Reddit reveals daily active user count for the first time: 52M

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/1/21754984/reddit-dau-daily-users-revealed

by finphil • 6 years ago

54 22 6 years ago

czzr• 6 years ago

Huh. That’s actually smaller than I would have guessed.

Still, the high level number doesn’t capture the strong communities embedded within Reddit, which I think is the real value of the site.

dilDDoS2• 6 years ago

I feel like at that number Reddit is in the goldilocks zone for being a useful social media platform -- big enough that there is tons of engagement, but small enough to not drown out anyone. If I want to, I can make a post about a hobby project on Reddit and (if it's actually something interesting) it'll get quite a bit of attention. If I post the same thing on twitter, it'll be lucky to get a tenth of the attention.

I do wonder how much of this is due to the lack of emphasis on a poster's "credentials" though. Reddit seems to be the last online platform where anyone can contribute to a discussion without being judged for how "popular" someone is.

Dirlewanger• 6 years ago

Absolutely not true at all that you'll get attention if it's "interesting". There's tons of people jostling for eyes on their posts in medium-to-large hobby subreddits, oftentimes posting things to multiple ones. Makes it even harder because one can't self-promote their own stuff. Bots/burner astroturfing accounts are also a massive problem on reddit.

dilDDoS2• 6 years ago

I'm just speaking from my own experience, but I guess I've just been lucky. The subreddits I've posted projects to are in the ~20-50K subscriber range and have always responded well to whatever project I'm announcing, unless it was something that clearly didn't take me very long.

colejohnson66• 6 years ago

Keep in mind the size of the subreddit. A subreddit with a few thousand followers is more likely to see your post than, say, /r/funny’s followers would

commonturtle• 6 years ago

Wow that's.. tiny. I was also surprised to learn that Twitter has just 187M daily users, even smaller than Snap (249M), which in my mind was only an app used by American teenagers.

torbital• 6 years ago

Twitter is just a bunch of businesses, celebrities, and bots.

I don't know a single normal person that uses it on a daily basis. The fact that is has this many people is amazing to me.

B-Con• 6 years ago

I wonder what an active user is defined as for Twitter.

Tweeted?

Scrolled through their timeline?

Read an embedded tweet on a news site?

Dismissed a mobile notification?

For a platform like Twitter (or Facebook for that matter) it seems relatively easy to game the numbers.

rkuykendall-com2• 6 years ago

Similar to Reddit or HackerNews, it depends on what communities you're in. You have to go to Twitter if you want to follow journalists, comic artists, or TV writers. I'm sure there's a lot more communities I'm not interested in where Twitter is the primary source of information, like celebrities or K-Pop.

blackrock• 6 years ago

This is much smaller than I suspected.

It seems there is room for competition here.

wolco23• 6 years ago

Many moved off reddit when thedonald subreddit got shutdown and went to other places.

olyjohn• 6 years ago

Millions of people?

solarkraft2• 6 years ago

It would be interesting to see how many and how it influenced the remaining users' satisfaction.

dbbk• 6 years ago

It sounds about right to me. A quarter of Twitter, and Twitter is well known in the mainstream zeitgeist.

Reddit reveals daily active user count for the first time: 52M

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