>Then there'd actually be a reason to get gilded up ... I have to imagine reddit has already thought of this and come up with some justification for why it won

>Then there'd actually be a reason to get gilded up ... I have to imagine reddit has already thought of this and come up with some justification for why it won't work - because the proposed strategy is just so incredibly lazy. Ultimately I suspect the data somehow suggests (a) the network provider has to provide free access in order to sustain the criticality of the social network, and (b) charging for something that other people are getting for free (a la twitter's 8$ checkmarks, reddit gold, etc.) is just not a very viable product strategy. So Reddit has decided to stick 3rd party devs with the thorny problem of direct-monetization of users, wherein their cost to the developer is usage-billed while the revenue to the developer is presumably fixed; meanwhile Reddit can cash the checks from their mobile ads.