It's very weird that for as many problems as Reddit has, there doesn't seem to be any serious VC-funded competition. Why is that? Every other social site has a half dozen well-capitalized competitors. Is it because Twitter/X and TikTok occupy all of the social media attention? Or because a forum is filled with mostly young people simply isn't a scalable business?
Sure but there have been numerous exodus moments from Reddit over the last ±5 years. Even today, my feeling is that no one really likes posting on Reddit itself, it's just kind of...there. There aren't any alternatives.
It's a very different situation from say, TikTok vs. Facebook, in which I think TikTok is simply a superior product.
> it's just kind of...there. There aren't any alternatives.
Yes, that's the network effect in action.
It's like having a bar you don't like that all your friends go to. You can try going to another bar, but your friends aren't there. You can try to talk your friends into going to the other bar with you but their friends are still at the first bar.
Communities are incredibly sticky.
> It's a very different situation from say, TikTok vs. Facebook
That's largely because Facebook has gradually shifted away from being a community-oriented product and largely to a media-consumption one.
If you're getting on Facebook to see pictures of your friends' kids, then some other app with a beautiful UX that has very nice pictures of strangers' children is not at all compelling. You're not there for the quality of the kid pics, you're there because it's your friends' kids.
But if you're just getting on Facebook to scroll through memes and videos made by strangers (but perhaps incidentally reposted by people you know), then another app that shows you funnier memes and more entertaining videos will easily snap you up.
The fact that Facebook transitioned away from extremely sticky community-oriented features towards mass popular media consumption seems like a shitty business strategy to me, but that's what they've done.
Reddit is definitely going in that direction too. The mobile app in particular pushes you towards image and video subreddits, and it's inevitably harder to comment when using a phone where typing is a chore. Maybe that hardware transition is the root cause leading us away from more community-oriented apps.
But, so far, Reddit still has enough community interaction to be very sticky. We'll see how long that lasts given the direction it's headed.
