4 ms·

It's patently obvious that they're just trying to drive up ad impression numbers on the app to inflate their financials before IPO/acquisition.

by nvy 3y ago

rapsey 3y ago
Reddit is still not profitable.
- libraryatnight 3y ago
  Maybe forums and digital commons shouldn't be.
  - ako 3y ago
    How do you suggest they survive long term if the continue to lose money?
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      Stop spending so much money developing features that are useless for adding value to the site; stop hiring devs to create new 'resume' features like counter-productive reverse-blocking and hire devs to fix modding tools. Stop spending money hosting videos and multimedia when your core value is text conversations. Don't make stupid decisions like destroying your most popular features (the AMA subreddit, the secret santa) because you are stupid. Fire your CEO who is doing all of these things. There is no reason reddit can't be profitable if they did these things. They don't need 100,000,000 users watching videos to bring in ad revenue. They need 10,000,000 users generating good content that ends up as top google results and they can find clever ways to monetize product tie-ins, annual meetups (those were a thing in a lot of cities a while ago), events, merch, and subscriptions. It isn't rocket science. The top stockholders just have to be satisfied to be millionaires instead of billionaires.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  It's not trying to be. They only care about the value of the equity, not about profitability. It'd pretty easy to be a profitable company with a $10 million turnover, but you're not going to be a unicorn this way. Founders and VC wants high return on their equity, and today being enormous without profitability is valued more than being reasonable and profitable.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    spez's comment "We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable." suggests a real concern about not being profitable. In fact, the whole ordeal reeks of panic – a last ditch attempt to right the ship before bankruptcy sets in. There was once an age where investors would buy in simply on the belief of unicornedness, but that ship sailed several months ago. Investors have become much more critical of tech businesses, showing substantially less interest in tech companies that aren't displaying strong fundamentals. A recent Fidelity report indicates Reddit's own valuation has dropped by 41% on that change in sentiment.
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      There's no reason to buy's spez's words, nor any other executives in any company for that matter, their job is to spread a narrative. In fact, if profitability was the goal, then he should have been ousted at this point, because he's been back for 8 years now without succeeding to make the company profitable. I don't think he is that inapt, and that his board is stupid to let him in charge despite such a failure, profitability was just never the goal. Getting the biggest possible IPO is the goal, but the timing is actually very bad for them for the reason you mention and now they're trying as hard as they can, including by creating fake subreddits with translated old content for non-English speakers (at least French and German speakers).
      - vxNsr 3y ago
        > I don't think he is that inapt, and that his board is stupid to let him in charge despite such a failure, profitability was just never the goal. Just fyi, reddit rose around the same time as Facebook so it’s likely they share a similar governance model, where founders control an outsized part of the board/voting shares. Since Uber and wework semi-imploded investors are less forgiving of that sort of thing but legacy companies like Reddit likely still are run that way.
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  Profit depends on 2 things, revenue and expenses. Reddit has tripled their headcount over the last few years so they can focus on new features like NFTs. If they were concerned about sustainable profitability, IMO they should've kept their headcount around 500 people and tried to grow revenue without totally blowing up their costs.
  - sznio 3y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if reddit was profitable/at least broke even 8 years ago. Reddit needs 300 people max to run, and they got like 1500.
    - rcxdude 3y ago
      AFAIK they have never been profitable.
    - Nextgrid 3y ago
      Considering moderation and basically all community upkeep is relegated to unpaid volunteers, even 300 is a lot.
- conradfr 3y ago
  If one of the most visited website/app in the world with highly cacheable and free content can't be profitable the internet is doomed. But did they try to be?
  - goykasi 3y ago
    How is reddit highly cacheable? Maybe old/infrequently accessed discussions are cacheable, but the live set is too dynamic. So there probably isnt much of a win there. The feeds are definitely not cacheable (except for maybe on a per user basis with a low ttl). Popular and all are never the same upon reload. And every user is going to have a different combination of subreddits. Those feeds have to be generated on the fly. Most of the data is too dynamic and ever-changing to cache effectively.
    - conradfr 3y ago
      https://medium.com/@sevebadajoz/exploring-cache-optimization-with-reddits-infrastructure-f5682325990d https://medium.com/@sevebadajoz/exploring-cache-optimization... Also a lot of their content is not "hot" and "commentable" anymore.
    - raverbashing 3y ago
      - Cache for unlogged users, have a less dynamic front page (let's say 10s cache), that would help a lot - Cache of most popular topics (again, even a 10s invalidation time) would help For the logged users you could do something more dynamic, for example, cache the front-page snippets of the main subs + add the ones for the user. And again cache that (unless the 'new reddit' makes this harder, to which I would say - well deserved! ;) )

It's patently obvious that they're just trying to drive up ad impression numbers on the app to inflate their financials before IPO/acquisition.

by nvy 3y ago

It's patently obvious that they're just trying to drive up ad impression numbers on the app to inflate their financials before IPO/acquisition.

rapsey 3y ago

Reddit is still not profitable.

libraryatnight 3y ago
Maybe forums and digital commons shouldn't be.
- ako 3y ago
  How do you suggest they survive long term if the continue to lose money?
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    Stop spending so much money developing features that are useless for adding value to the site; stop hiring devs to create new 'resume' features like counter-productive reverse-blocking and hire devs to fix modding tools. Stop spending money hosting videos and multimedia when your core value is text conversations. Don't make stupid decisions like destroying your most popular features (the AMA subreddit, the secret santa) because you are stupid. Fire your CEO who is doing all of these things. There is no reason reddit can't be profitable if they did these things. They don't need 100,000,000 users watching videos to bring in ad revenue. They need 10,000,000 users generating good content that ends up as top google results and they can find clever ways to monetize product tie-ins, annual meetups (those were a thing in a lot of cities a while ago), events, merch, and subscriptions. It isn't rocket science. The top stockholders just have to be satisfied to be millionaires instead of billionaires.
littlestymaar 3y ago
It's not trying to be. They only care about the value of the equity, not about profitability. It'd pretty easy to be a profitable company with a $10 million turnover, but you're not going to be a unicorn this way. Founders and VC wants high return on their equity, and today being enormous without profitability is valued more than being reasonable and profitable.
- randomdata 3y ago
  spez's comment "We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable." suggests a real concern about not being profitable. In fact, the whole ordeal reeks of panic – a last ditch attempt to right the ship before bankruptcy sets in. There was once an age where investors would buy in simply on the belief of unicornedness, but that ship sailed several months ago. Investors have become much more critical of tech businesses, showing substantially less interest in tech companies that aren't displaying strong fundamentals. A recent Fidelity report indicates Reddit's own valuation has dropped by 41% on that change in sentiment.
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    There's no reason to buy's spez's words, nor any other executives in any company for that matter, their job is to spread a narrative. In fact, if profitability was the goal, then he should have been ousted at this point, because he's been back for 8 years now without succeeding to make the company profitable. I don't think he is that inapt, and that his board is stupid to let him in charge despite such a failure, profitability was just never the goal. Getting the biggest possible IPO is the goal, but the timing is actually very bad for them for the reason you mention and now they're trying as hard as they can, including by creating fake subreddits with translated old content for non-English speakers (at least French and German speakers).
    - vxNsr 3y ago
      > I don't think he is that inapt, and that his board is stupid to let him in charge despite such a failure, profitability was just never the goal. Just fyi, reddit rose around the same time as Facebook so it’s likely they share a similar governance model, where founders control an outsized part of the board/voting shares. Since Uber and wework semi-imploded investors are less forgiving of that sort of thing but legacy companies like Reddit likely still are run that way.
Rebelgecko 3y ago
Profit depends on 2 things, revenue and expenses. Reddit has tripled their headcount over the last few years so they can focus on new features like NFTs. If they were concerned about sustainable profitability, IMO they should've kept their headcount around 500 people and tried to grow revenue without totally blowing up their costs.
- sznio 3y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if reddit was profitable/at least broke even 8 years ago. Reddit needs 300 people max to run, and they got like 1500.
  - rcxdude 3y ago
    AFAIK they have never been profitable.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    Considering moderation and basically all community upkeep is relegated to unpaid volunteers, even 300 is a lot.
conradfr 3y ago
If one of the most visited website/app in the world with highly cacheable and free content can't be profitable the internet is doomed. But did they try to be?
- goykasi 3y ago
  How is reddit highly cacheable? Maybe old/infrequently accessed discussions are cacheable, but the live set is too dynamic. So there probably isnt much of a win there. The feeds are definitely not cacheable (except for maybe on a per user basis with a low ttl). Popular and all are never the same upon reload. And every user is going to have a different combination of subreddits. Those feeds have to be generated on the fly. Most of the data is too dynamic and ever-changing to cache effectively.
  - conradfr 3y ago
    https://medium.com/@sevebadajoz/exploring-cache-optimization-with-reddits-infrastructure-f5682325990d https://medium.com/@sevebadajoz/exploring-cache-optimization... Also a lot of their content is not "hot" and "commentable" anymore.
  - raverbashing 3y ago
    - Cache for unlogged users, have a less dynamic front page (let's say 10s cache), that would help a lot - Cache of most popular topics (again, even a 10s invalidation time) would help For the logged users you could do something more dynamic, for example, cache the front-page snippets of the main subs + add the ones for the user. And again cache that (unless the 'new reddit' makes this harder, to which I would say - well deserved! ;) )