This is where most of the conflict lies. Reddit the community and Reddit the business don't have the same goals in mind.

The company wants to grow and become more profitable, the community wants to preserve what it has.

I don't know if a site like this can really be run as a for profit company, at least not a growth oriented one. The obvious monetization schemes will be met with resistance. Even though its attracted a lot of users, can it really ever make money?

> This is where most of the conflict lies. Reddit the community and Reddit the business don't have the same goals in mind.

And this is the part about Reddit that I just don't get. A few years ago their users were a rather homogeneous group of nerds that had a lot of trust in the reddit management. Why on earth didn't they capitalize on that?

By doing all the latest actions that aim at getting rid of people that are now unwanted they try to get once again a somewhat homogeneous (albeit different) group of people. So maybe soon they are structurally exactly where they were some years ago except for the huge lost of trust of their users.

How is this going to help increasing their profit?

If they're exactly where they were some years ago but now with a demographic that's less likely to block ads, that's a win. How might they have "capitalized on" their "homogeneous group of nerds" that wouldn't have caused them to just leave?

> How might they have "capitalized on" their "homogeneous group of nerds" that wouldn't have caused them to just leave?

The possibilities should be endless. One thing I could have imagined would be cooperations with companies that have products which reddit user value and use heavily. Take Valve's Steam, for instance. Reddit could have offered those companies a service to buy a sub that is especially tailored for the company's needs so that they could turn their sub into a tailor-made r&d lab (with special features as required...). Those who love their products would be thrilled to develop ideas and share their user knowledge with their favorite company.

As long as they would've selected companies carefully and resist from interfering with other parts of reddit no one would run away. If anything, those "special sub" could be a gateway drug for new users.

Which is why it's a big deal that this has spread into the mainstream subs.

A terrible business that I think could be sold in a heartbeat for a few hundred million dollars to the big players, so is it really that bad?

The community would be in an uproar if such a sale happened. Reddit's only monetization schemes right now are 1) reddit gold 2) ads and 3) the gift shop. These are things that the community can completely boycott. Any sane person would know not to buy out something like reddit.

It depends... Reddit was sold once before, and it thrived post-sale.

that sale also made reddit lost one of its original cofounders :( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

Reddit is really poorly managed. If Google bought it and gave it an overhaul I'm sure it would be welcome over the current administration. Plus, the "non-vocal users" simply don't care.

I would start with rewarding administrators with payment (akin to youtube, somewhat proportionally to views -- this creates a strong incentive towards fidelity), revamp post priority algorithms, and add some basic functionality that you need to install an add on (!), RES, to get (what other top 100 website needs this?).

I'm really not sure what planet you live on, but Google managed communities are almost without exception an unmitigated disaster.

True. Plus "gave it an overhaul"? Pictures and Circles, for example? ;-)

> Reddit is really poorly managed. If Google bought it and gave it an overhaul

If this happened, Internet would explode from all the rage.

A few hundred million for what -- a largely unmonetizable high traffic website full of tantrum throwing racists, bigots, and pornographers? They don't make much money from ads (they were unprofitable through at least 2012 afaik) and probably can't monetize that way -- even past the brand safety issues, it's still a forum that would feel lucky to get perhaps 50 cent cpm advertising on US traffic. I'd be shocked if they could clear 50 million, and that would be from someone who was going to fire the majority of employees and just run the site out. Particularly with digg's example of how fickle internet users can be.

I'm aware it was invested in at a 1/2 billion valuation, and good luck to them, but I stand by my analysis.

The thing is, 'reddit-likes' have definitively a place in the Internet, and I mean for the next couple decades. This format has been iterated over and over, starting with slashdot, 4chan, digg et al, and it's obviously one of the best ways we ever found to manage large discussions/news/etc. HN is an example.

Reddit is growing and would continue to grow really quickly. There's no competition in sight. Owning the discussion backbone of the internet is massively valuable, comparable at least to WhatsApp I'd say.

Can it die out due to massive exodus? Sure, but something similar will replace it. And for each iteration (slashdot,digg,etc), those websites have become larger and more consolidated. It's fair to assume at some point it will reach long term stability (particularly if it's properly managed).

Will there be chat forums on the internet? Yes, obviously. But that's unrelated to a particular forum's value as a business.

As far as reddit growing, is the plan to lose money on each pv but make it up in volume?

Even stack overflow seems to have trouble monetizing, and that's both brand safe and targeted to a valuable audience.

do you have evidence that SO has trouble monetizing?