Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/06/reddit-rumored-to-be-raising-money-at-a-400-million-valuation/

by xmen • 14 years ago

67 78 14 years ago

tomasien• 14 years ago

With all the acquisition write-offs we see, it's pretty awesome to see that this one has worked out so well for Condé Nast. It was such an unconventional acquisition, and now it's worth about half of the New York Times.

Other giants in fading industries should take note.

apl• 14 years ago

  > (...) and now it's worth about half of the New York Times.

It's one of those cases where I can't help but think, you know, maybe our metrics are way off.

graeme• 14 years ago

Off in that the NYT should be worth more because it makes money, or off in that Reddit should be worth more because of it's ungodly amounts of traffic and devotion?

kami88459• 14 years ago

Why is the NYT this wholy grail, that no company ever can aspire to be worth more than?

For me personally Reddit is much more important than the NYT will ever be. If the NYT disappears tomorrow I couldn't care less. There's other publications that will fill its place. Reddit has allowed me to meet great people, have in-depth conversations on topics that no one in my near vicinity cares about and expand my knowledge into fields I never knew possible. It's a great place.

stdbrouw• 14 years ago

What's worth more, producing excellent journalism that occassionally exposes wrongdoing, or entertaining millions of people every day? Is police officer a more laudable occupation than movie director? What about a farmer versus a politician? I don't think it's so obvious that the NYT does more for society than Reddit. (Though you could argue that Reddit is more replaceable.)

cremnob• 14 years ago

In recent years I've really grown to despise Reddit, so I'm going to get a kick out of the angst that Redditors will feel when they gradually realize that their interests and Reddit's interests diverge.

yesimahuman• 14 years ago

I love reddit, but I do fear bringing on lots of investors will seriously damage the site and the community. Just look at what appears to have happened with Quora in the scramble to satisfy stakeholders.

onedev2• 14 years ago

What do you think has happened to Quora?

kami88459• 14 years ago

They've done an impeccable job of steering the site in the past. With their track record and the sheer sweat and grit they've put into the site, I'm confident that won't change just because they raise capital.

danso• 14 years ago

I can understand that the community may not be as appealing due to its growing popularity, but what has Reddit done company-wise that conflicts with users' wishes? The interface is still as minimal and the advertising virtually non-existent

rplnt3• 14 years ago

They took over the most popular subreddits as AskReddit or IAmA. They also ban subreddits/users and remove posts that can make a bad name for reddit in the media. Both from these brand subreddits and from the whole site.

onedev2• 14 years ago

I think he's saying that Reddit will eventually reach a point where the interests of its community and the site itself WILL diverge to some extent.

It's something that has to happen and will happen to the best of em, and it just depends on how Reddit chooses to handle the situation.

A really great example of good monetization I think is Ultimate Guitar. The site used to be completely free and the community of musicians was and still is unparalleled on the internet. They've monetized pretty heavily over the years by offering paid tools and more features/premium-content for musicians (even making their own mobile apps for things like tuners, tabs, etc). I think it was a great way to monetize the community on top of ads. However, it benefits from having a very specific focus (music) and a very focused and passionate community which makes the process of monetization a little easier.

The problem Reddit will have I think is that the community is extremely open, unfocused, and unrestricted (as well as having multiple sub-communities). Its very user-driven so it becomes difficult to creatively monetize without infringing on their "freedoms" or "openness". For example, I think /r/iama would be a great outlet for brands to come and have a conversation with the community (for example, before a movie release). However, that subreddit is ALREADY used like that, and it's very open. Anyone (including any brand) can come in and do an AMA so any type of monetization would have to to be a complement to the community (can't monetize the community itself without killing it or pissing people off). So how can Reddit monetize without just resorting to ads and promoted content? It's a difficult question and I don't see a clear answer.

If they do decide to do stuff like "featured" posts, I think they will have to be very very careful to not clutter up the user-upvoted content and hopefully they'll work hard to make the "featured" stuff interesting to the community. They'll have to make some important decisions when monetizing and I wish them the best of luck.

wonderyak• 14 years ago

The best/worst things about communities like HN and Reddit are that you're only going to get what the community is capable of producing. When the mean age/experience of the community tilts the wrong way the discourse is naturally affected as well.

That said; my Dad has a saying: "things are not as good as they used to be; and they never were"

rplnt3• 14 years ago

To like reddit you have to unsubscribe from all the default subreddits and swera to never read discussions in them. Then find yourself a nice set of smaller subreddits that you like. Either there are alternatives with stricter rules to the default subs or there are more specific subs.

awakeasleep2• 14 years ago

There are important flaws to this approach.

Every interest has different levels of content. Pictures range from works of art that took hours to conceptualize, to images of a cat butt with a text overlay.

As a subreddit becomes more popular, the greatest common denominator's interests take precedence. And while you can attempt a solution by splitting the sub community, say, no text overlays, that doesn't work as well everywhere.

For example, a programming community needs to split into subs for languages, and the technical level of the articles. This makes aggregation more difficult, and ruins an information flow that would include a home for overall high quality posters-- now they have a more difficult time determining where to post, and must question whether the articles they submit meet the requirements for technical depth etc.

Even then, the process of dilution begins again as the lesser posters begin to inflate the sub communities.

rohamg• 14 years ago

Sounds like a lot of work just to waste time more efficiently..

loceng• 14 years ago

It will be interesting to see what they do with the money. I wonder too if they IPO if they will provide moderators a sum of money like Geocities did back in the day.

scottlu2• 14 years ago

It's surprising that Instagam would be considered a billion dollar business, but Reddit a 400 million dollar business.

kmfrk• 14 years ago

Instagram wasn't "worth $1B". It was worth $1B to Facebook (and even more to Twitter, apparently).

It has to be viewed in that context. A context in which Facebook was botching mobile major time and described it as its major challenge in public filings.

chimeracoder3• 14 years ago

> Instagram wasn't "worth $1B". It was worth $1B to Facebook

Which, (given a fixed supply of exactly 1 Instgram) means that it was worth $1B.

Whether Facebook overpaid (ie, whether they would have been better off spending part or all of that $1B elsewhere) is a completely separate question - the point is, the market valued Instagram at $1B.

drivebyacct23• 14 years ago

For what? I hate to be that guy, but I have seen a huge increase in "OP is a faggot" style posts being upvoted in the main subreddits (just in the last 4 weeks). I've always championed finding niche subreddits, and I do, but the result has been me spending increasingly little time on reddit. I check /r/rust, /r/golang, etc but that's about all I can stand.

sillysaurus• 14 years ago

If you have something to say that starts with "I hate to be that guy" then just don't say it.

You're not their main audience, and they're massively popular. They're continuing to grow in popularity, and they're becoming increasingly relevant as a primary source of information. Reddit represents a fundamental step forward in how the internet interconnects everyday people.

You may not see anything worthwhile, but in reality it's one of the most exciting future prospects of the internet in general. It has the potential to affect and influence generations. Something like that is truly special.

drivebyacct23• 14 years ago

A year ago I would have bought that. Log out, look at the front page and repeat this with a straight face:

>It has the potential to affect and influence generations.

rm9992• 14 years ago

When you see drastic and sudden changes in reddit, it's usually something external. In this case the beginning of December marks the end of the semester for college and high school students, who use reddit more during reading period/christmas break. They will soon start school again and things will return to normal.

That kind of behavior has been pretty much the norm for years at reddit. Not to say it's ubiquitous, reddit still has great content and what I'd call 'safe' subreddits where that behavior isn't tolerated. Also, to be clear to those who don't know, 'OP is a faggot' is supposed to be an ironic meme rather than hate speech. A terrible meme, but I wouldn't want people to misunderstand and think reddit has become a cesspool of hate.

chimeracoder3• 14 years ago

> They will soon start school again and things will return to normal.

Except when they don't[1].

> . A terrible meme, but I wouldn't want people to misunderstand and think reddit has become a cesspool of hate.

The language originates from 4chan, where it is also used ironically. I get rather annoyed when I hear people dismiss 4chan as homophobic, because under the surface, it's actually not. Then again, if Reddit is starting to mimic 4chan in terms of its language and linguistic memes, either 4chan's reputation is ill-deserved, or Reddit's reputation will start to resemble 4chan's.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_september

lessnonymous• 14 years ago

I hate this sort of joke. It reinforces the behavior for people who don't see it as a joke. And there's a lot of them.

"Oh, it's OK and funny to call people faggots"

I wish regular Redditors would stamp this shit out.

No, I'm not being unnecessarily precious or PC. I used to laugh at distasteful misogynistic jokes (and worse) but somebody pointed out to me that joking about it normalizes it. And to the depraved part of society the joke is missed and they see it as support for their depravity.

devsatish• 14 years ago

Reddit is a addictive big-time sink. The only way I can get some work done is by blocking reddit.

elchief• 14 years ago

Doesn't reddit have 400M users? Sounds like someone picked "a buck a user" outta the air and, voila, valuation

Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

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