If they ever kill off the old.reddit.com site I'll be done, most users prefer the alternative mobile app --
They are a bit broken - but have taken so much capital - they have to IPO, thus is life.
They are a bit broken - but have taken so much capital - they have to IPO, thus is life.
Interestingly, Twitter went through a phase where they killed off any and all 3rd party enhancements but they just recently seem to be reversing policy to encourage more participation (within limits) with a new API V2 released in July.
But Reddit's value is in the huge long tail collection of micro-interest subs built up over the years so it would be a shame for wall street to come in and mess things up over a few short quarters as they tend to do. I'm not even annoyed by advertising - Reddit is one of the few places where super specific targeting may actually work - it's just their native user interfaces are so unusabley bad.
Maybe we will go back to Usenet Groups.
i soooooo miss "nn".
Really, sometimes I feel that there are designers that are just so out of touch, and engineers feel like they have to implement the designs they're given. Really nothing else explains this phenomenon.
Or maybe your tastes are different from the majority of users? fwiw I don't like the new UI either, but two datapoints is hardly a comprehensive survey
I don’t like it either, but people working within Reddit have commented here before and said that they are optimizing for engagement and that it’s clearly working.
If you talk to people who have only been using Reddit since the new version launched, most typically have no interest in switching to the old one even though they have that option.
This is also why I use old.reddit. The new design has the same effect as Twitter's optimizing for engagement. Reddit is headed down the same path where all the interesting long-tail communities and big well-moderated spaces will vanish, and all that will be left is clickbait. It's only objectively better if your objective is to juice people for ad views.
I wish sites would stop optimizing for an endless loop of quick, semi-random dopamine hits (Skinner box) and optimize for long-term mutual value. HN's community is annoying on an average day, but I come back because there's an occasional solid thread that nobody had to growth hack into existence.