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Most non-Reddit users I know say they've tried looking at it, but just could not figure out the layout. Anecdotally, it took me a while to understand the layout/navigation.

Now that's not to say that once people do figure out how to navigate, they're turned off by the culture. However, I do think the UI has something to do with more people not joining.

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I think the biggest plus of Reddit is its simplicity and minimalism with regards to content. For people for whom the written word is enough to understand and work with things, Reddit is an ideal platform. In case of the other platforms, the platform has to reach out to the user by including stuff like flashy animations, banners, embedded images, ajax, etc. which is always slow and unnecessary.

I am one of those people who feel the reddit UI sucks and needs a make over. I really appreciate simplicity and minimalism but I don't feel reddit gets it right. For example, HN is extremely minimal, but it's also extremely clean. It's very intuitive.

Personally, I feel even 4chan is much cleaner than reddit (yes I know 4chan uses linear threads while reddit supports branching. Hence the HN example)

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