- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.world
- dataisbeautiful@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.world
- dataisbeautiful@lemmy.world
SimilarWeb has just released traffic estimates for June. According to these estimates, Reddit’s traffic has seen a 3.36% month-over-month decrease.
For comparison, here’s how traffic has changed for other popular social networking websites:
- Discord.com: +0.51%
- Twitter.com: -1.65%
- Instagram.com: -1.35%
- Facebook.com: -3.18%
- TikTok.com: +0.77%
- Pinterest.com: -2.27%
- Youtube.com: -2.02%
Source: https://www.similarweb.com/website/reddit.com/#overview
You must log in or register to comment.
On the one hand, this doesn’t seem like a lot. But on the other, this is just for June. A lot of people left or drastically cut down their usage at the very end of June, and we’re not seeing this reflected in the data yet.
Even so, no company wants to say they’ve lost 3% of their customers. With 1.7 billion total, that’s still 51 million people. It’s a notable loss, especially for a company trying to become profitable and have an IPO.
I used Apollo right up until it shut down, and I haven’t touched Reddit since. I’m guessing I’m not the only one.
I was also an enthusiastic Apollo user.
Other than Lenny, do you replace Reddit with anything else? This thread we’re in now is an exception - there are a lot of posts here. But most threads on Lemmy are pretty empty.
Most people didn’t create content and don’t interact with it (ie most people are lurkers). Take it upon yourself to comment and interact with posts and others will almost always join in and have something to say.
Thats why its up to all of us to start participating.
Protip: If you really want to start a conversation/get engagement, follow Cunningham’s Law:
the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.
So, fill those empty posts with confidently incorrect statements and watch that comment section fill up as people rush in to correct you.
Actually, Cunningham’s Law says nothing of the sort. If you look at the source material as I have done - and in the original Phoenician, because so much is lost in translation otherwise - you’ll quickly note that Cunningham is really attempting to convey the hopeless sense of man’s search for purpose in a cruel, unforgiving world. While some scholars debate the literal truth to this sentiment as expressed by the author, it is generally thought plausible if not outright likely that these writings followed a catastrophic life event of some sort - the loss of a child or death of a spouse, witnessing the end of a great civilization, a dick pic delivered to the wrong person. While the specifics aren’t known, what we do know about the author is that he would likely be further distraught at the loss of control and ownership experienced with a misattributed “law” on the internet should such a thing even be imaginable.
I like this law
Wefwef all the way now
I downloaded Memmy yesterday, and so far I like it.
Memmy ist really awesome! Intuitive, fast, great looks! Love itt!
And it is officially on the App store now!
It’s absurd just how good wefwef is as a web app. Such a natural transition from Apollo.
Since I’m here, RIP Apollo and thanks for all the hard work Christian!
WefWef on the desktop and Memmy for Lemmy on the phone…
Same, it took me to 7/1 for me to finally uninstall RIF. Let’s wait and see what July’s numbers look like
Same
I used sync up until the 13th or so, then started limiting my reddit usage, and increased my lemmy usage until July 1st. Now I’m solely on lemmy on mobile, and only see reddit on desktop when I come across a search I need.
Same. I still have the app as a reminder but this is my home now.
Weekend I’m going to see about spinning up my own instance.
I really missed Reddit at first and it took a while to get TestFlight on Memmy and figure this out but it’s looking good so far.
Same with me. I haven’t deleted my Reddit account yet, but will be doing that soon, after I delete or overwrite my comments of 10 years there.
Between Lemmy, Kbin and Mastodon, I have plenty to keep me occupied in what used to be my Reddit-scrolling time.
Yep. Just check the site to see if my data request has been processed. Replied to a message in which someone was asking about Lemmy. But that’s it.
migrated to wefwef, would prefer a native app, but nevertheless i’m not even looking back. 13 year club.
How many people are less engaged in the internet at the beginning of summer because they’re on vacation or partying? I would think drops like this as the weather improves are pretty normal.
Alternatively, people with more time sign up and shitpost. I recall every summer break Redditors would complain. 🫣
That’s a good point although with smart phones, I wonder how much of the teenager traffic is baked in year round now. Summer Reddit was terrible but then it just became Reddit.
I agree. The real change will be from 1 July onwards since none of us can use our apps anymore.
I would love it if that was true, but think the impact of the blackout making ALL users unable to access whole swathes of the site might be bigger
I think there are still some subs that are private, and I know a couple went NSFW and a bunch are getting harassed by admins to reopen or remove the NSFW tag.
My friend told me the cyberpunk sub couldn’t reply to the email they got telling them to turn off the NSFW tag. Because nearly full on sex scenes, decapitation, huge hogs with giant titties is absolutely SFW.
Eh, reddit could’nt even do that right. They’ve not shutdown all apps
Yeah, I don’t exactly understand how but RIF is working for me, despite the fact you can’t log into it. I only kept it as a momento, but it still works as long as you have the subs you want to see memorized…
hate to be that guy, but I also want to contribute with content, so: It’s memento
It’s like reddit never left.
Yea, Infinity is still working
Infinity has Spez’s cock down their throat and is going subscription based.
I am not paying, Its working.
It’ll be interesting to see how many users stick with the apps that are continuing. I think the devs are crazy to think that even more than 5% of the users they had will continue to use the app for $5/month. Especially when you can’t view NSFW content.
For whatever it’s worth, I doubt it comes anywhere near their throat.
Good one!
spaz: were not profitable, heres ways were gonna become more profitable.
redditors: ugh leaves
spaz: your small protest from the landed gentry cant hurt me.
redditors: ok, bye.
spaz: jgvbefgbaegbeQANGBLEw
Think of how many ‘users’ are bots that likely won’t continue to work since no one would pay the monthly sub to bot Reddit like in the past.
I am wondering how user count is calculated.
I guarantee you that a huge percentage of Redditors have multiple accounts. Many of which might be inactive. Are all accounts ever created on Reddit still considered part of their current total or are only accounts active in the 6 or 12 months count? If people are legitimately leaving Reddit, I think their losses are going to steamroll because they won’t just lose one user, but instead they will lose that one user and their 2 or 3 alternate accounts as well.
Next month or three are going to look like a bloodybath for Reddit.
Can’t wait!
Yeah, I was using Lemmy and Reddit in parallel throughout June (aside from the blackout days, where I stayed off of Reddit out of solidarity,) and only really drastically reduced my Reddit usage this month.
In history terms, 3% is everything. I remember seeing a documentary where a guy claimed that every coup in history, in which 3% of the population were ardently dedicated to the cause, has been successful.
Also, this data isn’t from Reddit. It’s from SimilarWeb. They track browser access to websites, not API calls. Reddit absolutely won’t report their drop in API access, which is where the largest drop will be.
Even if 3% is a low number, I guarantee that 3% were reddits more active users and content creators.
If most of the quality content slows to a trickle users will continue to leave and look for more viable platforms.
It’s not 3% of users, it’s 3% of traffic. This could be caused by 0.1% of power users leaving.
no company wants to say they’ve lost 3% of their customers
Reddit doesn’t see users as customers.
They are the product. A number that you can sell to advertisers and shareholders.That model started with literal radio. It’s not a new thing. We are the consumers and the advertisers are the customers. It’s kinda like how children are the consumers of toys but the parents are the customers. It actually makes business much harder because you have to keep two groups satisfied. The product is still airtime(radio), and nobody likes ads but they are sharing the space and funding the transmitter.
Don’t forget to donate to your local independent stations, folks. Radio is not free! Neither is Lemmy.
I think this an overly simplistic way to look at the dynamic. Users are the primary customer, and they don’t provide any direct revenue to the company. Their value is in attracting the secondary customers though, who directly pay the company to access the users. Bring a primary customer implies that the company still needs to treat you as a customer and at least not openly antagonize you. They can’t take you for granted as a product. There is no secondary customer without you.
It’s like bars that advertise free drinks for women on certain nights. The women aren’t directly paying the bar, but the men who come to the bar because of them makes it a net profit. I’m sure there’s other examples of this primary/secondary customer dynamic. Anything cheap for kids that sells expensive stuff to parents for instance.
overly simplistic way
It was hyperbolic of course. But really,
Users are the primary customer, and they don’t provide any direct revenue
How can someone who doesn’t provide revenue be the primary customer of a profit oriented company? Ahead of others who actually do, like advertisers?
It might be better if the terms are swapped. I’m only calling them primary because they have to come first before the secondary, and they’re the foundation for everything. There’s probably a better way to term them.
Oh, I’m not denying that the users are the foundation for the business model but when Reddit makes business decisions, they first listen to those who pay them.
They also don’t want to lose 3% of their product.
No company wants to say they’ve lost 30% of their top development, marketing and QA personnel.
They can still sell the raw product numbers, for as long as advertisers and shareholders don’t realize the product has turned to shit.
I suspect half that drop is from me alone, lol.
Reddit lost a LOT of their power users. Even if the general traffic isn’t that badly dented, it means a lot of the best content and conversations will not go back. Reddit will spiral down to a 9gag clone.
Reddit will spiral down to a 9gag clone.
Back in the day, I discovered Reddit because people in the comments on 9gag would say a certain post was stolen from reddit.
I was a sucker for rage comics, so r/fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu (aka f7u12) was my gateway drug.
I got onto Reddit from a rage comic app. 11 years ago.
I’d start a f7u12 community here, but I haven’t seen a classic rage comic that was actually worth a wet slap in years
Even the porn subs are starting to be overrun by onlyfans spammers
I thought they always were.
I mean, hey, free titties but always there.
I lurk the frontpage occasionally and I’ve already noticed the Reddit atmosphere has gotten … weird.
Little-known, content-churning subreddits are bubbling to the top because of all the other blackouts and desertions. Fringe viewpoints and wacko opinions that would normally get downvoted to the bottom of a thread are now out in the open because there’s no voice of reason to hold them back.
And the kind of people that are still on there, acting as if everything is fine (or, God forbid, better(???) than it was before the revolts) … it’s a very strange place now.
Same! I went to check it out earlier and the frontpage had a couple of subreddits I recognized but am not interested in, and the rest were all subreddits I had never heard of before. I also thought the scores seemed weirdly low, but not 100% sure about that since I dont usually pay super close attention. At least the weird vibe was pretty helpful in getting me to hop off, versus getting sucked in to browsing around more.
The meltdowns are something else.
On one smaller sub that participated in the blackout people were seriously accusing mods of rigging the votes to stay closed for longer. Of course nothing actually indicated that, and neither did they present any evidence, they just couldn’t stand not getting their content.
Reddit is pretty much at the point where you can open any thread on the front page and the comments will be indistinguishable from a Facebook comment section.
There was an r/Apple thread were people were going off about simplicity and just how hard it is to get into and use Lemmy… I am so glad I left lol
I didn’t make an account for awhile because so many people on Reddit were saying that. Once I finally did, I laughed how easy it was.
On the other hand, most upvoted posts and comments on redit are far away from best. I expect most of those people will not even notice, they just scroll over reposts and bot.
9gag… That’s a word I haven’t seen in a long time.
Reddit will stay, heck Digg if still around. It won’t be the same though.
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
A well deserved outcome. Companies need to realize that they are nothing without their customers/users. An undeserved arrogance can only lead to eventual downfall.
I didn’t think I would cut it completely, but once Sync died I tried to use the browser and it just forces that app on you. The app is unusable and very unenjoyable. Cold Turkey it is.
I imagined the numbers would be a touch higher but 3% feels shruggable.
I think the real question that these numbers don’t tell you though is the quality of the content. When I have popped on just out in f curiosity and not logged in, the new ‘front page of the internet’ appears to be whitepeople twitter and memes. Doesn’t look inviting enough for me to log in at all.
Not enough to matter. Not even out of step with any other social media site lol. We’re doomed
Reddit doesn’t need to be destroyed in order for Lemmy to succeed. There is plenty of room on the internet for multiple communities.
Right. I’d be happy for the IPO to go south just for petty vengeance, but I’m not angry about Reddit. It’s been good to me for years, until it wasn’t.
I’m on lemmy now, and I’m happy here. Don’t need Reddit to burn, my needs are fulfilled. They can do what they want, and the world keeps turning.
deleted by creator
Digg has had a bit of a weird history. They tried to relaunch as an RSS reader, which was pretty cool, right in the wake of Google killing reader.
Now it looks like they’re a buzzfeed knockoff. Meh
I thought about this comment, and realized that somehow, I just don’t care so much about what happens to Reddit anymore. Instead of worrying about what I left behind, I’m looking forward to what’s ahead of us.
I think it’s because even before the whole 3d-party-app drama, there already was this undefined feeling that Reddit’s best days are behind it. Maybe it’s the effect of ad money and monetization, or it’s the inevitable trend towards low quality content that comes with mass adoption, probably it’s both.
Whatever the cause, in most subreddits, the old Facebook-style rot had already set in. Once-cool subs now being an endless barrage of tired memes, bots farming karma, and people being assholes. The things I joined for years ago, the engaging discussion, random encounters with amazing experts, the cutting-edge internet anarchy, it’s all already long gone.
When I opened the app (Baconreader in my case), I only did it out of habit, to then spendy time scrolling through an endless list of things that made me slightly go “heh”.
So, maybe most people will stay on Reddit for now, and probably I will have to leave behind certain communities instead of finding direct replacements. But I see that as a good thing. As long as even just 2% of Reddit’s users make it here, I’m excited it will grow into something much better than what I left behind.
Yeah. Something something … The company we keep.
It shouldn’t matter if Reddit has a larger user base, etc. As long as the quality is high here, I’m happy.
Lemmy’s been a. Breath of fresh air for me. Feels a lot like Reddit in the ol’ days and prefer it over Reddit.
If that means we have a lower user count than Reddit … Sure. As long as y’all here with me, we have made Lemmy successful.
The data is from June. I suspect July will show a more meaningful decline. I still used it in June apart from the blackout. After July 1st I login for maybe a few minutes via the desktop site to check the frontpage for missing news. That’s about it.
Same. TBH, I didn’t really pay much attention to all the protesting. But when Bacon Reader stopped working, I started looking for a new app.
SimilarWeb needs to invest a little in their presentation skills. A bar graph with no difference in the bar heights is not very interesting. And are they aware you can use more places after the decimal point? “1.7B” above each bar doesn’t help at all.
Would be interesting to see engagement metrics as well.
Yeah, even just 3% could be very meaningful because it could be a lot of content creators who hopped ship.
And judging by how much content we have here on Lemmy - yeah, I’m thinking Reddit lost a bunch of valuable users and will only get worse with time.
Similarly, what remains are increasingly concentrated bots.
.
Look at r/subredditsimulator… Reddit admins were experimenting with AI content and comment generation, and had been for a while.
That’s the key point. More than 90% of their users never post, comment or even vote.
You’re right - that’s the important part!
Need to be take SimWeb data with a bit of a grain of salt. Having used in previous businesses their results are indicative. They smooth big m2m changes from memory.
To add, from memory this won’t include app traffic and will only be Web and msites.
Whatup Lemmy gang. Glad to be here.
If it wasn’t for my photography, I’d delete instagram. Holy shit is it pay-to-play a cesspool. And I’m being targeted for ads for all kinds of ponzi schemes and crypto and FOREX scams. Probably from watching Coffeezilla videos.
We’ll see how Lemmy picks up. I’m really liking it, thus far. Right now we’re looking at Reddit like a former, toxic partner that we want to spite. Lately I was just going on the World News, Ukraine war mega thread.
Just like Etsy. Its a horrible place to try and build a business and be creative and make money, and is being overrun by dropshipped tat, but its where everyone goes to get nice things, so its where people have to sell
I’m a hobbyist and I went there to get something nice and save myself some time making it. I expected high quality reasonable cost and I found average/low quality high cost. Disappointed.
If it wasn’t for my photography, I’d delete instagram
It’s funny, but my photography is precisely the reason I’m not on Instagram. Since day 1 I’ve never thought it is a good place for actual artistic photography; indeed it kinda directly undermined artistic photography back in the day with the “all photos must be square” rule. I’ve always considered Instagram more of a place to share snapshots. Flickr isn’t what it once was, but it’s always been more of a true photography-focused social media site.
I’m in the same boat. Been trying a few different Instagram alternatives for a few years but the user bases are all too small. Pixelfed and Vero seem decent but too much of a ghost town to feel it’s worth continuing to post.
I haven’t tried Pixelfed yet. I just got into the Fediverse and several instances on Lemmy. So I’ll eventually try Pixelfed. But 500px and Flickr seemed kind of dead to me. Vero and Vsco, I’ve heard mixed things, but also ghost-towns.
It’s to the point in IG that not even close friends nor family, see what I post. Adam Mosseri and Mark can fuck right off.
Just found out about Lemmy for the first time, joined, and am loving the layout/website/app so far. Probably going to switch over to just this over time.
I have just visited reddit for the first time in quite a while , the picture imo is pretty grim for reddit. Dead subs , little actual life , and when you log out the front page is dire. I think that actual content is key here and that is where the crisis for reddit is shown clearly. Talk of the protest not working is just that,talk , in reality reddit has been deeply effected imo
Seems like they just updated their mobile site, you no longer get the annoying popup telling you to download their mobile app!
