Re:One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits
by joshuapants on Wednesday July 15, 2015 @07:47PM
(#9894757)
> 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.
Re:One Way to Reform Reddit: Give Users a Share in Profits
by fapjacks on Wednesday July 15, 2015 @07:18PM
(#9894621)
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.
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)