6 ms·

Genuinely curious: at what point (numerically) would you consider a subreddit to be "popular" and how many subreddits currently fall into that category?

frakkingcylons 14y ago
I'd personally consider the tipping point around 50,000 subscribers. From my personal experience with organically promoting a website on a subreddit with ~60K subscribers, a #1 post on a subreddit of that size garners around 6k to 7k clicks in one day. Afterwards over the next 3 days or so, the link would get around 3k clicks.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  Thanks! I frequent r/bicycling which has 80k+ subscribers, so it's good to know I have a feel for what the environment of a "popular" subreddit is like with respect to # of submissions, comments, etc.
- TkTech 14y ago
  There's at least 234 subreddits with 50000+ subscribers[1] ...that's a fair number of highly targeted marketing channels. [1]: http://redditlist.com/ http://redditlist.com/
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    I took a glance at the list and a lot of those subreddits aren't really suitable for advertisement targets. I'd guess that 2/3 of those 234 subreddits are addressable, so maybe 150 is a reasonable estimate.
    - ImprovedSilence 14y ago
      >> I took a glance at the list and a lot of those subreddits aren't really suitable for advertisement targets entirely dependent on what you want to market...
- rjh29 14y ago
  The curious thing is that once a subreddit -does- get popular - that is, it hits 100K subscribers or so - you generally don't want to subscribe to it anymore. If it was specialised or niche, it becomes general; if it was highly moderated, the moderators will be struggling to keep the quality it once had; if it felt personal and intimate, it's now, well... not.
- baby 14y ago
  Totally depends on what you're marketing. For example, if you're marketing to a city. You don't need 50,000 subscribers. For example, I get calls from all the social scene of Lyon (France) because I own a page with only 4k fans (+ a website). Only students. And that's enough already to advertise.
staunch 14y ago
Popular relative to the overall size of Reddit, by that measure almost none of the subreddits are very big. They should have a bunch of subreddits with 1+ million subscribers given the size of the site. They should encourage people to create accounts and subscribe to things they're interested in. It makes the site 100x more interesting, and yet most users just lurk or refresh the front page.
- baby 14y ago
  > They should have a bunch of subreddits with 1+ million subscribers given the size of the site. Not really. What about the 90/10 rule?
  - cglace 14y ago
    Do you mean the 80/20 rule?
    - baby 14y ago
      Something like that! Well you get the idea.
    - arjie 14y ago
      It's similar, yes. Here's the Wikipedia article: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)

frakkingcylons 14y ago

I'd personally consider the tipping point around 50,000 subscribers. From my personal experience with organically promoting a website on a subreddit with ~60K subscribers, a #1 post on a subreddit of that size garners around 6k to 7k clicks in one day. Afterwards over the next 3 days or so, the link would get around 3k clicks.

hkmurakami 14y ago
Thanks! I frequent r/bicycling which has 80k+ subscribers, so it's good to know I have a feel for what the environment of a "popular" subreddit is like with respect to # of submissions, comments, etc.
TkTech 14y ago
There's at least 234 subreddits with 50000+ subscribers[1] ...that's a fair number of highly targeted marketing channels. [1]: http://redditlist.com/ http://redditlist.com/
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  I took a glance at the list and a lot of those subreddits aren't really suitable for advertisement targets. I'd guess that 2/3 of those 234 subreddits are addressable, so maybe 150 is a reasonable estimate.
  - ImprovedSilence 14y ago
    >> I took a glance at the list and a lot of those subreddits aren't really suitable for advertisement targets entirely dependent on what you want to market...
rjh29 14y ago
The curious thing is that once a subreddit -does- get popular - that is, it hits 100K subscribers or so - you generally don't want to subscribe to it anymore. If it was specialised or niche, it becomes general; if it was highly moderated, the moderators will be struggling to keep the quality it once had; if it felt personal and intimate, it's now, well... not.
baby 14y ago
Totally depends on what you're marketing. For example, if you're marketing to a city. You don't need 50,000 subscribers. For example, I get calls from all the social scene of Lyon (France) because I own a page with only 4k fans (+ a website). Only students. And that's enough already to advertise.

staunch 14y ago

Popular relative to the overall size of Reddit, by that measure almost none of the subreddits are very big. They should have a bunch of subreddits with 1+ million subscribers given the size of the site. They should encourage people to create accounts and subscribe to things they're interested in. It makes the site 100x more interesting, and yet most users just lurk or refresh the front page.

baby 14y ago
> They should have a bunch of subreddits with 1+ million subscribers given the size of the site. Not really. What about the 90/10 rule?
- cglace 14y ago
  Do you mean the 80/20 rule?
  - baby 14y ago
    Something like that! Well you get the idea.
  - arjie 14y ago
    It's similar, yes. Here's the Wikipedia article: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)