Is there anyone interested in funding a Reddit alternative? | Hacker News Reader

Is there anyone interested in funding a Reddit alternative?

8 pointssubbed11 comments

Design Preview: https://i.imgur.com/GZx5b2n.png

As many of you know, Reddit has had some issues with their 3PA developers by raising API prices.

This has sparked alot of interest in an alternative.

I recently spoke with someone who offered to help with the project, and I think right now the biggest hurdle is the figma design (courtesy of setproduct) still needs to be implemented into the old reddit source code, and a .com domain is needed, but this is a start at least.

The figma design was purchased from Setproduct, and the source code is coming from the reddit archive, but more specifically saidit github repo. Both elements will need to be worked on, but its a slow and steady progress. Hosting costs also seem like a concern.

The old reddit source code will need to be refactored and the dependencies updated as well as stripe implementation to get it all to work for subscriptions.

All these things need to be integrated together to work, and a .com domain that is short needs to be purchased.

But so far so good.

Given all of this, here is a preview of the design: https://i.imgur.com/GZx5b2n.png

If anyone here is interested in helping, please feel free to comment below. :)

Thank you!

"right now the biggest hurdle is the figma design"

The biggest hurdle is you don't understand what real hurdles will be. Getting a large population to use your app, paying for it and scaling are the challenges. Your design is very far down the list.

Scaling is probably pretty easy. Bootstrapping a community is the hardest part by far.

> Hosting costs also seem like a concern.

There's a huge open question about how sites like reddit should be monitized (and pay their bills). I'd recommend forming a plan first, even if it's "stay small and seek donations". If you can't solve that then you are doomed to the enshitification reddit is performing.

I don't understand why Reddit doesn't insert affiliate ads on sub side bars. Or ad more aggressive ads on porn subs.

it is relatively straight forward to build a site that mimics something like reddit.

what's less tractable is convincing people to move there en masse. doubly so if you offer nothing that's going to be significantly unique that draws people. I can guarantee you the API stuff is not a needle mover.

there's a reason nothing has unseated twitter, despite the perceived chaos and hysterical predictions of how unsafe it would get for people to be on there.

my advice is don't get caught in the hysteria. rather dream up a product that doesn't exist and that people would pay for.

What's your business plan? The code side of things is pretty trivial, the business side is more difficult I think.

In other words, how do you plan to attract a critical mass of users that generate significant enough income (directly or indirectly) to cover your costs?

What is your projected hosting costs per user? What are your fixed costs? What are your marginal costs per thousand users?

What is your revenue model? Subscriptions? Advertising? Other? Some mix of the above? What are your projected returns to an investor?

How are you planning to moderate the content? (And yes, it will need to be moderated, else you just have 4chan).

What is your marketing plan to attract new users? How will you differentiate from a dozen other options in this space?

The code side of things is not as easy as it sounds, especially not the safety part of things.

I can’t project hosting costs without knowing how many users could join but initially I would say in the hundreds, then thousands.

Revenue model is a pro and ultra subscription model.

Moderation will be important but unsure how it will be done.

Scale and high availability wont be easy. They will cost $$$. So you need to be a business, probably get funding and before you know it you are a corporation trying to make money from non-paying users as the server bills come in and any hifalutin pure morals you had have to slide a bit. You have become just like your dad, i.e. Reddit.

You can use reddit to find open source reddit clones https://www.reddit.com/r/opensource/comments/vog8mg/is_there...

But like other posters have already said you would need a strategy to get people to use it.

It's the classic chicken and egg, if you have no content why would I visit, and if you have no visitors why would I post content.

The design looks good but what are your plans to make the alternative more attractive than the other alternatives?

What don't you like about the alternatives that exist?

What's your killer feature?

Why won't yours end up like Voat?

There's a whole bunch of people interested. We're The Federation.

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