That doesn't follow at all. There are all sorts of insanely popular websites which have significant monetization issues (think tumblr, wikipedia).

Just because lots of people use something doesn't make them willing to pay for it, and it doesn't make a platform inherently monetizable.

Any attempt at monetization through the "normal" means, such as increasing the number of ads or selling user data, would completely undermine the things that make Reddit such a valuable site. We've already seen a few examples of Reddit moving toward a more legitimate, financially viable social media model, and each one of those moves has been met with significant backlash. It seems that they're in a lose-lose situation: either run out of money to keep the site running, or lose all their users.

I thought Wikipedia doesn’t have monetization issues, but maybe things have changed? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/20/cash_rich_wikipedia...

Indeed, also not everybody is trying to squeeze money out of their user base regardless of costs (to popularity, principles...).

Reddit gold, the new Reddit platinum and bronze, they already show ads, redesign shows ads much more prominently. Literally dozens of ad trackers when you load their site.

Reddit is just as much of a profit driven company as Facebook or Twitter, I’m not sure why you’d think otherwise.

> Reddit is just as much of a profit driven company as Facebook or Twitter, I’m not sure why you’d think otherwise.

Because, among other things, they don't show annoying ad formats and don't demand real names and phone numbers from their users.

Yet :)

We'll see. Meanwhile, the old design is still available and not burdened with lots of trackers.

Their old design totally loads ad trackers...

And I wholeheartedly wish Reddit will continue doing what they are doing. As a user, I would vote for scheduled maintenance downtime to many monetization attempts present on other networks.

Looks like they’re having trouble just keeping the lights on without taking VC money.

Not exactly a sustainable plan if you value using their service, and they’ve already got early investors pushing them to monetize.

The problem these sites have is that most of us don't particularly value using their service. We might appreciate the facility they offer for free, but what we truly value is the communities that are found there and the information and discussions that originate from those communities.

If Reddit died tomorrow, we'd all shrug and find somewhere else to talk, just like the countless forums we used before Reddit that are no longer with us. Such is the danger for any social media: if all you provide is a commodity platform, you're only ever as valuable as the community you can build and whatever that community is willing to contribute, and ultimately you have very little control over those things.

They don't make nearly as much as others with that traffic. Brand safety issues with subreddits and discussions, anonymous user profiles, poor mobile experience, mostly link aggregation instead of content, high adblocking, etc.

Here's an old answer of mine comparing reddit's $7M to Instagram's $700M in 2014: https://www.quora.com/Why-are-reddits-advertising-revenues-o...

I think they just don't sell as much data as something like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Each outbound link on reddit is tracked, similar to how Google tracks users clicking on SERPs. This can be tied back to a user to build profile on your interests, in addition to sub-reddits you subscribe to etc. which can be valuable if combined with other demographic data about you.

I dont know if they started selling this data directly. Last I spoke to ad people there, they had plans to build out their own tracking and analytics infrastructure, to improve things like geo-targeted ads, as their capabilities were lacking signficiantly.

You can turn off outbound link tracking in the privacy section of preferences. Uncheck “allow reddit to log my outbound clicks for personalization”

which means your logged in and your behavior and activity is captured, and available for ad-targeting anyway. There's no real opt-out.