I think I’d say that’s consistent with a direction they’re trying to send Reddit, for all that it’s inconsistent with where Reddit is now.
I think some of the current fire over there is actually aimed at winnowing the hyper-engaged members of the community who are hobbyists and niche interest specialists - and then exchanging them for ‘influencers’ who are not amateurs, but who have an external financial incentive to maintain spaces, continue engagement, and to toe Reddit’s line.
An ongoing remark during the blackouts noted that a whole ton of niche google searches went dull after the reddit portions of the results subsequently bricked. Reddit’s niche communities are where people online are going for organic product and service recommendations - people needing advice on products don’t search for review sites anymore, they go to reddit discussions. And I think they’ve realized that the influencer space on IG or similar is exceedingly lucrative.
If they can leverage their own platform’s prominence to either boost-for-fees organic influencers or seed dialogue via AI-piloted accounts, that turns into an alternative way of monetizing their placement and niche online.
If they manage to drive off the hyper-engaged community members who might counteract those seeded recommendations, or recapture communities from real organic hobbyists and similar - they can offer key spaces in niche communities with retail importance to both the companies and the influencers (“organic brand evangelists”) as a monetization angle down the road.
If you have any way of getting their pitch to prospective partners on record somehow, that would be absolutely fantastic.
While I think you might be onto something - I think this only works for consumer focused goods/products/services. Large language models can seed “what car should I get” type conversations - however they have a tendency to be confidently wrong. And in industry specific communities being confidently wrong (especially when attempting to influence a b2b sale) can lead to all kinds of negative ripple effects.
I hope more that it loses them profit rather than users. I suspect that they will lose users, but only users who weren’t going to drive profits anyway. The IPO is going to go ahead and the investors are going to have a field day while the website becomes terrible for the users.
Well, they’re losing one advertiser - me. I was about to start an advertising campaign on Reddit when this all went down. Just pulled the plug on it. At this point, keeping my Reddit ad will be bad for business with my client base.
Not sure where I’ll advertise instead, but definitely not there.
I think this will be the true litmus test. There’s clearly a lot of us concerned and have mostly moved on, but we are probably a minority… The rest of the larger user base, I wonder how much of them will just move back to official apps after Apollo/RIF cuts off service after July 1st, and then observe the outcomes. Part of me really want to see the site go way of the dodo, but part of me thinks they’ll linger around like Twitter does, and eventually they’ll acquire new users that doesn’t know/care for anything beyond what the royal court has to offer.
@chiisana@PBJ I’m surprised none of the 3rd party apps have either tried finding a similar app like Reddit and redesigning their app around that, or try to create their own Reddit alternative, I mean, they DO have the infrastructure to do it, (especially Christian), they would just need to shuffle things around and tweak their apps a bit.
Third party app users are likely some of the most engaged users Reddit has, so if or as those users find a new home, the overall content quality on Reddit declines and lurkers shift their attention elsewhere.
And keep in mind, it’s not Reddit v. Lemmy. It’s Reddit v. Netflix, Instagram, TikTok, etc because Reddit is competing for attention.
This is really it. There are people who create content and then there are casual browsers. I personally browsed reddit casually for years before even commenting and then actually posting. I could look at it on my lunch break or something but I didn’t have the time to really get into it, and there are a lot of people who are exactly like I was. It’s also just a little intimidating for new people to take that leap because it feels like you’re going to be torn apart.
During the time that I was just browsing, I would frequently encounter dips in quality. Like nothing actually worthwhile was happening. Nothing I wanted to click on or engage with, so I’d just bounce after a minute or so. I pulled up Reddit in an incognito browser yesterday and it was exactly like that. Modern day facebook level content was weaved all through the front page.
I honestly cannot think of a dumber move by a company than this. This is Circuit City div-x dvd player level dumb. Not even the debacle with Cricut approaches this.
deleted by creator
I’m at Cannes Lions rn. There’s a ton of of the Reddit marketing team here overhearing their conversations with advertisers.
Lemme tell you, that place was doomed to start with.
Tell us more…
They just have no idea what value the site brings to their actual users.
Essentially, pushing a Reddit as a recommendation engine for “organic brand evangelists” instead of organic community communication.
I’m gonna swing by their booth tomorrow and report back.
I think I’d say that’s consistent with a direction they’re trying to send Reddit, for all that it’s inconsistent with where Reddit is now.
I think some of the current fire over there is actually aimed at winnowing the hyper-engaged members of the community who are hobbyists and niche interest specialists - and then exchanging them for ‘influencers’ who are not amateurs, but who have an external financial incentive to maintain spaces, continue engagement, and to toe Reddit’s line.
An ongoing remark during the blackouts noted that a whole ton of niche google searches went dull after the reddit portions of the results subsequently bricked. Reddit’s niche communities are where people online are going for organic product and service recommendations - people needing advice on products don’t search for review sites anymore, they go to reddit discussions. And I think they’ve realized that the influencer space on IG or similar is exceedingly lucrative.
If they can leverage their own platform’s prominence to either boost-for-fees organic influencers or seed dialogue via AI-piloted accounts, that turns into an alternative way of monetizing their placement and niche online.
If they manage to drive off the hyper-engaged community members who might counteract those seeded recommendations, or recapture communities from real organic hobbyists and similar - they can offer key spaces in niche communities with retail importance to both the companies and the influencers (“organic brand evangelists”) as a monetization angle down the road.
If you have any way of getting their pitch to prospective partners on record somehow, that would be absolutely fantastic.
While I think you might be onto something - I think this only works for consumer focused goods/products/services. Large language models can seed “what car should I get” type conversations - however they have a tendency to be confidently wrong. And in industry specific communities being confidently wrong (especially when attempting to influence a b2b sale) can lead to all kinds of negative ripple effects.
Reminder
I hope more that it loses them profit rather than users. I suspect that they will lose users, but only users who weren’t going to drive profits anyway. The IPO is going to go ahead and the investors are going to have a field day while the website becomes terrible for the users.
Well, they’re losing one advertiser - me. I was about to start an advertising campaign on Reddit when this all went down. Just pulled the plug on it. At this point, keeping my Reddit ad will be bad for business with my client base.
Not sure where I’ll advertise instead, but definitely not there.
Sounds interesting, are you able to tell us what kind of thing you’re advertising? Is it something small or is it like a company thing?
The problem is the free users are creating the content that profit generating users are consuming.
Without that content those users will leave for the next social media startup.
I think this will be the true litmus test. There’s clearly a lot of us concerned and have mostly moved on, but we are probably a minority… The rest of the larger user base, I wonder how much of them will just move back to official apps after Apollo/RIF cuts off service after July 1st, and then observe the outcomes. Part of me really want to see the site go way of the dodo, but part of me thinks they’ll linger around like Twitter does, and eventually they’ll acquire new users that doesn’t know/care for anything beyond what the royal court has to offer.
@chiisana @PBJ I’m surprised none of the 3rd party apps have either tried finding a similar app like Reddit and redesigning their app around that, or try to create their own Reddit alternative, I mean, they DO have the infrastructure to do it, (especially Christian), they would just need to shuffle things around and tweak their apps a bit.
I hope reddit’s IPO burns so hard that spez’s golden parachute catches fire.
I think they have left their IPO too late.
The 2nd internet boom is entering a bust.
Uhhh 95% of users use the official Reddit app, they won’t even notice. Saw it on cited chart the other day.
This chart I saw disagrees
I always used the official app because I couldn’t be bothered. Still stopped using it because I won’t support this shit.
It’s not just users to users.
Third party app users are likely some of the most engaged users Reddit has, so if or as those users find a new home, the overall content quality on Reddit declines and lurkers shift their attention elsewhere.
And keep in mind, it’s not Reddit v. Lemmy. It’s Reddit v. Netflix, Instagram, TikTok, etc because Reddit is competing for attention.
This is really it. There are people who create content and then there are casual browsers. I personally browsed reddit casually for years before even commenting and then actually posting. I could look at it on my lunch break or something but I didn’t have the time to really get into it, and there are a lot of people who are exactly like I was. It’s also just a little intimidating for new people to take that leap because it feels like you’re going to be torn apart.
During the time that I was just browsing, I would frequently encounter dips in quality. Like nothing actually worthwhile was happening. Nothing I wanted to click on or engage with, so I’d just bounce after a minute or so. I pulled up Reddit in an incognito browser yesterday and it was exactly like that. Modern day facebook level content was weaved all through the front page.
I honestly cannot think of a dumber move by a company than this. This is Circuit City div-x dvd player level dumb. Not even the debacle with Cricut approaches this.