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Why is it impossible for communities to emerge organically in 2024? Why must you raise and spend $20m on marketing alone? I found Reddit literally through orga

Why is it impossible for communities to emerge organically in 2024? Why must you raise and spend $20m on marketing alone? I found Reddit literally through organic word-of-mouth when Digg went under. Never saw an ad for it in my life. Why does a Glassdoor alternative inherently need marketing?

johnnyanmac 3y ago
>Why is it impossible for communities to emerge organically in 2024? levels and blind sort of feels that way, but that's part of the issue: 1. these kinds of sites are a paradox in that you want employees to be anonymous but also verified. So you can't just spin up a site in a week and have valuable data 2. despite the comparisons, I'm sure both levels and blind were in fact vc funded. The models feels indie but it probably isn't. But they did their part for SEO and marketing and yadda yadda. So it got the eyeballs it needed before word of mouth set in >Why does a Glassdoor alternative inherently need marketing? to be frank, because most people don't try very hard to find the grassroots. They are lazy and will take the first thing that looks good on Google.
cchance 3y ago
The thing is you did find reddit via marketing, its just the marketing hit the people before it hit you, that guy that told you about it or the one that told him was the one that marketing got into reddit, which got them to a critical mass that word of mouth can take over.
- nullc 3y ago
  Reddit's early employees were very busy with sock accounts reposting things from other sites, commenting on them, then messaging the creators on the original sites "hey your thing was posted on reddit!". Marketing comes in lots of forms.
okanat 3y ago
Reddit didn't start to attract the critical mass until they became the top result in Google though nor it was able to keep its servers with its own profit. Until they squash all possible opponents, such social networks has never been profitable.
- jasonm23 3y ago
  Reddit isn't profitable, never has been, and likely never will

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>Why is it impossible for communities to emerge organically in 2024? levels and blind sort of feels that way, but that's part of the issue: 1. these kinds of sites are a paradox in that you want employees to be anonymous but also verified. So you can't just spin up a site in a week and have valuable data 2. despite the comparisons, I'm sure both levels and blind were in fact vc funded. The models feels indie but it probably isn't. But they did their part for SEO and marketing and yadda yadda. So it got the eyeballs it needed before word of mouth set in >Why does a Glassdoor alternative inherently need marketing? to be frank, because most people don't try very hard to find the grassroots. They are lazy and will take the first thing that looks good on Google.

cchance 3y ago

The thing is you did find reddit via marketing, its just the marketing hit the people before it hit you, that guy that told you about it or the one that told him was the one that marketing got into reddit, which got them to a critical mass that word of mouth can take over.

nullc 3y ago
Reddit's early employees were very busy with sock accounts reposting things from other sites, commenting on them, then messaging the creators on the original sites "hey your thing was posted on reddit!". Marketing comes in lots of forms.

okanat 3y ago

Reddit didn't start to attract the critical mass until they became the top result in Google though nor it was able to keep its servers with its own profit. Until they squash all possible opponents, such social networks has never been profitable.

jasonm23 3y ago
Reddit isn't profitable, never has been, and likely never will