The revenue doesn't matter though if their expenses exceed it. Reddit is not a profitable company. So the parent poster's question remains valid: was there ever going to be a way to "make money" (i.e. profit) without alienating the user base?
Sounds to me like they're just bad at running a business.
Server costs went up in order to keep the site alive, and investors saw the potential and subsidized those costs, and everything ticked along swimmingly until the investors became impatient. Again, this is just speculation.
Imgur also became a community of its own. I don’t remember when it happened, but perhaps Reddit thought they were becoming a true competitor and opted to pull away.
I think there is a point to be made about a smoother user experience, but youtube is a great example where their embeds can still be monetized.
Reddit not pushing ads through the API is like if youtube didn't give you ads on embedded videos.
my brother in christ, no man is an island; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promentory were.
nobody wants their website to be a linkfarm to content that's all 404'd, it's not that complex. How do you keep that from happening? Host it yourself.
It’s stupid and premature in my opinion; they should have bought Imgur instead.
And the Reddit video player:host was notoriously crappy.
In that case, wouldn't they still be paying for the hosting?
So many suitable options were voiced for the 3pa such as profit shares or just reasonable priced API fees.
It baffles me that Reddit didn't already turn a profit. So over bloated and the shit they have actually paid people for such as the official app and desktop site, is just sub standard
How do people live on only 500k a year.... They dont buy a private jet and a $50million house.
Reddit does not have to spend half a billion dollars every year to satisfy their users (which is what its entire valuation was in 2014).
And they are operating worldwide, processing take down notes, handling court orders alone, is a big deal.
Depends on whose profits you care about. Growing WeWork at all costs was wildly more profitable for Adam Neumann than trying to slowly grow a sustainable commercial real estate company ever would have been.
The core problem is that no one in charge at Reddit HQ 'wins' if reddit where to become a much smaller, but profitable, company.
Their infrastructure costs can't be much different than archive.org, but archive.org doesn't try to get huge profits and doesn't have many employees.