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The ChatGPT site crossed 3B visits last month (For perspective - https://imgur.com/a/hqE7jia https://imgur.com/a/hqE7jia). It has been >2B since May this year a

The ChatGPT site crossed 3B visits last month (For perspective - https://imgur.com/a/hqE7jia https://imgur.com/a/hqE7jia). It has been >2B since May this year and >1.5B since March 2023. The Summer slump of last year ? Completely gone. Gemini and Character AI ? A few hundred million. Claude ? Doesn't even register. And the gap has only been increasing. So, "just" brand recognition ? That feels like saying Google "just" has brand recognition over Bing. https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/ai-news/chatgpt-topped-3-billion-visits-in-september/ https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/ai-news/chatgpt-top...

charlieyu1 2y ago
Yea the figures look great so far. Doesn’t mean we can bet the future on it.
DanHulton 2y ago
I mean it's still not an impassibly strong moat. If it were, we'd all still be on MySpace and Digg.
- qeternity 2y ago
  As model performance converges, it becomes the strongest moat. Why go to Claude for a marginally better model when you have the ChatGPT app downloaded and all your chat history there.
  - segasaturn 2y ago
    I actually pre-emptively deleted ChatGPT and my account recently as I suspect that they're going to start aggressively putting ads and user tracking into the site and apps to build revenue. I also bet that if they do go through with putting ads into the app that daily user numbers will drop sharply - one of ChatGPT's biggest draws is its clean, no-nonsense UX. There are plenty of competitors that are as good as o1 so I have lots of choices to jump ship to.
    - rbjorklin 2y ago
      The day LLM responses start containing product placements is not far now.
      - Terr_ 2y ago
        And some of them will be from poisoned data, not just an explicit prompt by the site-owner.
      - Terr_ 2y ago
        And some of them will be from poisoned data, not just an explicit prompt by the site-owner. A whole new form of spam--excuse me--"AI Engine Optimization."
  - cen4 2y ago
    True. ChatGPT has already won me over. I stopped even testing anything else.
  - attentive 2y ago
    Do you ever look at your chat history? why? how far back?
- sumedh 2y ago
  Myspace and Digg dug their own graves though. Myspace had a very confusing UX and Digg gave more control to advertisers. As long as OpenAI dont make huge mistakes they can hold on to their marketshare.
  - Mistletoe 2y ago
    The moat is bigger on MySpace and Digg though since you have user accounts, karma, userbases. The thing with chatbots is I can just as easily move to a different one, I have no history or username or anything and there is no network effect. I don't need all my friends to move to Gemini or Claude, I don't have any friends on OpenAI, it's just a prompt I can get anywhere.
    - jart 2y ago
      Digg was basically Reddit except with a single subreddit. Reddit demolished Digg because it offered people fiefs rather than just karma.
      - Terr_ 2y ago
        Reddit had a much better system for commentary, as opposed to just reacting to URLs. Sure, you could comment on Digg, but it was a pain and not good for conversations, and that meant there was less to keep people around when it seemed like the company was started to put their finger on the scales for URL-submissions.
        AndyNemmity 2y ago
        It wasn't a pain on Digg, and it was equally good at conversations. Reddit did not win due to it's features, it won because Digg said it doesn't matter what the users think, we will redesign the site and change how it works regardless of the majority telling us they don't want it.
        Terr_ 2y ago
_hark 2y ago
Claude's API usage absolutely registers (60% the size of OpenAI's), their chat interface just isn't as popular. [1] [1]: https://www.tanayj.com/p/openai-and-anthropic-revenue-breakdown https://www.tanayj.com/p/openai-and-anthropic-revenue-breakd...
- famouswaffles 2y ago
  ChatGPT usage from the main site dwarfs API Usage for both Open AI and Anthropic so we're not really saying different things here. The vast majority of people using LLMs just use ChatGPT directly. Anthropic is doing fine for technical or business customers looking to offer LLM services in a wrapper but that doesn't mean they register in the public consciousness.
  - commandar 2y ago
    >Anthropic is doing fine for technical or business customers looking to offer LLM services in a wrapper If there's an actual business to be found in all this, that's where it's going to be. The consumer side of this bleeds cash currently and I'm deeply skeptical of enough of the public being convinced to pay subscription fees high enough to cover running costs.
    - moralestapia 2y ago
      No one here gets it, even though @sama has said it countless times. I will write it explicitly for you once again: The plan is to make inference so cheap it's negligible.
      - downWidOutaFite 2y ago
        so... ad funded?
        Incipient 2y ago
        I think they mean running inference. Either more efficient/powerful hardware, or more efficient software. No one thinks about the cost of a db query any more, but I'm sure people did back in the day (well, I suppose with cloud stuff, now people do need to think about it again haha)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
hiq 2y ago
> The ChatGPT site crossed 3B visits last month With how much profit per visit though? I just used ChatGPT and 2 other similar services for some personal queries. I copy-pasted the same query in all 3 of them, using their free accounts, just in case one answer looks better than the others. I got into this habit because of the latency: in the time it takes for the first service to answer, I've had time to send the query to 2 others, which makes it easier to ignore the first response if it's not satisfying. Usually it's pretty much the same though. We can nitpick about benchmarks, but I'm not sure they're that relevant for most users anyway. It doesn't matter much to me whether something is wrong 10 or 20% of the time, in both cases I can only send queries for which I can easily check that the answer makes sense. I see other comments mentioning they stopped their ChatGPT Plus subscription because the free versions work well enough. I've never paid myself and it doesn't look like I ever will, because things keep getting better for free anyway. My default workflow is already to prompt several LLMs so one could go down, I wouldn't even notice. I'm sure I'm an outlier with this, but still, people might use Perplexity for their searches, some WhatsApp LLM chatbot for their therapy session, purely based on convenience. There's no lock-in whatsoever into a particular LLM chat interface, and the 3B monthly visits don't seem to make ChatGPT better than its competitors. And of course as soon as they'll add ads, product placement, latency or any other limitation their competitor doesn't have, I'll stop using them, and keep on using the other N instead. At this point it feels like they need Microsoft more than Microsoft needs them.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  >With how much profit per visit though? They probably lose on each one, but it's the same with their competitors. FWIW, regular folks now say "let me ask Chat" for what it used to be "let me Google that"; that is a huge cultural shift, and it happened in only a couple years.
  - OccamsMirror 2y ago
    It just so happened to coincide with Google delivering terrible results. I used to be able to find what I wanted but now the top results only loosely correlate with the search. I’m sure it works for most people’s general searches but it doesn’t work for me.
0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
Google search is free. I suspect OpenAI may have to start charging for ChatGPT at some point so they stop hemorrhaging money. Customers who are opening their wallet might shop around for other offerings.

charlieyu1 2y ago

Yea the figures look great so far. Doesn’t mean we can bet the future on it.

DanHulton 2y ago

I mean it's still not an impassibly strong moat. If it were, we'd all still be on MySpace and Digg.

qeternity 2y ago
As model performance converges, it becomes the strongest moat. Why go to Claude for a marginally better model when you have the ChatGPT app downloaded and all your chat history there.
- segasaturn 2y ago
  I actually pre-emptively deleted ChatGPT and my account recently as I suspect that they're going to start aggressively putting ads and user tracking into the site and apps to build revenue. I also bet that if they do go through with putting ads into the app that daily user numbers will drop sharply - one of ChatGPT's biggest draws is its clean, no-nonsense UX. There are plenty of competitors that are as good as o1 so I have lots of choices to jump ship to.
  - rbjorklin 2y ago
    The day LLM responses start containing product placements is not far now.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      And some of them will be from poisoned data, not just an explicit prompt by the site-owner.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      And some of them will be from poisoned data, not just an explicit prompt by the site-owner. A whole new form of spam--excuse me--"AI Engine Optimization."
- cen4 2y ago
  True. ChatGPT has already won me over. I stopped even testing anything else.
- attentive 2y ago
  Do you ever look at your chat history? why? how far back?
sumedh 2y ago
Myspace and Digg dug their own graves though. Myspace had a very confusing UX and Digg gave more control to advertisers. As long as OpenAI dont make huge mistakes they can hold on to their marketshare.
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  The moat is bigger on MySpace and Digg though since you have user accounts, karma, userbases. The thing with chatbots is I can just as easily move to a different one, I have no history or username or anything and there is no network effect. I don't need all my friends to move to Gemini or Claude, I don't have any friends on OpenAI, it's just a prompt I can get anywhere.
  - jart 2y ago
    Digg was basically Reddit except with a single subreddit. Reddit demolished Digg because it offered people fiefs rather than just karma.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      Reddit had a much better system for commentary, as opposed to just reacting to URLs. Sure, you could comment on Digg, but it was a pain and not good for conversations, and that meant there was less to keep people around when it seemed like the company was started to put their finger on the scales for URL-submissions.
      - AndyNemmity 2y ago
        It wasn't a pain on Digg, and it was equally good at conversations. Reddit did not win due to it's features, it won because Digg said it doesn't matter what the users think, we will redesign the site and change how it works regardless of the majority telling us they don't want it.
        Terr_ 2y ago

_hark 2y ago

Claude's API usage absolutely registers (60% the size of OpenAI's), their chat interface just isn't as popular. [1] [1]: https://www.tanayj.com/p/openai-and-anthropic-revenue-breakdown https://www.tanayj.com/p/openai-and-anthropic-revenue-breakd...

famouswaffles 2y ago
ChatGPT usage from the main site dwarfs API Usage for both Open AI and Anthropic so we're not really saying different things here. The vast majority of people using LLMs just use ChatGPT directly. Anthropic is doing fine for technical or business customers looking to offer LLM services in a wrapper but that doesn't mean they register in the public consciousness.
- commandar 2y ago
  >Anthropic is doing fine for technical or business customers looking to offer LLM services in a wrapper If there's an actual business to be found in all this, that's where it's going to be. The consumer side of this bleeds cash currently and I'm deeply skeptical of enough of the public being convinced to pay subscription fees high enough to cover running costs.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    No one here gets it, even though @sama has said it countless times. I will write it explicitly for you once again: The plan is to make inference so cheap it's negligible.
    - downWidOutaFite 2y ago
      so... ad funded?
      - Incipient 2y ago
        I think they mean running inference. Either more efficient/powerful hardware, or more efficient software. No one thinks about the cost of a db query any more, but I'm sure people did back in the day (well, I suppose with cloud stuff, now people do need to think about it again haha)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

hiq 2y ago

> The ChatGPT site crossed 3B visits last month With how much profit per visit though? I just used ChatGPT and 2 other similar services for some personal queries. I copy-pasted the same query in all 3 of them, using their free accounts, just in case one answer looks better than the others. I got into this habit because of the latency: in the time it takes for the first service to answer, I've had time to send the query to 2 others, which makes it easier to ignore the first response if it's not satisfying. Usually it's pretty much the same though. We can nitpick about benchmarks, but I'm not sure they're that relevant for most users anyway. It doesn't matter much to me whether something is wrong 10 or 20% of the time, in both cases I can only send queries for which I can easily check that the answer makes sense. I see other comments mentioning they stopped their ChatGPT Plus subscription because the free versions work well enough. I've never paid myself and it doesn't look like I ever will, because things keep getting better for free anyway. My default workflow is already to prompt several LLMs so one could go down, I wouldn't even notice. I'm sure I'm an outlier with this, but still, people might use Perplexity for their searches, some WhatsApp LLM chatbot for their therapy session, purely based on convenience. There's no lock-in whatsoever into a particular LLM chat interface, and the 3B monthly visits don't seem to make ChatGPT better than its competitors. And of course as soon as they'll add ads, product placement, latency or any other limitation their competitor doesn't have, I'll stop using them, and keep on using the other N instead. At this point it feels like they need Microsoft more than Microsoft needs them.

moralestapia 2y ago
>With how much profit per visit though? They probably lose on each one, but it's the same with their competitors. FWIW, regular folks now say "let me ask Chat" for what it used to be "let me Google that"; that is a huge cultural shift, and it happened in only a couple years.
- OccamsMirror 2y ago
  It just so happened to coincide with Google delivering terrible results. I used to be able to find what I wanted but now the top results only loosely correlate with the search. I’m sure it works for most people’s general searches but it doesn’t work for me.

0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago

Google search is free. I suspect OpenAI may have to start charging for ChatGPT at some point so they stop hemorrhaging money. Customers who are opening their wallet might shop around for other offerings.