Hacker News Reader

Comment by Johnie | Hacker News Reader

Reddit is likewise another competitor.

I've always looked at many of the subreddits as a potential for different products or a channel to access customers of that interest.

For example:

  * r/RedditGetsDrawn -- Marketplace for artists and users 
  * r/SomebodyMakeThis -- Request for product
  * r/DataIsBeautiful -- Collection of people passionate about data visualization
  * r/IAMA -- Ask Me Anything -- many other community sites have copied this concept.

View on HN

It would be more accurate to call r/DataIsBeautiful a collection of people passionate about data visualization + 5.2 million people who were automatically subscribed when they joined Reddit. It was made a default subreddit and now most of the posts are simple line graphs which support a popular opinion or ideology.

Reddit is kind of a dumpster fire though.

So is Facebook. So is anything with users.

Facebook is 1 year older than reddit and makes 2,000x the revenue.

I don't see anyone suggesting that the two are equivalent.

I think Johnie sees them as competitors, sips tea.

I meant that Reddit is another Excel-esque competitor to your startup. Or another way to look at it is that Reddit is your early validation for demand.

Revenue is not everything. There are things on the internet, old as country roads, operating on minimal revenue, still alive; while younger things which believed revenue is the way to go, are long forgotten.

A wonderful little comment.

You're a poet, sir.

Excellent comment. IRC and Craigslist are examples of something "old as country roads" on the internet.

I think they're saying Reddit's another Excel-like competitor for your startup, not a competitor for Facebook.

Then reddit is doubly a competitor, because they're apparently stable with 0.05% of Facebook's revenue. Facebook might falter if their financials go south, reddit has no where to go but up.

If your customers don't buy your product because they can get it for free on reddit, it doesn't matter how much they pay reddit for it.

Eh; Reddit has a huge user base but many of them are cheap and Reddit advertising is more of a niche than a household name at this point. Additionally, Facebook is much much MUCH more interactive than Reddit; most of the users on Reddit are lurkers. I think that something like ~10% of the DAU actually post content, which is really, really low.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com