Reddit is pulling out all the stops for their upcoming IPO and it still amounts to nearly nothing.
Bringing back r/place to juice user count, killing the API, destroying their mobile site, and that's just the start.
That's why they are only planning a "very small float", there's simply no interest.
It seems even at just $5 billion, the valuation is too rich.
I can only assume the price is because the license is non-exclusive and they think they can get other big fish to bite.
They can offer higher quality and more timely data than scrapers can, so there is a value proposition there.
I know this is possible to do by other communities like paid forums (SomethingAwful), or grow into an adjacent e-commerce supported community (e.g. bodybuilding forums), but is it possible to do it on Reddit's scale? We'll see.
I have no horse in the race either way, most of my posts on there are from the Reddit vs Digg era, so I'm not really invested.