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Not sure how reddit exists without ads either though. Running huge websites with user video hosting is a non trivial expense that's hard to entice enough users
by rtkwe 3y ago
Not sure how reddit exists without ads either though. Running huge websites with user video hosting is a non trivial expense that's hard to entice enough users to cough up money for to make viable.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoGenAI training data licensing. Forum participants get, at no cost, a curated venue that continues to operate in return. Chat amongst yourselves while the robot learns.
- pluc 3y agothere are plenty of ads on reddit
- rtkwe 3y agoYes... and the person I was replying to was saying the best reddit is one without ads. If the best version of something can't exist because it would bleed itself dry paying for hosting it's not a real option to judge against.
- ok_dad 3y agoDon’t host media, just host text like they used to.
- rtkwe 3y agoImage and video posts get way more activity than text posts constantly. People don't just want text posts and no one wants to be reddit's free image host like imgur used to be.
- geysersam 3y agoWho cares what gets most activity? Arguably the text/conversation content on Reddit is massively more valuable than the images shown there. (Not in the sense of market value, in the sense of value.) Let the image host show ads to cover their costs.
- rtkwe 3y agoReddit cares as a business, more activity means more chances to make money whatever scheme they choose to use. Users also want more activity because that gives them more to do on the site.
- murphyslab 3y ago> a non trivial expense that's hard to entice enough users to cough up money for to make viable Yet the site's operators got rid of one of the most popular mechs for monetization: Awards.
- kobalsky 3y agoreddit gold worked fine to cover infrastructure and administration costs. of course it all went to hell when they went from a small dedicated team to a startup raising millions to add hundreds of employees doing god knows what
- geysersam 3y agoRuining a good website takes a lot of manpower.
- account42 3y agoSeems more inversely correlated if we go by how Reddit has changed.
- kobalsky 3y agoReddit was good before that "manpower". Infrastructure costs were covered by reddit gold. This was displayed on each community, some accrued years worth of server time. Instead of organic stuff like the first IAMA's what that "manpower got you were promotional flybys by actors releasing a new movie or book or something, who didn't even understand what they were doing.
- rtkwe 3y agoWas it though? I thought reddit was the standard VC money pit and never really had a profitable quarter under gold. Did they ever release numbers showing their cost vs gold revenue?
- geysersam 3y agoDid they even host video and image content originally though? Vaguely remember such content was only available through external links. I think that would be a good compromise. Make it free/paid by donations/subscriptions and only host cheap text.
- codewench 3y agoImgur for example was created by a reddit user specifically for hosting content posted on reddit. The move to reddit itself hosting content came much later
- geysersam 3y agoDo you happen to know why they started hosting content themselves?
- codewench 3y agoI don't have any inside knowledge, but I believe it was a mix of wanting to simplify things for users, and to keep users within their system. I suspect that the rise of imgur as it's own community was seen as a threat, or at least competition, and the question "why are we basically helping our competitors" was asked at least once.
- rtkwe 3y agoThat was my impression from having lived through it as well. Imgur built it's own little community and figured they could make a go of it on their own instead of being purely a reddit image host. They still do host a fair amount of content but gone are the days when you could got to imgur.com/r/aww and see all the cute animal pics because imgur was the default host of all of reddit so they had the integration to show subreddit specific albums.
- randerson 3y agoWhen you share an image or video with someone its now a Reddit link so it drives new users. Even if you Copy Image, you'll see a Reddit overlay when you paste it.