> It's a little bit ridiculous that a webpage serving millions of unique visitors every day cannot manage to turn a profit. A savvy business person would do a lot for a head start like that.

Care to elaborate on how a savvy business person would extract a profit? Unobtrusive ads obviously don't make enough money. Obnoxious ads are going to push users away / to use AdBlock. Sneaky manipulation of rankings will get out eventually, and when it does, is also likely to lose users.

> I think that the whole website is pretty bad. It's old and crummy, easily one of the worst designed popular sites on the internet.

Really? I find it quite functional.

> Open a new one as a subscription service

Yeah, a reddit paywall is going to go over real well. (And if the free version doesn't compromise basic functionality, good luck convincing anybody to pay for frills)

> Yeah, a reddit paywall is going to go over real well. (And if the free version doesn't compromise basic functionality, good luck convincing anybody to pay for frills)

Reddit is already addictive. I'm sure they could take a bit of inspiration from the variety of addictive "free to pay" games and work in microtransactions and perks.

To be fair, I don't think the parent is talking about preserving this gilded crystal egg of a community. They are talking about making Reddit profitable. Two (apparently totally) different things. You could slap banner ads and sneak stories onto Reddit's top posts list and enough users would stick around for you to not only turn a profit, but turn it into a huge return for investors. I'm all for preserving and protecting the fragile, warm community wherever it exists, but that's not what makes a profit, or people would never lament "the good ole days" of community X.

The value of Reddit is the userbase. Unless you can convince a critical mass to move over to your new Reddit it's dead, and how are you going to convince people to leave their established communities and pay money to start over somewhere new?

I made this prediction some years ago, that the Reddit userbase is change-resistant enough that any change that made it profitable would kill the whole thing. Frankly, I'm astonished it made it this long. But then again, thinking about how terrified the management must be, sitting on this huge treasure trove of active users, knowing that they could kill it with even minute changes... In a way it's not surprising Reddit has been in a kind of design stasis.

I'm just pulling ideas off the top of my head since this isn't challenging honestly. Retroactively give everyone that has ever purchased or been purchased reddit gold a one year subscription. Do the same for reddit gold purchases going forward. Immediately you have a new reddit populated by users that are valuable.

Nothing is stopping anyone from returning to their old communities. The whole thing hinges on the new website actually being good, fast, and better.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand reddit.

Please help us understand reddit by sharing your understanding about reddit.

"It's old and crummy, easily one of the worst designed popular sites on the internet." I love Reddit's design, it's very effective and to the point. You don't visit Reddit to view Reddit, you visit to read posts and comments. The design gets out of the way and lets you do that.

Well, to start, it's not a place that people wake up in the morning and visit hoping they'll be drenched in video pre-roll ads. For that, we have Wikia. ;)

EDIT: I noticed that the article kindly compares reddit to Wikipedia, which Wikia is basically the for-profit sister of, in fact originally created by hosting content that was removed from Wikipedia and putting Google Ads on it. Both Reddit and Wikia have the problem of generating revenue from the people who create the content that the revenue is generated by, many of whom are children.

Reddit actually has one of the better mobile interfaces I've used (certainly better than, say, Hacker News). I'm referring to i.reddit.com, not the new one that they're trying to push on people.

Reddit is thriving on community and gigantic network effects. If I were them, I would essentially do what their new CEO is currently doing: ask the community what they think would work (he's doing regular AMAs and I expect monetization will come up frequently). That's probably why I'm not too worried about it currently.

What do you mean by "worst designed"? Are you talking about usability? Something else?

Badly designed? Reddit seems ok as a website.

I think it's decent, but quite a few people I know browse imgur for Reddit content instead of browsing Reddit. They say that the UI is "too confusing".

Ultimately, the design hasn't actually changed much at all since 2006 when it started actually getting users.

I'm not really a redditor, in fact I don't even have an account. But whenever I do visit it's immediately apparent where to click or search to find a discussion around whatever content I'm interested in. I'm genuinely curious if there is a non-aesthetic reason I should I think the design is "bad"?

I don't think you can say that and simultaneously be on hackernews without sounding a bit hypocritical (if that the correct word)

Also I believe, Reddit has the userbase it does not for its design but for its the community.

The community on reddit isn't fantastic, it is just large.

Successful subscription models have been employed in the past. A lightweight paywall intended for a large user base covers operational costs, weeds out users who are just there to spam or troll, and reduces policing. It also cuts down or legitimises multiple accounts handled by the same user.

Popular reddit accounts sell on ebay so it isn't like nobody out there has money. Go ahead and downvote me. I feel the same way about it as I do when I try to explain the failings of Bitcoin. There are people passionate out there about whatever.