One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect
Now they owe it to their investors to offer the biggest return possible. And there are some big names on the cap table:
Edit to add: Also, Advance Publications may also be pushing for big gains.
Sure, if you can find investors willing to sink capital into a non-profit-making venture to replace those who currently are invested in Reddit, and who would probably prefer liquidating their holdings at a loss to have something to put into a profit-making venture than to let it sit in supporting a non-profit-making discussion forum.
Running costs include the wages for those working there. I think $150,000 or so per employee is more than enough + volunteers. Of course you would have to give up the dream of being a billionaire. Off the top of my head I can think of less than 10 people to have done that, and none of them did it after 2001.
You don't need additional capital beyond operational maintenance expenses if you aren't expanding, but you do need the existing capital, and that means that either (1) the existing investors need to have their standards for profitability met, or (2) someone else who is interested in operating the assets without those profit demands needs to be willing to purchase the existing capital from the current owners before they decide that their profit requirements won't be met and sell it to someone with a desire to use it for something other than its current insufficiently-profitable use.
The positive is there are lots of markets out there that are too small to attract external funding, but large enough that a good $10 to $20 million dollar business can dominate them profitably - I run exactly this type of company in this type of market. All I can say is it is very nice to have no outside investors to answer to and to see a nice positive balance sheet each month :)
Make a CMS with a points system on top of Usenet (tied to message-ID) that is sponsored by embedded ads instead of requiring a paid subscription. Block binaries with the exception of say, images - that way you're avoiding the vast majority of pirated materials. The points system would be similar to Reddit so that posts are ordered by rank but can still be sorted by date/poster. Posts/threads/users/groups can be canned from the CMS side. Posts censored? Feel free to switch to a pure Usenet service but you'll lose your points system/community.
By starting out on Usenet you already have content to begin with. Recall that Reddit started with fake user accounts with some quality content to get the ball rolling.
On further reflection...this would basically be Reddit as it is now.
Both failed due to bad management, unsurprisingly.
Stop and think, you're incoherent.
I think that the whole website is pretty bad. It's old and crummy, easily one of the worst designed popular sites on the internet. Open a new one as a subscription service, leave the old one open for free as it is right now.
I mean that wouldn't exactly be challenging and the whole site needs to be revamped anyway.
EDIT: I noticed that the article kindly compares reddit to Wikipedia, which Wikia is basically the for-profit sister of, in fact originally created by hosting content that was removed from Wikipedia and putting Google Ads on it. Both Reddit and Wikia have the problem of generating revenue from the people who create the content that the revenue is generated by, many of whom are children.
Reddit is thriving on community and gigantic network effects. If I were them, I would essentially do what their new CEO is currently doing: ask the community what they think would work (he's doing regular AMAs and I expect monetization will come up frequently). That's probably why I'm not too worried about it currently.
Nothing is stopping anyone from returning to their old communities. The whole thing hinges on the new website actually being good, fast, and better.
Care to elaborate on how a savvy business person would extract a profit? Unobtrusive ads obviously don't make enough money. Obnoxious ads are going to push users away / to use AdBlock. Sneaky manipulation of rankings will get out eventually, and when it does, is also likely to lose users.
> I think that the whole website is pretty bad. It's old and crummy, easily one of the worst designed popular sites on the internet.
Really? I find it quite functional.
> Open a new one as a subscription service
Yeah, a reddit paywall is going to go over real well. (And if the free version doesn't compromise basic functionality, good luck convincing anybody to pay for frills)
Reddit is already addictive. I'm sure they could take a bit of inspiration from the variety of addictive "free to pay" games and work in microtransactions and perks.
Also I believe, Reddit has the userbase it does not for its design but for its the community.
Successful subscription models have been employed in the past. A lightweight paywall intended for a large user base covers operational costs, weeds out users who are just there to spam or troll, and reduces policing. It also cuts down or legitimises multiple accounts handled by the same user.
Popular reddit accounts sell on ebay so it isn't like nobody out there has money. Go ahead and downvote me. I feel the same way about it as I do when I try to explain the failings of Bitcoin. There are people passionate out there about whatever.