With all the acquisition write-offs we see, it's pretty awesome to see that this one has worked out so well for Condé Nast. It was such an unconventional acquisition, and now it's worth about half of the New York Times.
Other giants in fading industries should take note.
Why is the NYT this wholy grail, that no company ever can aspire to be worth more than?
For me personally Reddit is much more important than the NYT will ever be. If the NYT disappears tomorrow I couldn't care less. There's other publications that will fill its place. Reddit has allowed me to meet great people, have in-depth conversations on topics that no one in my near vicinity cares about and expand my knowledge into fields I never knew possible. It's a great place.
NYT is one of the very if, possibly only, newspaper media companies with a worldwide brand recognition to actually have value/goodwill in its own right. That is why it is considered to be worth more than other media companies; it is due to its brand and reputation. Not to say this couldn't or won't change at some point.
Reddit has a unique and incredibly community. If you take the time and actually explore all of the amazing small subreddits that have developed their own cultures & rulesets and the content they've created, I doubt you would make this statement. There are great people in the specialist subreddits. Reddit is only worth as much as its community and that is _incredibly_ hard to reproduct and immensely valuable. Just look at HN. Dozens of people have come up with way better web apps to clone its functionality or have proposed redesigns. Nothing sticks and no one cares. The community is what makes sites like reddit & HN.
I'm a part of other great non-Reddit communities, some pre-dating Reddit, some that came later. Some of them have moved across forum software changes, URL changes, and ownership changes.
What is it that makes you think Reddit communities are a different animal? Were Reddit to disappear, I'm sure those communities would find new homes. From where I'm sitting, the problem with basing Reddit's valuation on those communities is that Reddit doesn't own those communities.
You can't always tell a community what to do (like how one can't build an HN replacement and expect the community to simply follow you there). If the steps Reddit takes to try to make a big return on investment anger those communities, the communities are free to leave. My view is that the network effects of Reddit are not nearly as strong as those of a Facebook or Instagram, and even those appear to be having some difficulty getting as much value out of their communities as they want.
>If the steps Reddit takes to try to make a big return on investment anger those communities,
Yes, but that won't happen. They've been incredibly hands-off for the past 7 years. They basically worked their asses off on too few engineers for years, and during all that time kept showing almost no ads, and if they did they did it on the far right where almost no one notices.
Just because they're raising capital now, doesn't mean they'll go out and fuck it up. Whatever outside money they take on, they'll be extremely conscientious about retaining control or their future stakeholders sharing their values.
No, it doesn't. Reddit is not a "community", and it does not have "a community". Reddit is millions of people, some of whom form communities in only the loosest possible sense of the word.
There's nothing inherently incredible about Reddit's "community", because Reddit's "community" is a mix of the same people that frequent 4Chan, SomethingAwful, and Fark. Reddit's user base includes people from nearly all walks of life: scum and villains, heroes, poor people, rich people, lonely people, and people who are friends with 500 other people on Facebook.
Reddit's "community" includes /r/askscience, /r/picsofdeadkids (you probably don't want to visit that), /r/bestof, /r/ShitRedditSays ... these things have nothing in common with each-other.
The only reason the various Reddit clones haven't taken off is because they aren't better. Reddit was not a Digg clone, Digg was not a Fark clone, Fark was not a Slashdot clone. Each of these offered a unique experience, some thing that the previous sites did not.
That's only one example of one of the hundreds of active communities on the site though. Steer clear of subreddits relating to charged topics and large subreddits and there are tons of good communities on reddit.
What's worth more, producing excellent journalism that occassionally exposes wrongdoing, or entertaining millions of people every day? Is police officer a more laudable occupation than movie director? What about a farmer versus a politician? I don't think it's so obvious that the NYT does more for society than Reddit. (Though you could argue that Reddit is more replaceable.)
Off in that the NYT should be worth more because it makes money, or off in that Reddit should be worth more because of it's ungodly amounts of traffic and devotion?
>Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow.
You don't understand the value of reddit. As I've written in other posts in this thread. It's the community and that's impossible to replace (as evidenced by the hundreds of other forums that have shit communities) Reddit is far and above many, many online communities in terms of breadth & depth.
When I actively read them, I valued the communities of Slashdot, Fark and Metafilter just as much as I value the Reddit community. Reddit is less unique in that regard than you might think. It is absolutely more replaceable than the New York Times. It's mindboggling that I even had to type that last sentence.
Your evidence that reddit is replaceable is you've used similar sites (most of which are basically dead in the water at this point). But in the same paragraph you exempt the new york times from that same reasoning. There are several large high-quality newspapers out there competing with the new york times (washington post, wall street journal, la times, chicago tribune, etc). I love the times, but "it may be less unique than you might think."
If anything, the internet has made the media extremely fungibile. Social networks are the opposite - as they grow the ability to switch between them becomes more difficult.
"Your evidence that reddit is replaceable is you've used similar sites (most of which are basically dead in the water at this point)."
That's the point. Internet communities come and go all the time. None of them have proven to be hard to replace. Quality news organizations don't pop up every few years.
The New York Times has competitors, but not equals. All of the papers you mentioned (except for the WSJ, which is indispensable in its niche) have a small fraction of the subscribers the New York Times does, which seems like a pretty good metric for unique value.
I guess different strokes for different folks. For me and the vast array of different specialist subreddits I use day-to-day, not only to consume but also to help others and participate in discussion I find the situation as I find it currently unique on the internet and incredibly hard to replicate. Added to that the karma system which consistently promotes good content (it's amazing what people will do to get karma, it works amazingly as an incentive).
To me the NYTimes is "articles with pictures". I can get that on a dozen more sites on the internet. And without a paywall.
Hubski looks interesting. I'll keep an eye on them, though do they do still look very tiny.
I don't think Imgur will ever take off. There is no fostering of individual subcultures like there was with subreddits. Basically their entire content revolves around funny images. Their comments never become thoughtful like reddit's.
MySpace started in 2003 and lost the battle to FB in 2008. Reddit was founded and has been growing steady and strong for 7 years, killing competitor Digg along the ride (Digg mainly caused it's own decline but I find the easy availability of a close competitor made it much easier).
I stand by the above statement. Reddit's community grew slowly and organically while the admins went through great pains to remain as "hands-off" as they could. They have major respect for their community and understand that that's the make-or-break aspect of the site.
You'd take that back if you saw my karma level. I use selfcontrol.app to keep Reddit at bay.
> It's the community and that's impossible to replace
I've been a member of lots of better communities... there's only so far you can get 'attached' to people who are anonymous.
Your entire argument is that a venue to discuss things is more important than the source of the discussion topic. I just can't agree with that. Throw out the water cooler and I'll take my discussion to the coffee machine. But throw out the discussion topic (Exposé on corruption at the FDA in the NYT), and water cooler or coffee machine, what will we talk about... Honey Boo Boo?
The last I heard the NYT had an estimated value roughly equal to that of the real estate it occupies (i.e. the paper, website, etc. are worth nothing).
Instagram wasn't "worth $1B". It was worth $1B to Facebook (and even more to Twitter, apparently).
It has to be viewed in that context. A context in which Facebook was botching mobile major time and described it as its major challenge in public filings.
> Instagram wasn't "worth $1B". It was worth $1B to Facebook
Which, (given a fixed supply of exactly 1 Instgram) means that it was worth $1B.
Whether Facebook overpaid (ie, whether they would have been better off spending part or all of that $1B elsewhere) is a completely separate question - the point is, the market valued Instagram at $1B.
It will be interesting to see what they do with the money. I wonder too if they IPO if they will provide moderators a sum of money like Geocities did back in the day.
For what? I hate to be that guy, but I have seen a huge increase in "OP is a faggot" style posts being upvoted in the main subreddits (just in the last 4 weeks). I've always championed finding niche subreddits, and I do, but the result has been me spending increasingly little time on reddit. I check /r/rust, /r/golang, etc but that's about all I can stand.
When you see drastic and sudden changes in reddit, it's usually something external. In this case the beginning of December marks the end of the semester for college and high school students, who use reddit more during reading period/christmas break. They will soon start school again and things will return to normal.
That kind of behavior has been pretty much the norm for years at reddit. Not to say it's ubiquitous, reddit still has great content and what I'd call 'safe' subreddits where that behavior isn't tolerated. Also, to be clear to those who don't know, 'OP is a faggot' is supposed to be an ironic meme rather than hate speech. A terrible meme, but I wouldn't want people to misunderstand and think reddit has become a cesspool of hate.
I hate this sort of joke. It reinforces the behavior for people who don't see it as a joke. And there's a lot of them.
"Oh, it's OK and funny to call people faggots"
I wish regular Redditors would stamp this shit out.
No, I'm not being unnecessarily precious or PC. I used to laugh at distasteful misogynistic jokes (and worse) but somebody pointed out to me that joking about it normalizes it. And to the depraved part of society the joke is missed and they see it as support for their depravity.
Too true. And in the same way we forget "simple" tasks like googling a tech support question are actually advanced behaviors, we become blind to the fact that the vast majority of the world isn't ironically playing with our expectations all the time.
And furthermore, irony and the "it's a joke" mentality can be used to justify the continuation of behaviors that don't meet people's own standards. It's easier to repeat a lame justification for thoughtless behavior than to spend months working to break a bad habit.
I have been reading hacker news for over 2 years. I started reading reddit last week when I learned about subreddits. The vast majority of my friends (all between 25-32) don't read reddit but are aware that it exists. There is an insane amount of growth that could happen there. I don't know much about their income, but saying "reddit is dead" or other comments because you don't think the quality is as good as it used to be is a stretch when saying the valuation shouldn't be $400m.
Seems to me like reddit could become the dominate messaging system and could be the best possible choice to replace craig's list if they decided to add classifieds.
It has huge growth potential and should not be underestimated so easily.
Maybe this money will add the ability to ignore people, or better, ignore entire groups of people pre-emptively. There are some subreddits I don't want anything to do with, nor the scum that dribble out of them.
> They will soon start school again and things will return to normal.
Except when they don't[1].
> . A terrible meme, but I wouldn't want people to misunderstand and think reddit has become a cesspool of hate.
The language originates from 4chan, where it is also used ironically. I get rather annoyed when I hear people dismiss 4chan as homophobic, because under the surface, it's actually not. Then again, if Reddit is starting to mimic 4chan in terms of its language and linguistic memes, either 4chan's reputation is ill-deserved, or Reddit's reputation will start to resemble 4chan's.
If you have something to say that starts with "I hate to be that guy" then just don't say it.
You're not their main audience, and they're massively popular. They're continuing to grow in popularity, and they're becoming increasingly relevant as a primary source of information. Reddit represents a fundamental step forward in how the internet interconnects everyday people.
You may not see anything worthwhile, but in reality it's one of the most exciting future prospects of the internet in general. It has the potential to affect and influence generations. Something like that is truly special.
That's because the front page is crap though. When they fix subreddit discovery (and Alexis mentioned in a comment reply that they're working on it), so that you actually find communities about what you're interested in, rather than presenting the opening page of the website as a cesspit of juvenile idiots, then it'll be great (again).
But, they have to not screw that up first. It's not a simple problem - you have to communicate how the website works, give indications of the kinds of subreddits you can find, and get them to create an account and actually choose some before users get bored and click away.
The front page is reddit. It's the vast majority of their page views. The only reason it's popular is because of subs like /r/AdviceAnimals, /r/pics, /r/funny, /r/WTF. All low-quality, repetitive content.
Well, sure, for their current audience. But they're not getting capital to maintain their current audience, they're getting it to further expand into other demographics. Those demographics are likely to be less impressed by the content which currently dominates the front page.
Plus, going that way isn't necessarily a solid business model for the future anyway. Remember the Cheezburger network? Failblog? 9Gag and 4Chan have both had huge drops in traffic since their heyday. Reddit is the shining example of an internet culture site which has continued to flourish over time, and even then, I think they will hit critical mass with their current target demographic soon.
>...you have to communicate how the website works, give indications of the kinds of subreddits you can find, and get them to create an account and actually choose some before users get bored and click away.
I have to do this every time I recommend the site to someone in person. Partly to avoid the wrong impression that I enjoy the crap typically found on the front page.
In recent years I've really grown to despise Reddit, so I'm going to get a kick out of the angst that Redditors will feel when they gradually realize that their interests and Reddit's interests diverge.
To like reddit you have to unsubscribe from all the default subreddits and swera to never read discussions in them. Then find yourself a nice set of smaller subreddits that you like. Either there are alternatives with stricter rules to the default subs or there are more specific subs.
Every interest has different levels of content. Pictures range from works of art that took hours to conceptualize, to images of a cat butt with a text overlay.
As a subreddit becomes more popular, the greatest common denominator's interests take precedence. And while you can attempt a solution by splitting the sub community, say, no text overlays, that doesn't work as well everywhere.
For example, a programming community needs to split into subs for languages, and the technical level of the articles. This makes aggregation more difficult, and ruins an information flow that would include a home for overall high quality posters-- now they have a more difficult time determining where to post, and must question whether the articles they submit meet the requirements for technical depth etc.
Even then, the process of dilution begins again as the lesser posters begin to inflate the sub communities.
I tend to use the more specific subreddits. For example gamedev and python instead of programming. But I'm there mostly for the community, not for the generic news articles. That is python tools/libraries, gamedev tutorials/experiences.
I can understand that the community may not be as appealing due to its growing popularity, but what has Reddit done company-wise that conflicts with users' wishes? The interface is still as minimal and the advertising virtually non-existent
I think he's saying that Reddit will eventually reach a point where the interests of its community and the site itself WILL diverge to some extent.
It's something that has to happen and will happen to the best of em, and it just depends on how Reddit chooses to handle the situation.
A really great example of good monetization I think is Ultimate Guitar. The site used to be completely free and the community of musicians was and still is unparalleled on the internet. They've monetized pretty heavily over the years by offering paid tools and more features/premium-content for musicians (even making their own mobile apps for things like tuners, tabs, etc). I think it was a great way to monetize the community on top of ads. However, it benefits from having a very specific focus (music) and a very focused and passionate community which makes the process of monetization a little easier.
The problem Reddit will have I think is that the community is extremely open, unfocused, and unrestricted (as well as having multiple sub-communities). Its very user-driven so it becomes difficult to creatively monetize without infringing on their "freedoms" or "openness". For example, I think /r/iama would be a great outlet for brands to come and have a conversation with the community (for example, before a movie release). However, that subreddit is ALREADY used like that, and it's very open. Anyone (including any brand) can come in and do an AMA so any type of monetization would have to to be a complement to the community (can't monetize the community itself without killing it or pissing people off). So how can Reddit monetize without just resorting to ads and promoted content? It's a difficult question and I don't see a clear answer.
If they do decide to do stuff like "featured" posts, I think they will have to be very very careful to not clutter up the user-upvoted content and hopefully they'll work hard to make the "featured" stuff interesting to the community. They'll have to make some important decisions when monetizing and I wish them the best of luck.
They took over the most popular subreddits as AskReddit or IAmA. They also ban subreddits/users and remove posts that can make a bad name for reddit in the media. Both from these brand subreddits and from the whole site.
Considering they have a strict AUP they've been remarkably tolerant in what they ban. A few blatantly illegal sub reddits; some sub reddits with borderline illegal content; and some harassment only sub reddits.
The best/worst things about communities like HN and Reddit are that you're only going to get what the community is capable of producing. When the mean age/experience of the community tilts the wrong way the discourse is naturally affected as well.
That said; my Dad has a saying: "things are not as good as they used to be; and they never were"
I love reddit, but I do fear bringing on lots of investors will seriously damage the site and the community. Just look at what appears to have happened with Quora in the scramble to satisfy stakeholders.
They've done an impeccable job of steering the site in the past. With their track record and the sheer sweat and grit they've put into the site, I'm confident that won't change just because they raise capital.
"Impeccable" in this case only means, "not as bad a job as Digg or Quora".
Reddit has clearly meddled with the site in the past for business reasons (e.g. the Sears thing, /r/jailbait), and the hands-off-unless-we-change-our-mind policy of the administration has led directly to extreme frustration among the site's biggest influences and moderators of larger subreddits.
The only thing that separates Reddit from Digg-2.0 at this point is that there is not yet another site for disgruntled users to migrate to.
-- Lost a lot of trust in the userbase when they did the ridiculous "Matt has viewed the following questions" stunt.
-- Kicked one of the 2 co-founders, Cheever off, rumour has it he didn't want to go as aggressively after growth as D'Angelo & other powers wanted.
-- Widely sneered at in SV as being the company to look at if you want to know what "taking it too far with forcing growth" means. Their "sign-on to view this content" is a joke. Especially if you combine with their "Our mission is to grow and spread the world's knowledge"
Personally:
-- Their site's JS is a fucking mess. Crashes both my Chrome _as well as_ my iPhone's Safari frequently.
This is the sole reason I'll never open an account there. Fortunately, if I really want to see some of their answers, I can just delete the overlay div in the developer console.
edit: It looks like they've fixed it so you can no longer just delete the overlay. Parts of the text are replaced by images of blurred text now. Oh well.
It never crashes my browser, but does stop reloading, or hangs, or whatever, so I have to reload the page. It's only been getting worse over the past 2 years.
Doesn't matter that much who thinks it is a good idea. It is still a straight sacrifice of user experience in the name of capturing more user details and monetization.
Quora does the dodgy 'Experts Exchange style' answer blurring crap when a google search links you to them. I've blocked them from my google results because of this nonsense.
Is domain blocking working for you or are you using some other extension? Domain blocking mysteriously disappeared for me a while ago. It was a real buzzkill when the likes of Experts Exchange, W3Schools and Quora started showing up in my search results again.
Other giants in fading industries should take note.