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That's incredible. Congrats!! :) Are we allowed to ask how/if they're making money?

by leak 15y ago

tokenadult 15y ago
Yes, how many of those eyeball visits produce revenue, and does the company have actual earnings (profits)?
- pdenya 15y ago
  Reddit has sponsored links paid by CPM so all eyeballs account for some revenue. I don't have any info on profit but between the ads, reddit gold and schwag i'd guess they're in the black.
  - baq 15y ago
    i guess so too, but not by a huge margin. reddit must be on the very top of visitors/sysadmins ranking.
fletchowns 15y ago
I'm guessing they are making money (ads & reddit gold) since they have been able to make a few hires recently. Unfortunately the overall quality of content on reddit has really gone downhill. Even after unsubscribing to the subreddits that were the worst offenders, it's really hard to find interesting stuff with meaningful discussions. These days I'm almost embarrassed to tell people I use reddit.
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago
  Reddit is the new Digg. Groupthink on an epic scale, linkbait headlines, and hordes of people that want to feel angry about things so they can at least feel something. (Just like old media!) Now, there is some good content on there, but there's way too much crap to wade through in order to find it.
  - cryptoz 15y ago
    Former and active NASA engineers hang out in r/space sometimes. r/askscience is full of incredible questions and smart answers. r/science recently started enforcing stricter standards and now has plenty of amazing discussion and knowledge moving around. r/physics is the same. It all depends on where you go, and I strongly disagree that finding those places is difficult.
    - 27182818284 15y ago
      This is a good point, you just have to leave the mainpageish universe completely. /r/linguistics has interesting stuff. Similarly the subreddit for creating your own language is also neat, but these are niche, small reddits. The big reddits have been taken over by group think and are difficult to read and often boring.
      - baq 15y ago
        everybody who's been on usenet for a nontrivial amount of time has experienced exactly what you describe, several times. expecting reddit to be different is like hoping for world peace. you should instead assume that degradation of quality will naturally happen as a community forum becomes more popular and either introduce moderation or fork off a smaller forum... and both of those happen, as you noticed. this comment may be misplaced, but i've finally entered rant mode after reading the 5th or so comment saying "reddit is popular hence degrades" and misses (or stops short of) the point that all communities degrade with increase of their popularity - every now and then somebody writes that hacker news is not what it used to be.
        mattgreenrocks 15y ago
        A lot of the quality degradation stems from the mistaken idea that everyone has something of value to contribute. They don't. Discussion often involves a handful of quality posts, and then a bunch of "I agree"'s clogging it up. Posts that don't add to the discussion should be moderated, or, at the very least, targeted for downvotes. Of course, it'd be tough to gain traction with users who believe their karma score matters. Better to hide it from them completely and indicate scores in another way.
- leak 15y ago
  Was money the problem before for hiring or the lack of support from the parent company (Conde Nast)? I don't know if they suddenly made more money and as a result were able to hire. Edit: http://blog.reddit.com/2010/11/thank-you-mr-nast-may-we-have-another.html http://blog.reddit.com/2010/11/thank-you-mr-nast-may-we-have...
  - jasonlotito 15y ago
    Unless they are lying, the impression I got was that the issue was money, and that things like Gold Members directly impacted their ability to hire.
    - raldi 15y ago
      In July 2010, some yutz who used to work there said that Conde Nast likes to "allocate resources proportionate to revenue." http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html
      - jasonlotito 15y ago
        Exactly my point. The issue was revenue (and, of course, the parent company). But, with more revenue, came more support.
- patrickod 15y ago
  Unfortunately the degradation of community and content is one of the issues that is associated with scale. I personally think reddit has done a much better job at staying off the decline than digg did. I'll be interested to see how things progress as their traffic numbers continue (presumably) to rise.
  - kmfrk 15y ago
    Is there a consensus about what caused the decline of Digg? I thought it had a lot to do with the redesign that couldn't be reverted, but I don't like to peddle hearsay and assumptions like it's the truth, especially since I never used Digg.
    - patrickod 15y ago
      IIRC the redesign was the final straw for many users and caused the mass-exodus. I think the functionality of subreddits and the ability to completely ignore the "mainstream content" if you so wish has been the main feature that has helped reddit stop the decline.
      - AtTheLast 15y ago
        Subreddits are what will keep Reddit strong. Even though Reddit has tons of members, subreddits make it feel much smaller and personal.
    - recursive 15y ago
      I know they suffered a big drop when it came out that they were manually curating the links on their front page. I don't remember the details, but that's what did it for me.
- ama 15y ago
  There is few good reddits with good/decent moderation (deleting silly memes and off topic comments, /r/AskScience , /r/fitness and /r/DepthHub/ comes to mind).
- kmfrk 15y ago
  The reddit admins have made a policy out of basically never intervening on the site - how ever egregious the transgressions are - so the inmates have slowly taken over the asylum. There's also something to be learnt about this on HN. :) I think reddit as more of a platform than a community at this point aside from the hivemind and reddit memes going on there. I'm sure it's still an interesting place to create your own subreddit, if you have the time to moderate it (although you can't IP nor e-mail ban people from it).
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Well, they did shutdown r/jailbait for "threatening the structural integrity of the greater reddit community."
    - kmfrk 15y ago
      They shut it down because it had child porn. Not "very young girls", but literally de jure child porn.
      - icebraining 15y ago
        It always did, and it always got deleted and the people were banned. The problem wasn't just the content, but the fact that some people took over the mods in a "coup" and were trying to fuck it up. Of course the CP wasn't deleted and they had to act. They still could've deleted just the CP and restored the mods, but considering they had already moved to r/teen_girls, that probably wouldn't make much sense.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - alex_c 15y ago
    I know, I know, "things were better back in the day", but the Reddification of Reddit has really accelerated over the past year and a bit. Between rage comics, advice animals, and the Atheism subreddit, the default front page is a very different place than it was a year(?) ago. There is still a lot of value in the smaller subreddits, and that's really Reddit's saving grace. As a whole, however, the site is pretty cringe-worthy.

That's incredible. Congrats!! :) Are we allowed to ask how/if they're making money?

by leak 15y ago

That's incredible. Congrats!! :) Are we allowed to ask how/if they're making money?

tokenadult 15y ago

Yes, how many of those eyeball visits produce revenue, and does the company have actual earnings (profits)?

pdenya 15y ago
Reddit has sponsored links paid by CPM so all eyeballs account for some revenue. I don't have any info on profit but between the ads, reddit gold and schwag i'd guess they're in the black.
- baq 15y ago
  i guess so too, but not by a huge margin. reddit must be on the very top of visitors/sysadmins ranking.

fletchowns 15y ago

I'm guessing they are making money (ads & reddit gold) since they have been able to make a few hires recently. Unfortunately the overall quality of content on reddit has really gone downhill. Even after unsubscribing to the subreddits that were the worst offenders, it's really hard to find interesting stuff with meaningful discussions. These days I'm almost embarrassed to tell people I use reddit.

mattgreenrocks 15y ago
Reddit is the new Digg. Groupthink on an epic scale, linkbait headlines, and hordes of people that want to feel angry about things so they can at least feel something. (Just like old media!) Now, there is some good content on there, but there's way too much crap to wade through in order to find it.
- cryptoz 15y ago
  Former and active NASA engineers hang out in r/space sometimes. r/askscience is full of incredible questions and smart answers. r/science recently started enforcing stricter standards and now has plenty of amazing discussion and knowledge moving around. r/physics is the same. It all depends on where you go, and I strongly disagree that finding those places is difficult.
  - 27182818284 15y ago
    This is a good point, you just have to leave the mainpageish universe completely. /r/linguistics has interesting stuff. Similarly the subreddit for creating your own language is also neat, but these are niche, small reddits. The big reddits have been taken over by group think and are difficult to read and often boring.
    - baq 15y ago
      everybody who's been on usenet for a nontrivial amount of time has experienced exactly what you describe, several times. expecting reddit to be different is like hoping for world peace. you should instead assume that degradation of quality will naturally happen as a community forum becomes more popular and either introduce moderation or fork off a smaller forum... and both of those happen, as you noticed. this comment may be misplaced, but i've finally entered rant mode after reading the 5th or so comment saying "reddit is popular hence degrades" and misses (or stops short of) the point that all communities degrade with increase of their popularity - every now and then somebody writes that hacker news is not what it used to be.
      - mattgreenrocks 15y ago
        A lot of the quality degradation stems from the mistaken idea that everyone has something of value to contribute. They don't. Discussion often involves a handful of quality posts, and then a bunch of "I agree"'s clogging it up. Posts that don't add to the discussion should be moderated, or, at the very least, targeted for downvotes. Of course, it'd be tough to gain traction with users who believe their karma score matters. Better to hide it from them completely and indicate scores in another way.
leak 15y ago
Was money the problem before for hiring or the lack of support from the parent company (Conde Nast)? I don't know if they suddenly made more money and as a result were able to hire. Edit: http://blog.reddit.com/2010/11/thank-you-mr-nast-may-we-have-another.html http://blog.reddit.com/2010/11/thank-you-mr-nast-may-we-have...
- jasonlotito 15y ago
  Unless they are lying, the impression I got was that the issue was money, and that things like Gold Members directly impacted their ability to hire.
  - raldi 15y ago
    In July 2010, some yutz who used to work there said that Conde Nast likes to "allocate resources proportionate to revenue." http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html
    - jasonlotito 15y ago
      Exactly my point. The issue was revenue (and, of course, the parent company). But, with more revenue, came more support.
patrickod 15y ago
Unfortunately the degradation of community and content is one of the issues that is associated with scale. I personally think reddit has done a much better job at staying off the decline than digg did. I'll be interested to see how things progress as their traffic numbers continue (presumably) to rise.
- kmfrk 15y ago
  Is there a consensus about what caused the decline of Digg? I thought it had a lot to do with the redesign that couldn't be reverted, but I don't like to peddle hearsay and assumptions like it's the truth, especially since I never used Digg.
  - patrickod 15y ago
    IIRC the redesign was the final straw for many users and caused the mass-exodus. I think the functionality of subreddits and the ability to completely ignore the "mainstream content" if you so wish has been the main feature that has helped reddit stop the decline.
    - AtTheLast 15y ago
      Subreddits are what will keep Reddit strong. Even though Reddit has tons of members, subreddits make it feel much smaller and personal.
  - recursive 15y ago
    I know they suffered a big drop when it came out that they were manually curating the links on their front page. I don't remember the details, but that's what did it for me.
ama 15y ago
There is few good reddits with good/decent moderation (deleting silly memes and off topic comments, /r/AskScience , /r/fitness and /r/DepthHub/ comes to mind).
kmfrk 15y ago
The reddit admins have made a policy out of basically never intervening on the site - how ever egregious the transgressions are - so the inmates have slowly taken over the asylum. There's also something to be learnt about this on HN. :) I think reddit as more of a platform than a community at this point aside from the hivemind and reddit memes going on there. I'm sure it's still an interesting place to create your own subreddit, if you have the time to moderate it (although you can't IP nor e-mail ban people from it).
- icebraining 15y ago
  Well, they did shutdown r/jailbait for "threatening the structural integrity of the greater reddit community."
  - kmfrk 15y ago
    They shut it down because it had child porn. Not "very young girls", but literally de jure child porn.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      It always did, and it always got deleted and the people were banned. The problem wasn't just the content, but the fact that some people took over the mods in a "coup" and were trying to fuck it up. Of course the CP wasn't deleted and they had to act. They still could've deleted just the CP and restored the mods, but considering they had already moved to r/teen_girls, that probably wouldn't make much sense.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- alex_c 15y ago
  I know, I know, "things were better back in the day", but the Reddification of Reddit has really accelerated over the past year and a bit. Between rage comics, advice animals, and the Atheism subreddit, the default front page is a very different place than it was a year(?) ago. There is still a lot of value in the smaller subreddits, and that's really Reddit's saving grace. As a whole, however, the site is pretty cringe-worthy.