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It seems like social medias, from a financial perspective, are more commonly bad than good. Out of all the mainstream social medias I know, these ones seem to b

It seems like social medias, from a financial perspective, are more commonly bad than good. Out of all the mainstream social medias I know, these ones seem to be losing money (or at least aren't generating "enough" profit): - Twitter: halved in value in 1 year - Tumblr - Reddit: stated it wasn't doing well when it increased the API price - YouTube: seems to not be doing well because it's trying to push adds and increasing YouTube premium - Threads: I doubt this is generating profit, because I see multiple posts about how this "failed" and this is the first threads post I've seen posted somewhere else. Maybe I'm wrong though - Mastodon & rest of the Fediverse: not very mainstream, but funding seems to be a common issue among communities, and this is with the relatively small userbase - Stack Overflow and Quora: they've both done layoffs recently, and I've heard they're also faring poorly, but I don't have much information - Bluesky, the audio-only one I forgot it's name: these certainly aren't making money The ones which are doing well: - Facebook: seemingly generating a lot of revenue because of ads and data collection - Instagram: same as Facebook - TikTok: probably because China pays well do to all of the information they get - Discord: I haven't heard anything about them losing money, and they don't really push ads. Maybe because a lot of people pay for Discord nitro, or people pay for the servers? - Slack & Teams: I also haven't heard anything, but I doubt they are losing money because companies pay for these - Tinder: not really a social media but they're probably making money from people who pay a lot for premium - Hacker News: Because it's cheap to run being text-only and brings publicity to YCombinator and their companies, I'm sure this is considered a financially good investment. But even then, it doesn't generate any revenue on its own And ones I don't know: - Twitch: seemed to have issues with money but idk, they have a lot of deals and sponsorships - LinkedIn Of course starting a small social media is always a bad investment, because it's very hard to get popular. But it looks like even the popular social medias are burning through cash reserves.

user_7832 3y ago
I wonder if HN gets paid by companies recruiting, they might even manage to make a small profit if so. I think the "high density" of users is in favor of HN doing well - low server requirements and an average high median income per user (if HN ever need crowdfunding, that is.)
phpisthebest 3y ago
Who would have ever though giving way your product for free would not be a good business model... odd.... It is not "social media" that is the problem is the Ad Supported business model in general, everything ad supported is having problems right now, look at "news", blog sites, etc If it is ad support is has issue turning a profit. That is because ad supported is a terrible business model, however investors keep trying it for some reasons... it is like socialism, this time it will work .. we just have to "do it right" nope. ad supported will never work. google is the closest by control everything from the browser up, but as we see with YT they still struggle
- armchairhacker 3y ago
  The problem with social media is that it has to get a large userbase, and it's much, much harder to convince someone to pay than it is to use your free service. Especially if your service is social media. Twitter seems to be trying to get people to pay, and it isn't going well for them. No, in today's world in order to make a "profitable" social media, you have to get people to pay through other means. Like news.ycombinator.com, forum.bodybuilding.com, https://forums.tomshardware.com/ https://forums.tomshardware.com/, and other forums do by promoting the main site (ycombinator.com, bodybuilding.com, https://tomshardware.com/ https://tomshardware.com/). The forums definitely help the main site so they are a net positive to run, but you don't pay by using them directly. Alternatively, if you don't care about making huge profits, there are a lot of social medias out there which seem to run on donations and volunteer work alone. 4chan, letsrun.com, lemmy.world and mastadon.world, and (although they're invite-only) tildes.net and lobste.rs, don't seem to have an income source besides (at most) banner ads and a merch store. Forums can be very cheap to run, especially if they're text-only: I imagine you can run a site with ~1 million daily users on <$100/mo, a few admins who work after their day job, and an army of volunteer moderators.
  - OhioMan2943 3y ago
    I don't think 'having a large userbase' is a success or a necessity, you can have a better experience with 10-30 people who provide better discussion. I think the issue is that we're worse than ever at finding good spaces for discussion.
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
Does Substack count as social media? How are they doing?

user_7832 3y ago

I wonder if HN gets paid by companies recruiting, they might even manage to make a small profit if so. I think the "high density" of users is in favor of HN doing well - low server requirements and an average high median income per user (if HN ever need crowdfunding, that is.)

phpisthebest 3y ago

Who would have ever though giving way your product for free would not be a good business model... odd.... It is not "social media" that is the problem is the Ad Supported business model in general, everything ad supported is having problems right now, look at "news", blog sites, etc If it is ad support is has issue turning a profit. That is because ad supported is a terrible business model, however investors keep trying it for some reasons... it is like socialism, this time it will work .. we just have to "do it right" nope. ad supported will never work. google is the closest by control everything from the browser up, but as we see with YT they still struggle

armchairhacker 3y ago
The problem with social media is that it has to get a large userbase, and it's much, much harder to convince someone to pay than it is to use your free service. Especially if your service is social media. Twitter seems to be trying to get people to pay, and it isn't going well for them. No, in today's world in order to make a "profitable" social media, you have to get people to pay through other means. Like news.ycombinator.com, forum.bodybuilding.com, https://forums.tomshardware.com/ https://forums.tomshardware.com/, and other forums do by promoting the main site (ycombinator.com, bodybuilding.com, https://tomshardware.com/ https://tomshardware.com/). The forums definitely help the main site so they are a net positive to run, but you don't pay by using them directly. Alternatively, if you don't care about making huge profits, there are a lot of social medias out there which seem to run on donations and volunteer work alone. 4chan, letsrun.com, lemmy.world and mastadon.world, and (although they're invite-only) tildes.net and lobste.rs, don't seem to have an income source besides (at most) banner ads and a merch store. Forums can be very cheap to run, especially if they're text-only: I imagine you can run a site with ~1 million daily users on <$100/mo, a few admins who work after their day job, and an army of volunteer moderators.
- OhioMan2943 3y ago
  I don't think 'having a large userbase' is a success or a necessity, you can have a better experience with 10-30 people who provide better discussion. I think the issue is that we're worse than ever at finding good spaces for discussion.

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

Does Substack count as social media? How are they doing?