6 ms·

Reddit CEO Asks Users To Buy Revamped Membership

50 points by ssclafani 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
aston 14y ago
Deep within the 1000+ comments on the accompanying reddit thread is a really interesting fact: Reddit is not (currently) profitable. [1] I was already a reddit gold subscriber, but the fact that at the moment they're literally running into the red to provide cool stuff like the Obama AMA makes me want to subscribe again. Anyone looking for a reddit gold account? [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/12v8y3/now_is_the_time_to_invest_in_gold/c6yfbuh http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/12v8y3/now_is_the_time...
- GuiA 14y ago
  Reddit is a fantastic product— and its huge, growing popularity is a sure sign of that. But it never was built with a clear business model in mind. Their two sources of revenues are (i) ads and (ii) reddit gold. I don't think anyone ever expected (i) to be more than just a little extra cash; and (ii), as they say, was never heavily promoted at all. So it seems like (part of) their solution today is to try to push (ii) as far as it will go. I don't believe it's going to get them very far in its current state, but it's a valid first step. I think this highlights, once again, the need to actually build a viable business in addition to a quality product- one does not make the other, and it's hard to retrofit a business model 5 years later. Sadly, everyone expects everything digital to be free (software, social networks, services, magazines, games, etc.), so it's an uphill battle. I think Reddit has some interesting cards in its hand though: AMAs are a growing trend, so that's something I'd try to monetize if I were them. Regardless, I'm curious to see where Reddit will go.
  - Klinky 14y ago
    Reddit probably has the same issue Groupon brought to local business. It's userbase expects a high quality product for dirt cheap, and is very vocal when something goes awry. When Woody Harrelson showed up to do an AMA, that turned out to be more of an "Ask Me About My New Movie", there was backlash. A lot of people just went around repeating a comment about Woody taking some poor girls virginity from a local high school prom and then never calling her back(not sure if this was true). So the idea of leveraging pseudo-AMAs for marketing purposes seems like swinging a broom at a hornets nest.
    - citricsquid 14y ago
      So the idea of leveraging pseudo-AMAs for marketing purposes seems like swinging a broom at a hornets nest. There are many AMAs that exist solely as the internet equivalent of a talk show where a celebrity makes an appearance to promote their latest book or tv series. The problem with the Woody Harrelson AMA was expectations, it was billed as "Ask Woody Harrelson Anything" and then when it came down to it the reality was it was actually "Ask Woody Harrelson anything about Rampart!" If you set expectations accurately and provide real value then there will be no outrage, there was an AMA a few weeks ago from an ex death row inmate who did the AMA to promote his book, did anyone complain? No, because he was open about it and spent time answering all the questions regardless of their value to his promotional intentions. Just like if a celebrity went on to Conan O'brien and answered every question with "Okay! So about my new film! It's really great, everyone should go and watch it!" people would be pissed. Here's a couple of AMAs that I just picked in <1 minute that are promotional but had no complaints: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12vg2c/i_am_lizzy_caplan_ask_me_things_about_things/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12vg2c/i_am_lizzy_capl... http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12uwz7/we_are_videogame_designers_randy_david_of_tiger/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12uwz7/we_are_videogam... http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/n9tef/hi_im_louis_ck_and_this_is_a_thing/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/n9tef/hi_im_louis_ck_a... http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kefnc/i_am_bear_grylls_ask_me_anything/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kefnc/i_am_bear_grylls...
      - Klinky 14y ago
        Cult TV show actress, indie video game developers and cult comic and adventure show host who are memes on Reddit. Reddit fancies these people, and the fact that they didn't pay to post makes it seem more legit. While they may be marketing something, the fact that it's not in your face makes it seem more innocent. Having something on there that specifically states "this is a sponsored AMA, someone is doing this to sell you something" immediately creates a negative reaction. Hiding the sponsorship would just cause paranoia. Would sponsored AMAs be front paged immediately? Could they be downvoted to hell? Would comments that the sponsor found offensive be removed? Would a company want someone linking to r/SpaceDicks in their AMA? It's kind of a Pandora's box promoting on Reddit.
- slackerIII 14y ago
  Does anyone know what Reddit's AWS monthly bill is these days? I suspect they would be closer to profitability if they ran their own hardware, but I haven't seen any numbers recently.
  - timothya 14y ago
    Don't forget that if they were to run their own hardware, they'd probably need a couple of sysadmins to manage it. The question is if running their own hardware would be cheaper by more than the salary of a couple employees.
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    In previous talks they have never revealed the numbers, but have said that their bills have been fairly constant over time - Amazon's price decreases have balanced growth in AWS usage.
    - raldi 14y ago
      Sure we did. Jedberg used to talk about it all the time.
      - rogerbinns 14y ago
        Closest I have found is this (two years old): http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/ctz7c/your_gold_dollars_at_work/c0v8ug8?context=1 http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/ctz7c/your_gold_dollar...
        raldi 14y ago
        Well, try updating it for the present.
citricsquid 14y ago
I don't really understand why they're so against doing proper advertising, so much so that they're willing to operate at a loss. Digg didn't fail because of advertising and if reddit can approach advertising in a "mature" way -- not just going after every penny -- it could work out well. you come under editorial pressure from advertisers to remove or modify it…This eventually results in a watering down of the true, authentic content on the site If you're in a situation where you have no advertising and you're losing money, why not be in a situation where you have some advertising and if an advertiser gets annoyed you tell them to leave and not work with you again? If reddit has value to advertisers a few annoyed advertisers aren't going to break the site, especially when it can exist as a money losing business. Their current advertising is just... pointless, I rarely see adverts on reddit, almost every page load has the advertisement block filled with an internal reddit notice (eg: "check out the FAQ!", "Thanks for not using adblock", "check out reddit gifts") or an advert that someone has paid for via self serve for their subreddit. Maybe I'm missing something but surely even just throwing up a simple adsense block in the advertising space would generate enough revenue to be worth whatever supposed good will these cutesy cat picture adverts exist to score. Adsense certainly wouldn't "destroy" the trust people have placed in the site... As someone that puts time into reddit I'd be more annoyed if they let the site become so unprofitable they have to shut it down vs. have a few adverts that I can opt out of with a tiny monthly fee. Would anyone here (that uses reddit) leave if they had proper advertising (that could be opted out of with reddit gold and was not audio / video advertisements, just "standard" web adverts)? I've never met someone willing to leave a website over adverts, if the adverts are reasonable. Also during the time I wrote this comment I was constantly refreshing reddit.com, so far I have not seen a single non-reddit related advert and I'm at 30 page loads. (maybe raldi or jedberg or whoever that left reddit and lurks here can explain why this isn't being done, because it's confusing, is there an internal belief that reddit users are so touchy that they'll leave if reddit tries proper advertising?) edit: oh and for the perfect example, imgur has advertising, what about 75% of popular reddit content uses, and I don't see people boycotting imgur? (of the 100 links in r/all right now 75 are to imgur, 25 of those are to imgur.com which has advertising, so that means 25% of the front page links go straight to imgur with adverts) edit edit: in an attempt to explain my opinion succinctly, I think the real problem reddit has is the toxic idea that any attempt to make money will alienate the community, when in reality the majority of reddit users don't care and the vocal minority would not leave the site as long as the advertisements were reasonable. People want a stable website that they can be a part of, advertisements don't destroy that. Look at how many people love imgur, 9gag and funnyjunk. Having so little faith in reddit users ability to deal with adverts is to me more "insulting" than the adverts themselves.
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
I really, really hope Reddit and 4Chan succeed in this. It would be great for other new services to be able to point to services like Reddit and say, "Customers will pay for something that is valuable to them, even if it's just a web site." I don't use Reddit enough to justify paying for it, but I would certainly pay to support HN.
- fudged71 14y ago
  Is 4chan doing something similar? Where did that come from?
  - GuiA 14y ago
    Who isn't familiar with 4Chan Gold? ;) (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gold-membership-trolling http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gold-membership-trolling)
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    They have the "4chan pass", the premise is pretty much the same as reddit gold, pay $ to support the site and get benefits: https://www.4chan.org/pass https://www.4chan.org/pass
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    I was just going off what was printed in the article. :)
    - fudged71 14y ago
      Oh shoot, I missed the last paragraph. Thanks
  - ANTSANTS 14y ago
    https://www.4chan.org/news?all#109 https://www.4chan.org/news?all#109 https://www.4chan.org/news?all#110 https://www.4chan.org/news?all#110 It's worth mentioning that moot has managed to keep 4chan running since 2005 without accepting any donations, while paying for what I imagine is a ridiculous amount of bandwidth and being shunned by most advertisers. Up until the addition of 4chan passes, he was paying a fairly large portion of the monthly server bills out of his own pocket. Moot hasn't said how many people have purchased passes, but I'm guessing it's an amount closer to "allows me to break even without dipping into my own pocket" and not "I can support 4chan entirely through user contributions!" I think Reddit would have a much easier time supporting itself entirely through non-intrusive advertisement, which makes me much less sympathetic towards their desire to have users directly support the site.
antidoh 14y ago
Maybe there's a third way. On one end is their free and ad-supported access. The few ads that I see are very easy on the eyes, easy to ignore, and I don't feel compelled by the ads to buy a gold account. In return you get user generated content. On the other end is the gold account, where you don't see ads, and you get the same user generated content. In addition to any of that, they might decide to generate content themselves. Be the paid New York Times of the Internet (whatever that means, to them); the Site of Record. They've almost got the credibility, and certainly have the name recognition; their drama gets covered by the mainstream media. Of course they'd have to hire another body or two.
seanalltogether 14y ago
It might be helpful for them to put a link in the blog post to buy reddit gold.
mung 14y ago
I don't quite understand why a site like reddit would have "editorial pressure" from advertisers. If anything it should be the other way around.
- batiudrami 14y ago
  What? A post get promoted 'My experience with AT&T sucks, they're terrible and here's why'. AT&T's marketing department makes a call, and says 'we'll pull our advertising spend if you don't pull that item'. Suddenly reddit has to make a call between having the cash they require to stay afloat, and staying true to their users. That being said, I think there's a better compromise for the ad block than what they're doing at the moment. I don't care whether the ad space shows a kitten or an ad for Maccas, so it may as well generate them money (and if a company pulls advertising, well, that sucks, but that's how it goes. Better than having no advertising at all.)
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    Suddenly reddit has to make a call between having the cash they require to stay afloat, and staying true to their users. but if reddit doesn't have that money now what difference does it make? if reddit has reddit gold and has advertising, don't they end up in a position where they're able to choose and turn away advertisers if they need to? unless turning away advertisers causes some sort of industry problem where companies are unwilling to work with reddit?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - aes256 14y ago
      You burn bridges pretty fast doing that sort of thing.
  - flxmglrb 14y ago
    The "big corps vs. the little guy consumers" notion is cute but I think the problem is more along the lines of very few advertisers wanting to be on a site with areas like /r/jailbait and /r/creepshots (or whatever took their place this week).
umami 14y ago
Why not buy the most popular mobile apps for the site and monetize them? Users seem to be much happier spending money on mobile apps than on web sites.
- panacea 14y ago
  Not sure if Jason (the developer of Alien Blue... far and away the best mobile reddit client) would want to sell his app. It seems like a labour of love.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
nikcub 14y ago
> See, the problem is that if your site is funded primarily with advertising, then you are beholden to your advertisers. There is a lot of precedent for handling this, as newspapers have been doing for decades. Newspapers have the content producers and the business people in the same building employed by the same company. You separate your business and editorial and put a wall between them in the company. Nobody from business has access to the admin panel and nobody from editorial has access to the business contacts. I really couldn't imagine an advertiser asking reddit to remove a post for them. To advertise on reddit means that you have some understanding of how it works, and how it works doesn't involve admins censoring content. There are more than enough advertisers in the world who both understand reddit and would pay good money to get their ads infront of that audience. The only problem is that the ad product is not sold or promoted well.
- adamjernst 14y ago
  That didn't work out too well for the newspapers, did it? Newspapers got away with it for so long because they held a monopoly on information distribution.
  - krichman 14y ago
    Unless I am mistake, newspapers have distribution costs that are orders of magnitude larger.
evoxed 14y ago
--- I typed this up just before getting a call, so apologies for the first-draftiness. I refreshed the page to see if anyone was saying anything similar but I didn't see anything, so I might as well post it. --- I really think they should just skip over the whole maj/minority struggle and work on a more suitable approach. What makes Reddit so special? Each subreddit and its dedicated and often unique community. When reddit was relatively new I avoided it, because on the surface all I saw were fellow tech-hungry teenagers looking for the next big place to gather. Only a few years ago did I stumble on some of the smaller, more interesting subreddits and realize that I could spend my entire time among just a few without ever caring about the rest of 'Reddit' because within those little communities, there was something really cool and fun. Expat living in Japan? There's an r/ for that. Love cartography? There's an r/ for that. Linguist/mathematician/physicist? Plenty of r/s for you, of varying quality and concentration but interesting nonetheless. Sometimes when I'm motivated to learn more about a subject, one of the first things I'll do is check if there is a decent subreddit that's relevant. Lo and behold, r/spicy and r/bonsai now come to my frontpage to shower me with pruning advice, sauce exchanges, and more. Of course, anyone can create a new subreddit if the existing ones aren't interesting enough, moderated poorly, or the subject just doesn't have a home yet. My list of micro-wikis and webpages to set up now has marks for items that would work just as well being a subreddit. But we're talking about revenue here, so let me get to the point. Don't just think about Reddit as one big thing, but rather as a world full of lively other things– some some tiny, others huge. They can make money without looking heavy-handed or causing too much controversy, as long as they see the users (all of them) as collaborators in that effort. Subreddits already enjoy a certain amount of freedom (of moderation, styling), why not gamify it somehow? For example, most people wouldn't mind if r/pics had real ads, and r/pics is probably one of the most trafficked subreddits around. Those who still don't want the ads can get Reddit Gold. However say r/crypto thought the ads were silly, and wanted them removed. Then they could, for example, buy their way out directly (garnering a few extra features for the local mods) or encourage their own subscribers to get gold, with some percentage reducing the number/location of ads until reaching zero.

50 points by ssclafani 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

aston 14y ago

Deep within the 1000+ comments on the accompanying reddit thread is a really interesting fact: Reddit is not (currently) profitable. [1] I was already a reddit gold subscriber, but the fact that at the moment they're literally running into the red to provide cool stuff like the Obama AMA makes me want to subscribe again. Anyone looking for a reddit gold account? [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/12v8y3/now_is_the_time_to_invest_in_gold/c6yfbuh http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/12v8y3/now_is_the_time...

GuiA 14y ago
Reddit is a fantastic product— and its huge, growing popularity is a sure sign of that. But it never was built with a clear business model in mind. Their two sources of revenues are (i) ads and (ii) reddit gold. I don't think anyone ever expected (i) to be more than just a little extra cash; and (ii), as they say, was never heavily promoted at all. So it seems like (part of) their solution today is to try to push (ii) as far as it will go. I don't believe it's going to get them very far in its current state, but it's a valid first step. I think this highlights, once again, the need to actually build a viable business in addition to a quality product- one does not make the other, and it's hard to retrofit a business model 5 years later. Sadly, everyone expects everything digital to be free (software, social networks, services, magazines, games, etc.), so it's an uphill battle. I think Reddit has some interesting cards in its hand though: AMAs are a growing trend, so that's something I'd try to monetize if I were them. Regardless, I'm curious to see where Reddit will go.
- Klinky 14y ago
  Reddit probably has the same issue Groupon brought to local business. It's userbase expects a high quality product for dirt cheap, and is very vocal when something goes awry. When Woody Harrelson showed up to do an AMA, that turned out to be more of an "Ask Me About My New Movie", there was backlash. A lot of people just went around repeating a comment about Woody taking some poor girls virginity from a local high school prom and then never calling her back(not sure if this was true). So the idea of leveraging pseudo-AMAs for marketing purposes seems like swinging a broom at a hornets nest.
  - citricsquid 14y ago
    So the idea of leveraging pseudo-AMAs for marketing purposes seems like swinging a broom at a hornets nest. There are many AMAs that exist solely as the internet equivalent of a talk show where a celebrity makes an appearance to promote their latest book or tv series. The problem with the Woody Harrelson AMA was expectations, it was billed as "Ask Woody Harrelson Anything" and then when it came down to it the reality was it was actually "Ask Woody Harrelson anything about Rampart!" If you set expectations accurately and provide real value then there will be no outrage, there was an AMA a few weeks ago from an ex death row inmate who did the AMA to promote his book, did anyone complain? No, because he was open about it and spent time answering all the questions regardless of their value to his promotional intentions. Just like if a celebrity went on to Conan O'brien and answered every question with "Okay! So about my new film! It's really great, everyone should go and watch it!" people would be pissed. Here's a couple of AMAs that I just picked in <1 minute that are promotional but had no complaints: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12vg2c/i_am_lizzy_caplan_ask_me_things_about_things/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12vg2c/i_am_lizzy_capl... http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12uwz7/we_are_videogame_designers_randy_david_of_tiger/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12uwz7/we_are_videogam... http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/n9tef/hi_im_louis_ck_and_this_is_a_thing/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/n9tef/hi_im_louis_ck_a... http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kefnc/i_am_bear_grylls_ask_me_anything/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/kefnc/i_am_bear_grylls...
    - Klinky 14y ago
      Cult TV show actress, indie video game developers and cult comic and adventure show host who are memes on Reddit. Reddit fancies these people, and the fact that they didn't pay to post makes it seem more legit. While they may be marketing something, the fact that it's not in your face makes it seem more innocent. Having something on there that specifically states "this is a sponsored AMA, someone is doing this to sell you something" immediately creates a negative reaction. Hiding the sponsorship would just cause paranoia. Would sponsored AMAs be front paged immediately? Could they be downvoted to hell? Would comments that the sponsor found offensive be removed? Would a company want someone linking to r/SpaceDicks in their AMA? It's kind of a Pandora's box promoting on Reddit.
slackerIII 14y ago
Does anyone know what Reddit's AWS monthly bill is these days? I suspect they would be closer to profitability if they ran their own hardware, but I haven't seen any numbers recently.
- timothya 14y ago
  Don't forget that if they were to run their own hardware, they'd probably need a couple of sysadmins to manage it. The question is if running their own hardware would be cheaper by more than the salary of a couple employees.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  In previous talks they have never revealed the numbers, but have said that their bills have been fairly constant over time - Amazon's price decreases have balanced growth in AWS usage.
  - raldi 14y ago
    Sure we did. Jedberg used to talk about it all the time.
    - rogerbinns 14y ago
      Closest I have found is this (two years old): http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/ctz7c/your_gold_dollars_at_work/c0v8ug8?context=1 http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/ctz7c/your_gold_dollar...
      - raldi 14y ago
        Well, try updating it for the present.

citricsquid 14y ago

I don't really understand why they're so against doing proper advertising, so much so that they're willing to operate at a loss. Digg didn't fail because of advertising and if reddit can approach advertising in a "mature" way -- not just going after every penny -- it could work out well. you come under editorial pressure from advertisers to remove or modify it…This eventually results in a watering down of the true, authentic content on the site If you're in a situation where you have no advertising and you're losing money, why not be in a situation where you have some advertising and if an advertiser gets annoyed you tell them to leave and not work with you again? If reddit has value to advertisers a few annoyed advertisers aren't going to break the site, especially when it can exist as a money losing business. Their current advertising is just... pointless, I rarely see adverts on reddit, almost every page load has the advertisement block filled with an internal reddit notice (eg: "check out the FAQ!", "Thanks for not using adblock", "check out reddit gifts") or an advert that someone has paid for via self serve for their subreddit. Maybe I'm missing something but surely even just throwing up a simple adsense block in the advertising space would generate enough revenue to be worth whatever supposed good will these cutesy cat picture adverts exist to score. Adsense certainly wouldn't "destroy" the trust people have placed in the site... As someone that puts time into reddit I'd be more annoyed if they let the site become so unprofitable they have to shut it down vs. have a few adverts that I can opt out of with a tiny monthly fee. Would anyone here (that uses reddit) leave if they had proper advertising (that could be opted out of with reddit gold and was not audio / video advertisements, just "standard" web adverts)? I've never met someone willing to leave a website over adverts, if the adverts are reasonable. Also during the time I wrote this comment I was constantly refreshing reddit.com, so far I have not seen a single non-reddit related advert and I'm at 30 page loads. (maybe raldi or jedberg or whoever that left reddit and lurks here can explain why this isn't being done, because it's confusing, is there an internal belief that reddit users are so touchy that they'll leave if reddit tries proper advertising?) edit: oh and for the perfect example, imgur has advertising, what about 75% of popular reddit content uses, and I don't see people boycotting imgur? (of the 100 links in r/all right now 75 are to imgur, 25 of those are to imgur.com which has advertising, so that means 25% of the front page links go straight to imgur with adverts) edit edit: in an attempt to explain my opinion succinctly, I think the real problem reddit has is the toxic idea that any attempt to make money will alienate the community, when in reality the majority of reddit users don't care and the vocal minority would not leave the site as long as the advertisements were reasonable. People want a stable website that they can be a part of, advertisements don't destroy that. Look at how many people love imgur, 9gag and funnyjunk. Having so little faith in reddit users ability to deal with adverts is to me more "insulting" than the adverts themselves.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

I really, really hope Reddit and 4Chan succeed in this. It would be great for other new services to be able to point to services like Reddit and say, "Customers will pay for something that is valuable to them, even if it's just a web site." I don't use Reddit enough to justify paying for it, but I would certainly pay to support HN.

fudged71 14y ago
Is 4chan doing something similar? Where did that come from?
- GuiA 14y ago
  Who isn't familiar with 4Chan Gold? ;) (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gold-membership-trolling http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/gold-membership-trolling)
- citricsquid 14y ago
  They have the "4chan pass", the premise is pretty much the same as reddit gold, pay $ to support the site and get benefits: https://www.4chan.org/pass https://www.4chan.org/pass
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  I was just going off what was printed in the article. :)
  - fudged71 14y ago
    Oh shoot, I missed the last paragraph. Thanks
- ANTSANTS 14y ago
  https://www.4chan.org/news?all#109 https://www.4chan.org/news?all#109 https://www.4chan.org/news?all#110 https://www.4chan.org/news?all#110 It's worth mentioning that moot has managed to keep 4chan running since 2005 without accepting any donations, while paying for what I imagine is a ridiculous amount of bandwidth and being shunned by most advertisers. Up until the addition of 4chan passes, he was paying a fairly large portion of the monthly server bills out of his own pocket. Moot hasn't said how many people have purchased passes, but I'm guessing it's an amount closer to "allows me to break even without dipping into my own pocket" and not "I can support 4chan entirely through user contributions!" I think Reddit would have a much easier time supporting itself entirely through non-intrusive advertisement, which makes me much less sympathetic towards their desire to have users directly support the site.

antidoh 14y ago

Maybe there's a third way. On one end is their free and ad-supported access. The few ads that I see are very easy on the eyes, easy to ignore, and I don't feel compelled by the ads to buy a gold account. In return you get user generated content. On the other end is the gold account, where you don't see ads, and you get the same user generated content. In addition to any of that, they might decide to generate content themselves. Be the paid New York Times of the Internet (whatever that means, to them); the Site of Record. They've almost got the credibility, and certainly have the name recognition; their drama gets covered by the mainstream media. Of course they'd have to hire another body or two.

seanalltogether 14y ago

It might be helpful for them to put a link in the blog post to buy reddit gold.

mung 14y ago

I don't quite understand why a site like reddit would have "editorial pressure" from advertisers. If anything it should be the other way around.

batiudrami 14y ago
What? A post get promoted 'My experience with AT&T sucks, they're terrible and here's why'. AT&T's marketing department makes a call, and says 'we'll pull our advertising spend if you don't pull that item'. Suddenly reddit has to make a call between having the cash they require to stay afloat, and staying true to their users. That being said, I think there's a better compromise for the ad block than what they're doing at the moment. I don't care whether the ad space shows a kitten or an ad for Maccas, so it may as well generate them money (and if a company pulls advertising, well, that sucks, but that's how it goes. Better than having no advertising at all.)
- citricsquid 14y ago
  Suddenly reddit has to make a call between having the cash they require to stay afloat, and staying true to their users. but if reddit doesn't have that money now what difference does it make? if reddit has reddit gold and has advertising, don't they end up in a position where they're able to choose and turn away advertisers if they need to? unless turning away advertisers causes some sort of industry problem where companies are unwilling to work with reddit?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - aes256 14y ago
    You burn bridges pretty fast doing that sort of thing.
- flxmglrb 14y ago
  The "big corps vs. the little guy consumers" notion is cute but I think the problem is more along the lines of very few advertisers wanting to be on a site with areas like /r/jailbait and /r/creepshots (or whatever took their place this week).

umami 14y ago

Why not buy the most popular mobile apps for the site and monetize them? Users seem to be much happier spending money on mobile apps than on web sites.

panacea 14y ago
Not sure if Jason (the developer of Alien Blue... far and away the best mobile reddit client) would want to sell his app. It seems like a labour of love.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

nikcub 14y ago

> See, the problem is that if your site is funded primarily with advertising, then you are beholden to your advertisers. There is a lot of precedent for handling this, as newspapers have been doing for decades. Newspapers have the content producers and the business people in the same building employed by the same company. You separate your business and editorial and put a wall between them in the company. Nobody from business has access to the admin panel and nobody from editorial has access to the business contacts. I really couldn't imagine an advertiser asking reddit to remove a post for them. To advertise on reddit means that you have some understanding of how it works, and how it works doesn't involve admins censoring content. There are more than enough advertisers in the world who both understand reddit and would pay good money to get their ads infront of that audience. The only problem is that the ad product is not sold or promoted well.

adamjernst 14y ago
That didn't work out too well for the newspapers, did it? Newspapers got away with it for so long because they held a monopoly on information distribution.
- krichman 14y ago
  Unless I am mistake, newspapers have distribution costs that are orders of magnitude larger.

evoxed 14y ago

--- I typed this up just before getting a call, so apologies for the first-draftiness. I refreshed the page to see if anyone was saying anything similar but I didn't see anything, so I might as well post it. --- I really think they should just skip over the whole maj/minority struggle and work on a more suitable approach. What makes Reddit so special? Each subreddit and its dedicated and often unique community. When reddit was relatively new I avoided it, because on the surface all I saw were fellow tech-hungry teenagers looking for the next big place to gather. Only a few years ago did I stumble on some of the smaller, more interesting subreddits and realize that I could spend my entire time among just a few without ever caring about the rest of 'Reddit' because within those little communities, there was something really cool and fun. Expat living in Japan? There's an r/ for that. Love cartography? There's an r/ for that. Linguist/mathematician/physicist? Plenty of r/s for you, of varying quality and concentration but interesting nonetheless. Sometimes when I'm motivated to learn more about a subject, one of the first things I'll do is check if there is a decent subreddit that's relevant. Lo and behold, r/spicy and r/bonsai now come to my frontpage to shower me with pruning advice, sauce exchanges, and more. Of course, anyone can create a new subreddit if the existing ones aren't interesting enough, moderated poorly, or the subject just doesn't have a home yet. My list of micro-wikis and webpages to set up now has marks for items that would work just as well being a subreddit. But we're talking about revenue here, so let me get to the point. Don't just think about Reddit as one big thing, but rather as a world full of lively other things– some some tiny, others huge. They can make money without looking heavy-handed or causing too much controversy, as long as they see the users (all of them) as collaborators in that effort. Subreddits already enjoy a certain amount of freedom (of moderation, styling), why not gamify it somehow? For example, most people wouldn't mind if r/pics had real ads, and r/pics is probably one of the most trafficked subreddits around. Those who still don't want the ads can get Reddit Gold. However say r/crypto thought the ads were silly, and wanted them removed. Then they could, for example, buy their way out directly (garnering a few extra features for the local mods) or encourage their own subscribers to get gold, with some percentage reducing the number/location of ads until reaching zero.