4 ms·

Reddit Sees Massive Growth & Hires New Programmers

104 points by staunch 15y ago

dreamux 15y ago
Not surprising, Reddit was in the perfect position at the perfect time to suck up all of Digg's traffic when they briefly faltered. On top of that they've curated not just a large community (and even more impressive -- self-sustaining sub-communities) but a culture that is just as sticky as the content. They are properly entrenched now.
mindblink 15y ago
Numbers look great. Time on site is an average of 15 and a half minutes, which is pretty impressive user engagement. Looks like Conde Naste is committing some additional investment into Reddit. It will interesting to see how they try to generate revenue.
daedhel 15y ago
Strangely, this growth happens in the exact same time I ponder leaving reddit because of its degradation.
- mindblink 15y ago
  I observed that also. I wonder if it's a flat cyclical fluctuation that popular public social news sites go through, or if it's a sloped cyclical movement (usually downward).
  - brown9-2 15y ago
    I believe it's just a function of how long you've been a member of the site - it's easy to fantasize about the "way things used to be", much harder to objectively rank the quality of a site and also keep track of that in your mind over time.
- blhack 15y ago
  Check these: http://www.reddit.com/r/truereddit http://www.reddit.com/r/truereddit http://www.reddit.com/r/indepthstories http://www.reddit.com/r/indepthstories http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience http://www.reddit.com/r/earthporn http://www.reddit.com/r/earthporn
  - cowkingdeluxe 15y ago
    reddit.com/r/frugal has also been good for me.
    - blhack 15y ago
      /r/frugal can get a little crazy at times, but yes, I subscribe as well :) also: http://reddit.com/r/bicycling http://reddit.com/r/bicycling http://reddit.com/r/linguistics http://reddit.com/r/linguistics http://reddit.com/r/beer http://reddit.com/r/beer http://reddit.com/r/homebrewing http://reddit.com/r/homebrewing reddit is a fantastic site for communities. The defaults are way too crowded, but the smaller subs are awesome.
- noarchy 15y ago
  I've seen plenty of folks threaten to do the same with HN, since it isn't exclusive enough for them anymore, either. Both sites will do fine, I think.
- tsumnia 15y ago
  When I joined reddit some 3 years ago, I was a Digg user that wanted fresher content. Eventually reddit's minimalist style converted me, since all the Digg content was showing up on reddit. Coincidentally, I'm seeing myself frequenting HN more often to read actual content, instead of sifting through tons of memes and pictures. HN is also starting to display content faster, which doesn't really mean anything unless you like shouting 'First' in comment pages (even more so now that I'm working, so by the time I visit both sites, the stories are posted). The community of reddit is nice, doubly appealing when you are having fellow celebrities among your members; however, with the influx of people, it becomes difficult to feel like you are actually contributing.
- notJim 15y ago
  Honestly every community comes with its foibles. (Metafilter: kind of ridiculously liberal at times, overly anti-business, HN: not very good with racism/sexism (IMO), Reddit: kind of immature, dangerous libertarian streak) These are all awesome communities though (with reddit, the unit of community is the subreddit, rather than the whole site, and you do have to pick the right subreddits.)
  - theclay 15y ago
    This isn't just a problem with online communities either. True communities are a mess.
tokenadult 15y ago
What is Conde Nast's plan for monetizing Reddit? How much operating profit would it take to recover the investment that bought Reddit?
- blhack 15y ago
  I'm not sure what Conde's plan is, but I really would love to see reddit run [1]viglinks on the site. If you're not familiar with it, viglinks uses some javascript to append an affiliate ID to any outbound links on the site (and it's completely transparent to the user). I see people linking me to amazon all the time when I ask for book recommendations. Often, I end up buying things as a result of things I see on reddit. (I don't work for viglinks, but I think the idea behind it is brilliant. As a user, this is the most non-intrusive way to monetize a site I've yet seen.) [1]http://www.viglink.com/ http://www.viglink.com/
  - jaz 15y ago
    This would be interesting - although I wonder if there would be any negative reaction from redditors. Posterous tried this out last year[1]. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1309403 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1309403
    - blhack 15y ago
      I think that the problem there was posterous didn't communicate this to their users. Reddit does a fantastic job of communicating with the users; if they explained what was happening, I think the users would be fine with it.
      - code_duck 15y ago
        I agree, I especially think that Redditors would be happy to support Reddit in a way that leaves them with the same amount of money, Amazon with less and Reddit with more.
    - jackowayed 15y ago
kin 15y ago
The Reddit community has really become something incredible. They really have to be careful and not upset their community through selfish monetize strategies like Digg. They've done great so far. I vote that they monetize by Gold memberships, donations, merchandise, and that tiny ad box on the right (which should start having actual advertisements - simple ones, no flash intrusions).
famousactress 15y ago
"our average time on site has remained steady at an impressive 15 and a half minutes" Wow. I find this number pretty staggering, but I'm not familiar with traffic patterns on discussion & news sites. Can anyone who is weigh in with how this compares to other news or discussion sites?
- smallblacksun 15y ago
  On reddit that stat is inflated by each click taking so long to load. When I use reddit, I literally spend 30-40% of my time waiting for pages to load.
  - raldi 15y ago
    On the contrary, when I worked at reddit, we found that people allocate a certain amount of time to using the site (consciously or subconsciously) and the speed of the site doesn't seem to have much effect on that (unless it's completely unresponsive). In other words, if they can read 100 threads in 15 minutes because things are running really smoothly, they will. If they can only read 50 threads in 15 minutes because things are under heavy load, then we would just get 50 pageviews from them. TLDR: Slow reddit -> fewer pageviews, same time on site
- buro9 15y ago
  It's impressive when compared to, say, a news or review website. But it's not that impressive for a discussion forum. I run several discussion forums, and average time on site ranges from 9 minutes (the one with least loyalty) through to fractionally over 17 minutes (the one with pretty good loyalty). I'd be far more interested in knowing reddit's bounce rate and spread of recency and loyalty. Those are the killer metrics... just how obsessed are your users? I'm pretty proud of one of my sites having a bounce rate of only 18%. Now that is a fairly unheard of number for a decent sized site. Another site I run has over 26% of users having visited 201+ times. Loyalty off the scale. What I've found is that it's fairly easy to build in a high frequency of existing users returning soon and of extending the time on the site, but it's much harder to build actual visitor numbers. Basically communities have natural size limits before they crumble a bit, and reddit's magic sauce is subreddits and the ability to carry on pretending reddit is small when it's really large.

104 points by staunch 15y ago

Not surprising, Reddit was in the perfect position at the perfect time to suck up all of Digg's traffic when they briefly faltered. On top of that they've curated not just a large community (and even more impressive -- self-sustaining sub-communities) but a culture that is just as sticky as the content. They are properly entrenched now.

mindblink 15y ago

Numbers look great. Time on site is an average of 15 and a half minutes, which is pretty impressive user engagement. Looks like Conde Naste is committing some additional investment into Reddit. It will interesting to see how they try to generate revenue.

daedhel 15y ago

Strangely, this growth happens in the exact same time I ponder leaving reddit because of its degradation.

mindblink 15y ago
I observed that also. I wonder if it's a flat cyclical fluctuation that popular public social news sites go through, or if it's a sloped cyclical movement (usually downward).
- brown9-2 15y ago
  I believe it's just a function of how long you've been a member of the site - it's easy to fantasize about the "way things used to be", much harder to objectively rank the quality of a site and also keep track of that in your mind over time.
blhack 15y ago
Check these: http://www.reddit.com/r/truereddit http://www.reddit.com/r/truereddit http://www.reddit.com/r/indepthstories http://www.reddit.com/r/indepthstories http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience http://www.reddit.com/r/earthporn http://www.reddit.com/r/earthporn
- cowkingdeluxe 15y ago
  reddit.com/r/frugal has also been good for me.
  - blhack 15y ago
    /r/frugal can get a little crazy at times, but yes, I subscribe as well :) also: http://reddit.com/r/bicycling http://reddit.com/r/bicycling http://reddit.com/r/linguistics http://reddit.com/r/linguistics http://reddit.com/r/beer http://reddit.com/r/beer http://reddit.com/r/homebrewing http://reddit.com/r/homebrewing reddit is a fantastic site for communities. The defaults are way too crowded, but the smaller subs are awesome.
noarchy 15y ago
I've seen plenty of folks threaten to do the same with HN, since it isn't exclusive enough for them anymore, either. Both sites will do fine, I think.
tsumnia 15y ago
When I joined reddit some 3 years ago, I was a Digg user that wanted fresher content. Eventually reddit's minimalist style converted me, since all the Digg content was showing up on reddit. Coincidentally, I'm seeing myself frequenting HN more often to read actual content, instead of sifting through tons of memes and pictures. HN is also starting to display content faster, which doesn't really mean anything unless you like shouting 'First' in comment pages (even more so now that I'm working, so by the time I visit both sites, the stories are posted). The community of reddit is nice, doubly appealing when you are having fellow celebrities among your members; however, with the influx of people, it becomes difficult to feel like you are actually contributing.
notJim 15y ago
Honestly every community comes with its foibles. (Metafilter: kind of ridiculously liberal at times, overly anti-business, HN: not very good with racism/sexism (IMO), Reddit: kind of immature, dangerous libertarian streak) These are all awesome communities though (with reddit, the unit of community is the subreddit, rather than the whole site, and you do have to pick the right subreddits.)
- theclay 15y ago
  This isn't just a problem with online communities either. True communities are a mess.

tokenadult 15y ago

What is Conde Nast's plan for monetizing Reddit? How much operating profit would it take to recover the investment that bought Reddit?

blhack 15y ago
I'm not sure what Conde's plan is, but I really would love to see reddit run [1]viglinks on the site. If you're not familiar with it, viglinks uses some javascript to append an affiliate ID to any outbound links on the site (and it's completely transparent to the user). I see people linking me to amazon all the time when I ask for book recommendations. Often, I end up buying things as a result of things I see on reddit. (I don't work for viglinks, but I think the idea behind it is brilliant. As a user, this is the most non-intrusive way to monetize a site I've yet seen.) [1]http://www.viglink.com/ http://www.viglink.com/
- jaz 15y ago
  This would be interesting - although I wonder if there would be any negative reaction from redditors. Posterous tried this out last year[1]. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1309403 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1309403
  - blhack 15y ago
    I think that the problem there was posterous didn't communicate this to their users. Reddit does a fantastic job of communicating with the users; if they explained what was happening, I think the users would be fine with it.
    - code_duck 15y ago
      I agree, I especially think that Redditors would be happy to support Reddit in a way that leaves them with the same amount of money, Amazon with less and Reddit with more.
  - jackowayed 15y ago

kin 15y ago

The Reddit community has really become something incredible. They really have to be careful and not upset their community through selfish monetize strategies like Digg. They've done great so far. I vote that they monetize by Gold memberships, donations, merchandise, and that tiny ad box on the right (which should start having actual advertisements - simple ones, no flash intrusions).

famousactress 15y ago

"our average time on site has remained steady at an impressive 15 and a half minutes" Wow. I find this number pretty staggering, but I'm not familiar with traffic patterns on discussion & news sites. Can anyone who is weigh in with how this compares to other news or discussion sites?

smallblacksun 15y ago
On reddit that stat is inflated by each click taking so long to load. When I use reddit, I literally spend 30-40% of my time waiting for pages to load.
- raldi 15y ago
  On the contrary, when I worked at reddit, we found that people allocate a certain amount of time to using the site (consciously or subconsciously) and the speed of the site doesn't seem to have much effect on that (unless it's completely unresponsive). In other words, if they can read 100 threads in 15 minutes because things are running really smoothly, they will. If they can only read 50 threads in 15 minutes because things are under heavy load, then we would just get 50 pageviews from them. TLDR: Slow reddit -> fewer pageviews, same time on site
buro9 15y ago
It's impressive when compared to, say, a news or review website. But it's not that impressive for a discussion forum. I run several discussion forums, and average time on site ranges from 9 minutes (the one with least loyalty) through to fractionally over 17 minutes (the one with pretty good loyalty). I'd be far more interested in knowing reddit's bounce rate and spread of recency and loyalty. Those are the killer metrics... just how obsessed are your users? I'm pretty proud of one of my sites having a bounce rate of only 18%. Now that is a fairly unheard of number for a decent sized site. Another site I run has over 26% of users having visited 201+ times. Loyalty off the scale. What I've found is that it's fairly easy to build in a high frequency of existing users returning soon and of extending the time on the site, but it's much harder to build actual visitor numbers. Basically communities have natural size limits before they crumble a bit, and reddit's magic sauce is subreddits and the ability to carry on pretending reddit is small when it's really large.