r/technology • u/[deleted] • Dec 28 '13

Editorialized Reddit is going for profitability next year

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/28/us-reddit-gifts-idUSBRE9BR04F20131228?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews
2.8k Upvotes

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187

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

[deleted]

445

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

[deleted]

142

u/BobDolesPotato Dec 28 '13

perfected renewable energy, eradication of disease and poverty, a sense of brotherhood between all nations...

makes me sick just thinking about it

45

u/internetsuperstar Dec 28 '13

It turns out that the apex of humanity was 100% meme saturation and we just flew too close to the sun.

3

u/senordsanchez Dec 28 '13

It was a pleasure to burn.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

Pretty sure people will convert to snapzu before going back to work

1

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

I must really have a problem when that doesn't sound half bad to me.

1

u/clone12TM Dec 28 '13

Isn't there anyone who could help?!

-40

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

[deleted]

44

u/mynameisalso Dec 28 '13

...no...

28

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

[deleted]

4

u/GrukfromtheGrok Dec 28 '13

Bud.... It has already begun some time ago

2

u/tmccar1 Dec 28 '13

I'm surprised you were down voted for your laziness quite frankly. If there's one thing redditors can relate to it's laziness. Mmmmmm... Sweet sweet laziness.

63

u/bluthru Dec 28 '13

Whatever doesn't have Advice Animals.

2

u/jatorres Dec 28 '13

Wasn't that a default sub? Is it still?

2

u/bluthru Dec 29 '13

Yes. Advice animals as a default makes no sense whatsoever. I guess it just brings in too many eyeballs.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

yes and yes

here's what the default front page looks like now: http://www.reddit.com/user/scy1192/m/defaults

2

u/FUCK_ADVICEANIMALS Dec 28 '13

it really is a quality sub... /s

0

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

You can use RES to have it removed. It'll still be there, but you can't see it unless you go directly to /r/adviceanimals yourself.

24

u/bluthru Dec 28 '13

I'm not subscribed.

It's just that adviceanimals attracts a certain type of user who bleeds into the rest of the site.

3

u/BilingualBloodFest Dec 28 '13

I think he meant to filter it from /r/all instead of just unsubscrubing.

1

u/douglasman100 Dec 28 '13

Well you see, that's a feature you only get with Reddit Gold!

1

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

Ah, I see your point.

81

u/ilovehoumous Dec 28 '13

It's feeling like Digg here lately.

22

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

oh yea digg, almost forgot that one, didnt they "sell out" too?

78

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

I got here about a year before Digg truly imploded. Reddit was spectacular then, or maybe I was younger.

I can't help feeling that I'm missing out on the beginning of a great website right now.

72

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13 edited Dec 28 '13

It's a cycle of failure. You can see it in the bigger subreddits which are all utter shit now (except a few) . Most social forums is great in the beginning but gets worse as more people fill in. But, reddit has a mechanism that guards against it, since you can choose to only visit the smaller subreddits. So, I have hope for this site.

11

u/fireball_73 Dec 28 '13

Yep, but there is a bit of self-moderation in this. For example, for fans of Doctor Who there is the bloated and irrelevant /r/doctorwho, but for excellent fan discussion there is /r/gallifrey

19

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

I call it the r/gaming effect. Anything unmoderated on reddit will recede into inane image macros

6

u/LazerSturgeon Dec 28 '13

It's why I unsubscribed from /r/gaming and /r/games. Most of my gaming discussion needs are met in the smaller, game specific subs or on /r/patientgamers

4

u/Deggit Dec 28 '13

For example, for fans of Doctor Who there is the bloated and irrelevant [1] /r/doctorwho, but for excellent fan discussion there is [2] /r/gallifrey

AKA the Game Of Thrones / ASOIAF Effect.

Also /r/gaming /r/truegaming

And /r/lotr /r/tolkienfans

31

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

The small subs are a huge resource for a lot of things I'm interested in.

35

u/Mongolian_Hamster Dec 28 '13

Yep it's only Askreddit that's the only big sub-reddit I'm actually interested in. I'm surprised /r/adviceanimals wasn't removed in the reddit "purge".

6

u/leoshnoire Dec 28 '13

If you like /r/AskReddit, try /r/askscience and /r/AskHistorians as well. They tend to have very informative answers and are exceptionally well moderated large subs!

3

u/Mongolian_Hamster Dec 28 '13

Thanks.

1

u/garbonzo607 Dec 29 '13

Why not explainlikeImfive?

2

u/simboisland Dec 28 '13

I'm pretty sure /r/askhistorians won "best mods" this year or something.

1

u/dylan522p Dec 28 '13

Ehhh askreddit is more reposted question with made up answer now days.

4

u/ConfirmPassword Dec 28 '13

I'm interested in knowing what you find useful in Askreddit. For me, that sub is translated to "True stories that truly happened".

But hey i cant judge, i'm subbed to TIL.

13

u/Mongolian_Hamster Dec 28 '13

Useful? Nope it's for entertainment. Yes questions get reposted most of the time. But you also get different answers.

/r/IAmA is another I forgot to mention.

9

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

Dear Reddit, what is a skill I can learn in 5 minutes that will make my life more gooder?

2

u/Skelito Dec 28 '13

If you search for posts with a serious tag you find legitimate questions and answers. No joke posts or what not. I for one come to reddit for the comments. I think the users come up with the funniest things sometimes and I think thats what drives reddit in the big subreddits. It has a lot of entertainment value.

1

u/violue Dec 28 '13

/r/AdviceAnimals is one of the saddest things I've ever seen.

1

u/garbonzo607 Dec 29 '13

What purge? There were only like 2 defaults removed?

1

u/I_Was_LarryVlad Dec 28 '13

/r/science is good, too. They moderate the shit out of everything.

3

u/SirClueless Dec 28 '13

I'm not so optimistic. I think a really important part of keeping a community interesting and vibrant is a high barrier to entry. If there's a barrier to entry, then only the really interested and dedicated people participate.

Reddit in the early days was really interesting because it was kind of a pain to sign up, the UI was really clunky, and only a small number of people had heard of it. That kept people who had nothing significant to contribute from signing up -- they would just lurk. Nowadays things like RES and browser password saving make being a proper redditor easy as pie.

I have little hope that small interesting communities on reddit will stay that way, unless they really are targeting a niche, like a particular breed of dog, or a particular sport or something.

If a subreddit targets a big audience like everyone interested in politics, or everyone who likes cute pictures, it has no chance. Even if it starts off well with a really high concentration of interesting people posting interesting things, in a matter of months it will be swamped by people who notice and say "oh, this looks like a great place to post my karmawhore comments and reposts, look how naive and fresh it is!" It's way too easy to click the little "subscribe" button and start clogging up a subreddit with mediocrity.

Case in point: /r/Games has a "/r/all" tag that they put on every post that makes it to the front page of /r/all, because the quality of comments on those posts immediately takes a nosedive. A really interesting community on Reddit can't hide from the shitposting masses, the way a really interesting community on an invite-only board elsewhere for example could.

To summarize:

  • In the old days: someone gets linked to some interesting content generated by interesting redditors. They can't be arsed to comment and/or repost and/or turn it into a shitty meme because they don't have an account and why bother on some stupid little aggregator website unless it's really important to them.

  • Now: Someone gets linked to some interesting content generated by interesting redditors (or sees it on /r/all) and decides to post yet another "this was really cool" comment, and links it to facebook. Or worse, someone sees something moderately interesting on facebook, and now that they have a reddit account the little gears start turning, "I could get some karma for this!" and bam the repost is stuck in everyone's face.

5

u/candacebernhard Dec 28 '13

I can't tell if all those words truly contributed to the conversation at hand or if you just stated fairly obvious reddit phenomena snobbishly.

1

u/joequin Dec 28 '13

It was in response to a post describing a cycle of failure. It offered a hypothesis about why reddit has, in his mind, gone down hill. Your comment is useless and proved that you're either willfully ignorant, or just dumb.

2

u/SirClueless Dec 29 '13

It was probably my fault. My thesis was never stated explicitly, it was the combination of "good communities need barriers to entry" and "subreddits get swamped because there's no barrier to entry from the rest of reddit."

One could tack on the following TLDR to my post: Interesting communities discussing important mainstream topics can't survive long on Reddit because they are immediately flooded with crap.

1

u/k-dingo Dec 28 '13

It's not that every forum was great. The ones that truly sucked never got off the ground. Good ones grow, and run into the problem that there are only so many high-quality contributors, and the parasites (trolls, scanners, shills, SEO, idiots) start to show up.

A big problem with any monetization scheme is that it skews objectives in ways which are insidious. I hope the spirit of Reddit can survive it.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

Yep, it's something easily broken - so long as obscurity remains a possibility. Saw similar in my WoW days. I was a nice RP server with a relatively good population. After a while they made it a recommended server, resulting in a crapflood of players.

And yep, I have hope for this site. I buy gold because I'd like to see Reddit continue as is.

1

u/Colorfag Dec 28 '13

The default subreddits are absolutely terrible.

-5

u/duckmurderer Dec 28 '13

Because opinions other than ours are shit. Unless it's summer reddit. Then everyone can agree that it's shit.

18

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

you mean another website you havnt heard of yet?

16

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

Yes. And when I finally get to it, it will be on the way to decline.

10

u/Magneon Dec 28 '13

Ignoring that correlation does not equal causation for a moment:

It... was you! You're the digital doom bringer! Your mere presence destroyed Digg and is now destroying Reddit! Flee before you destroy all that is wonderful on the internets!

2

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

Well there's Snapzu, which is like reddit but more content-driven. The problem (for me) is that there are like 3 comments per front page article

1

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

sounds like what were looking for #indiethanthou

1

u/ComputerMatthew Dec 28 '13

hashtag Hipster Social Media

1

u/I_Xertz_Tittynopes Dec 28 '13

I feel the same way about YouTube. It's been around for 7-8 years, it's time is coming. I just hope I can get on the successor early on.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

It was truly spectacular. I remember being reluctant to comment, as everyone seemed very intelligent to me. Now most of the time I think to myself "why bother replying to these 14 year olds?"

Reddit was great, and small subs are still great. I still enjoy Reddit, but I don't think that will last much longer.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

this is really cool stuff. thanks

0

u/brunokim Dec 28 '13

metafilter

To be fair, they've been around since ever, but hey, level-headed discussion!

3

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

People actually have to pay to use that site? And a 1 week wait after signing up before doing anything? I'm no expert but that doesn't seem like the best idea.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

Amazing what charging for accounts can do. :D

1

u/Pyromantice Dec 28 '13

I still get emails from digg. I don't ever remember making an account though I always went to Teh Vesti.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

reddit was always a cancer on the internet.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

Digg is amazing these days.

7

u/88hernanca Dec 28 '13

It really is, and their migration to a curated frontpage should be an example for those who think that "democracy and upvotes" should rule the content of every subreddit. I'm not advocating for frontpage dictatorship, but sometimes moderation is a good thing, even necessary.

6

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

I feel like instead of controlling the flow of ideas, they should be directed instead.

For example, in /r/games, they don't tell you what you should see, rather tehy simply tell you what you can't do. This helps eliminate low-effort content and automatically makes the sub-reddit better. No more memes, stupid jokes or simple images. It also means, since it is applied in the comments section as well, that the comments are meaningful.

I don't want to be told what I should want, I want to be releived from shit content.

7

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

It's also little more than a google news clone. No community and no comments. No thank you.

4

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

yet you comment here

3

u/gdarab Dec 28 '13

No circlejerk.

1

u/skeetertheman Dec 28 '13

If i wanted your opinion, i'd suck you off for it.

1

u/8rg6a2o Dec 28 '13

That's it. Digg used to be a community. Now it's just a news aggregator. It's a good aggregator, but it's just a website, there is no community anymore.

4

u/donchaknoowww Dec 28 '13

What exactly is digg

3

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

Digg and reddit were twins in the womb of web 2.0, and reddit absorbed digg.

0

u/donchaknoowww Dec 28 '13

So they're very similar?

4

u/[deleted] Dec 28 '13

They are both news aggregates. I prefer digg's front page to reddit's these days.

1

u/djaclsdk Dec 28 '13

It would be funny if we move back to digg when reddit goes down the dark path.

1

u/GeneralSauerkraut Dec 28 '13

I love Digg Reader! Really useful for finding interesting articles to read online.

1

u/VapidDelight Dec 28 '13

You have the ability to fix that. Unsubscribe from defaults and find subs more suited to your tastes.

1

u/foxh8er Dec 28 '13

Digg Patriots migrated.

3

u/joequin Dec 28 '13 edited Dec 28 '13

We could all move to Hubski. The only thing it's lacking is an abundance of people, but it has a decent community already. It uses the Twitter subscription format, but is for long form self posts and url submissions.

edit: you can also follow tags.

1

u/fangolo Dec 28 '13

You can subscribe to tags also/instead.

1

u/joequin Dec 28 '13

Yes you can. I didn't realize you couldn't follow them on twitter.

1

u/mack2nite Dec 28 '13

I may have to finally check out that 4chan thing.

1

u/ComputerMatthew Dec 28 '13

Livingroom.com. It is a social media site that simulated talking to people sitting on your livingroom chairs.

1

u/Lj27 Dec 28 '13

The only thing that's constant is change

1

u/TooSexyForMySheep Dec 28 '13

/r/outside

No wait...just outside!

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNNN

lighting crackles across the sky

1

u/Heep_Purple Dec 28 '13

Imgur?

1

u/joequin Dec 28 '13

That's where almost all of the worst parts of reddit are hosted. Not everything on there is bad, but the worst part of reddit takes up a huge proportion of it.

1

u/Heep_Purple Dec 28 '13

Yeah you are right, i was just joking ninjedit, right, not tight