recommended for you to create). The list right below it are the ones that exist (called recently active). My design skills (rather lack of it) is to blame. Apologies and huge thanks for the feedback. I will improve it this week.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  Nah, I think we're fucked now. The Internet is a completely different place than what it was in 2011. Any reddit alternative that springs up now is immediately populated with spammers, conspiracy nuts, identity politic types...you know the types; all the ones that reddit banned. They instantly bring the quality down which makes it unattractive to most people who want to switch. And then it gets shut down e.g. voat. Rinse and repeat. With each passing day, the Internet looks more and more dire.
wraptile 6y ago
Reddit is really not that special under the hood. Given the opportunity it can be replaced. It just suffers from people moving issue most social networks suffer. A decentralized alternative Lemmy[1] is already quite feature complete and in many ways even better than reddit itself. It's just a bit of a ghost town and many of the instances are aimed towards and/or controlled by political/social rejects.
- markdown 6y ago
  It just suffers from people moving issue most social networks suffer. "just"? Reddit is the community, not code. Users aren't going to run off to Lemmy or any other site. It just isn't going to happen.
  - Kbelicius 6y ago
    Are you saying that Digg wasn't a community?
  - RichEO 6y ago
    The community came VERY close to jumping ship when a beloved low (mid?) level employee was terminated back in 2015.
    - markdown 6y ago
      But they didn't because there wasn't an alternative, as there isn't now. The alternative site (and it has to be one site, nor multiple, topic-specific sites) has to either already be massively active when the triggering event occurs.
betwixthewires 6y ago
That's actually not true, its just that the days of the big platform are over. It took a big company innovating to provide the value then that small dev groups are building left and right now. Those leaving reddit (and Facebook and YouTube and everything else) aren't migrating to an alternative site, they're spreading out into a diaspora. You've got software like Lemmy and Ruqqus and notabug.io and others and people are using them. There are lots of attractive alternatives, not just one.
rataata_jr 6y ago
It stops being fun once there are more users. Decentralized solutions are the future or image boards.

throwaway1777 6y ago

That's such ancient history I would bet most of the kids on there now never used digg.

jachee 6y ago
Eternal September continues unslowed across decades.
- csin 6y ago
  Ironic how you are getting downvoted because most hackernewers aren't old enough to know what Eternal September is.

ausbah 6y ago

you're probably over estimating the percentage of redditors that are old vs new. if reddit's growing evaluation is a signal, the amount of users gained in the past couple years is much higher than the years before that. this means your average user is now more likely to just be another average internet user, not some ex-Digg user who jumped ship all those years ago or some ideological diehard who thinks reddit should be X. the average user is therefore more likely to be a mobile user and less upset about any UI changes

nunez 6y ago

Given that /r/WallStreetBets went from ~1M to 7M subscribers over the course of a week, I'm going to say that there is strong overlap between the average Reddit user and Facebook users.