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Reddit seems to me like a very hard product to monetize. As a daily user I get a ton of milage out of Reddit Enhancement Suite (desktop) and Apollo (iOS), in co

by hbosch 5y ago

Reddit seems to me like a very hard product to monetize. As a daily user I get a ton of milage out of Reddit Enhancement Suite (desktop) and Apollo (iOS), in combination with typical ad-blockers. Combine that with the low friction of sign up (disposable e-mails allowed, no confirmation needed, sitewide bans rare) and the tacit allowance of "objectionable" content (porn, gore, hate speech, harassment, etc.)... you don't really have fertile ground for meaningful engagement from an advertiser perspective. Not only that, but if Reddit were to strongly disallow any or all of the above we have seen how EASY it is to simply clone the tech and re-host. There have been stories about certain communities being exiled from Reddit only to spring up just as quickly elsewhere with more or less the same exact user experience...

zozbot234 5y ago
> As a daily user I get a ton of milage out of Reddit Enhancement Suite (desktop) and Apollo (iOS), in combination with typical ad-blockers. Most users aren't going to do this. Really, the reddit folks should just go all-in on tailoring their official apps towards the most casual, highly "engaged" content consumers, and target most of their monetization towards that kind of user. As a bonus, make it trivially easy to post casual content directly from the app. Who cares about "objectionable" content when they'll have so many cat pictures and cute/funny memes to run their ads next to.
trts 5y ago
> if Reddit were to strongly disallow any or all of the above we have seen how EASY it is to simply clone the tech and re-host this seems doubtful to me. Reddit has tons of legendary threads, AMAs and is its own library of content at this point, similar to YouTube. Sure the tech could be replicated but the value is all in the content it generated.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  Maybe that points to a way they could make $: curate and make anthologies of the actually valuable content. /r/askhistorians content could be turned into a few history books. Of course, then people might start looking at the fact that they are giving away valuable property to Reddit in return for access to a simple forum site...
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  There are plenty of Reddit archiving and mirroring services. Pay one of those for a database dump and you’re off to the races (copyright issues be damned)
hinkley 5y ago
But every time you take more money you have to make more money. It’s like they’re trying to give themselves permission to do things they haven’t dared to do so far.
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
FYI you can actually still create a new reddit account without giving any email address (not even a disposable or fake one). Just leave the email text box blank and click "next".

by hbosch 5y ago

zozbot234 5y ago

> As a daily user I get a ton of milage out of Reddit Enhancement Suite (desktop) and Apollo (iOS), in combination with typical ad-blockers. Most users aren't going to do this. Really, the reddit folks should just go all-in on tailoring their official apps towards the most casual, highly "engaged" content consumers, and target most of their monetization towards that kind of user. As a bonus, make it trivially easy to post casual content directly from the app. Who cares about "objectionable" content when they'll have so many cat pictures and cute/funny memes to run their ads next to.

trts 5y ago

> if Reddit were to strongly disallow any or all of the above we have seen how EASY it is to simply clone the tech and re-host this seems doubtful to me. Reddit has tons of legendary threads, AMAs and is its own library of content at this point, similar to YouTube. Sure the tech could be replicated but the value is all in the content it generated.

wintermutestwin 5y ago
Maybe that points to a way they could make $: curate and make anthologies of the actually valuable content. /r/askhistorians content could be turned into a few history books. Of course, then people might start looking at the fact that they are giving away valuable property to Reddit in return for access to a simple forum site...
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
There are plenty of Reddit archiving and mirroring services. Pay one of those for a database dump and you’re off to the races (copyright issues be damned)

hinkley 5y ago

But every time you take more money you have to make more money. It’s like they’re trying to give themselves permission to do things they haven’t dared to do so far.

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

FYI you can actually still create a new reddit account without giving any email address (not even a disposable or fake one). Just leave the email text box blank and click "next".