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I think you're worrying about it too much and are looking at it from a very reddit-centric point of view. Like the example of Woody Harrelson, his terrible AMA

I think you're worrying about it too much and are looking at it from a very reddit-centric point of view. Like the example of Woody Harrelson, his terrible AMA in no way hurt his career. A better example would be Hipmunk though, it's created by Huffman (later joined by Ohanian) and they advertise pretty solidly on reddit. The comments for the ads are pretty negative despite the reddit history, but Hipmunk is still doing quite well. I think you'll do fine with a test run advertising on reddit, if you're that worried about it I'm pretty sure you can turn comments off for ads so they won't be able to see that other people don't like them.

baby 13y ago
Comments were negative, but still, I learned about Hipmunk through reddit and now do check Hipmunk (and many others) when I need a plane ticket.
- onlyup 13y ago
  Hipmunk is definitely one of the worst sites in it's category
  - baby 13y ago
    Depends where you're living I think. I live in Europe and, besides not displaying easyjet, ryanair and the other lowcost companies, it displays good prices. But what really gets me is the UI. It's my favorite one out of all the websites I know.
    - onlyup 13y ago
      I live in Europe too and it doesn't display two of the most popular airlines?
    - kawsper 13y ago
      How will you compare it with Momondo?
      - count 13y ago
        Beats Momondo hands down. I'd never heard of Momondo, so I just checked it out. Hipmunk's UI is WAY better for me trying to pick flights. I don't care that I might save $10 or whatever, as much as avoiding 8 hour layovers, or leaving at 5am. You can't easily tell any of that with an interface like Momondo's (which is just a pretty version of every other travel site).
        onlyup 13y ago
        I tried both. (Monmondo/Skyscanner) 162 vs 177 (himpunk) And the UI just doesn't matter with these sites.. do search, ignore crazy prices, select the legs that suit you best..
        count 13y ago
        But that's the part that Hipmunk makes easiest: figuring out which flights suit you best.
        kawsper 13y ago
        You have to use the sidebar after you have done your search, then you can specify the details that you want and compare. You can put a max on travel-time and choose which part of the day that you want to travel in.
        count 13y ago
        Have you used Hipmunk? It's NOTHING like that at all. Those sidebar features are the same on every travel website, except Hipmunk. The linear bar graph display of flights is, for me, infinitely superior than a data tabel that I can drag sliders around to change the wall of text. It takes me a glance to see that there are great options or shitty options on a given hipmunk search, even on my iphone. Momondo and basically every other site require significantly more cognitive work on my part to piece apart their text boxes full of information to figure out if that flight is a good fit for my needs or not.
vidarh 13y ago
I think it depends a lot on audience. Woody Harrelson - of course his career won't be negatively affected by a Reddit AMA. But a startup whose audience is largely techies that frequent Reddit? Maybe they should be slightly careful. But slightly careful, not terrified. It just means not stomping in totally ignorant about Reddit culture, which demands a higher standard from submissions (including advertisers) than from regular commenters. It means avoiding sounding like a PR drone, blatant lies, and avoiding coming across too arrogant. The Harrelson AMA seems to have blown up because a few of his responses were pretty much interpreted by Reddit users as "I am above you peons, be honoured I'm spending time on talking to you about Rampart. Did I mention Rampart? Oh, and Rampart". Which is a bit like walking up to a wild animal and kicking it in the nuts. That it seemed like a PR effort in a setting like an AMA where people expect something else but are also quite wary about the intrusion of marketeers made it doubly bad - ads are different, we know their purpose is to sell a product, and so merely trying to sell the product won't cause a stink, whereas the first time Harrelson tried to steer the conversation to Rampart, he'd already made a grave mistake. I'd think for advertising on Reddit, a limited run asking for feedback, and being responsive and friendly in comments would be a good start.

baby 13y ago

Comments were negative, but still, I learned about Hipmunk through reddit and now do check Hipmunk (and many others) when I need a plane ticket.

onlyup 13y ago
Hipmunk is definitely one of the worst sites in it's category
- baby 13y ago
  Depends where you're living I think. I live in Europe and, besides not displaying easyjet, ryanair and the other lowcost companies, it displays good prices. But what really gets me is the UI. It's my favorite one out of all the websites I know.
  - onlyup 13y ago
    I live in Europe too and it doesn't display two of the most popular airlines?
  - kawsper 13y ago
    How will you compare it with Momondo?
    - count 13y ago
      Beats Momondo hands down. I'd never heard of Momondo, so I just checked it out. Hipmunk's UI is WAY better for me trying to pick flights. I don't care that I might save $10 or whatever, as much as avoiding 8 hour layovers, or leaving at 5am. You can't easily tell any of that with an interface like Momondo's (which is just a pretty version of every other travel site).
      - onlyup 13y ago
        I tried both. (Monmondo/Skyscanner) 162 vs 177 (himpunk) And the UI just doesn't matter with these sites.. do search, ignore crazy prices, select the legs that suit you best..
        count 13y ago
        But that's the part that Hipmunk makes easiest: figuring out which flights suit you best.
      - kawsper 13y ago
        You have to use the sidebar after you have done your search, then you can specify the details that you want and compare. You can put a max on travel-time and choose which part of the day that you want to travel in.
        count 13y ago
        Have you used Hipmunk? It's NOTHING like that at all. Those sidebar features are the same on every travel website, except Hipmunk. The linear bar graph display of flights is, for me, infinitely superior than a data tabel that I can drag sliders around to change the wall of text. It takes me a glance to see that there are great options or shitty options on a given hipmunk search, even on my iphone. Momondo and basically every other site require significantly more cognitive work on my part to piece apart their text boxes full of information to figure out if that flight is a good fit for my needs or not.

vidarh 13y ago

I think it depends a lot on audience. Woody Harrelson - of course his career won't be negatively affected by a Reddit AMA. But a startup whose audience is largely techies that frequent Reddit? Maybe they should be slightly careful. But slightly careful, not terrified. It just means not stomping in totally ignorant about Reddit culture, which demands a higher standard from submissions (including advertisers) than from regular commenters. It means avoiding sounding like a PR drone, blatant lies, and avoiding coming across too arrogant. The Harrelson AMA seems to have blown up because a few of his responses were pretty much interpreted by Reddit users as "I am above you peons, be honoured I'm spending time on talking to you about Rampart. Did I mention Rampart? Oh, and Rampart". Which is a bit like walking up to a wild animal and kicking it in the nuts. That it seemed like a PR effort in a setting like an AMA where people expect something else but are also quite wary about the intrusion of marketeers made it doubly bad - ads are different, we know their purpose is to sell a product, and so merely trying to sell the product won't cause a stink, whereas the first time Harrelson tried to steer the conversation to Rampart, he'd already made a grave mistake. I'd think for advertising on Reddit, a limited run asking for feedback, and being responsive and friendly in comments would be a good start.