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).
Other giants in fading industries should take note.