@Deimos, have we thanked you lately for ensuring that Tildes is not reliant on ad revenue? Thank you. For anyone who is grateful, if you're financially in a place to do so, consider donating to...
Exemplary
@Deimos, have we thanked you lately for ensuring that Tildes is not reliant on ad revenue?
Thank you.
For anyone who is grateful, if you're financially in a place to do so, consider donating to Tildes monthly as a show of support (if you're not already). We as users are not monetized for our views or behavior here, so it is on us to cover costs and keep this place afloat.
Thanks! And yes, this is a perfect demonstration of why it's important to get away from these influences. We've talked about it with other companies like Twitter recently, but we're seeing massive...
Thanks! And yes, this is a perfect demonstration of why it's important to get away from these influences.
We've talked about it with other companies like Twitter recently, but we're seeing massive drops in advertising revenue all over the internet. Reddit isn't considered one of the "top-tier" social media platforms, so I suspect it's even worse for them because companies will be a lot more willing to stop advertising on Reddit than Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc.
Reddit has taken a ton of venture capital recently ($500 million in the last 3 years), and was supposed to be gearing up for an IPO sometime in the near future (they previously said 2020). A huge revenue drop is a really big problem for that, so they probably can't even truly consider turning down these ads, whether they want to or not.
Judd Legum said last week that the Trump campaign was spending $5.4 million per week on Facebook ads. Regardless of what Steve or the other executives/employees actually think about it, I doubt it's even a realistic option for Reddit to turn down a deep-pocketed advertiser like that in this situation.
And thanks for the reminder - I updated the Financials page and put the donation goal meter back into the home page sidebar.
As someone who has done a bit of very targeted, low cost advertising on Reddit, it's not really very hard to see why they aren't considered a top place to spend money. The RoI even in the absolute...
As someone who has done a bit of very targeted, low cost advertising on Reddit, it's not really very hard to see why they aren't considered a top place to spend money. The RoI even in the absolute best case scenario is abysmal compared to even poorly optimized Facebook ads. Redditors hate ads, and don't want to see them or click them, even in the event that you are advertising a free event hosted by a non-profit for the benefit of a community, meanwhile Facebook gets organic engagement and brings in underserved and underrepresented folks like it's magic.
The real decision I don't understand here is the Trump campaign wanting to spend money on the platform. The users are obviously going to be overwhelmingly not receptive, and the age, education, etc demographics are bad as well. I'm not sure the campaign gets anything other than a pile of angry redditors out of their ad spend.
That could actually be a goal. Not to actually influence the average redditor, but to wallpaper it with ads, hoping that one of them or a meme of it goes viral . Then despite the thing that went...
I'm not sure the campaign gets anything other than a pile of angry redditors out of their ad spend.
That could actually be a goal. Not to actually influence the average redditor, but to wallpaper it with ads, hoping that one of them or a meme of it goes viral . Then despite the thing that went viral being a mockery of some Trump policy, the media is forced to talk about it for a cycle or two.
I remember years ago people were already talking about how advertising revenue was falling and internet real-estate was becoming increasingly less profitable, and yet somehow companies like Reddit...
I remember years ago people were already talking about how advertising revenue was falling and internet real-estate was becoming increasingly less profitable, and yet somehow companies like Reddit and Twitter keep insisting it's the way forward somehow...
I think the core of it is that even with all of advertising's downsides and risks, it's still the only business model that's gotten any social-media-like services to billion-dollar valuations. And...
I think the core of it is that even with all of advertising's downsides and risks, it's still the only business model that's gotten any social-media-like services to billion-dollar valuations. And when you've taken large amounts of venture capital, that's the only real goal. VCs are usually investing in dozens (or hundreds) of companies, and just want a few of them to hit those massive valuations. They'd rather have all the others fail while shooting for the moon than end up with a bunch of "sustainable" businesses, because those can't give them the returns they need.
I understand what you are saying but I'm confused about one thing: as far as I can tell Reddit and Twitter already attained their high valuations and are now scrambling as hard as they can to make...
I understand what you are saying but I'm confused about one thing: as far as I can tell Reddit and Twitter already attained their high valuations and are now scrambling as hard as they can to make their advertisement-based operation financially solvent. So why do they keep digging in deeper on the proven, unsustainable model rather than taking even more moonshots to try and invent a new model or just cashing their chips and leaving?
That's really a much larger question about business, valuations, venture capital, and more, so it's not easy to answer. Trying to be relatively brief and over-simplifying a lot: Reddit is still a...
That's really a much larger question about business, valuations, venture capital, and more, so it's not easy to answer. Trying to be relatively brief and over-simplifying a lot:
Reddit is still a private company (their stock isn't available for purchase by the public), so their valuation is really just theoretical at this point, based on how much private investors were willing to pay. In their most recent venture capital round, they took $300M from investors for 10% of the company, so that gives them a valuation of $3 billion at that point. But if I was to start a new company and convince someone to give me $10,000 for a 1% share of it, that doesn't necessarily mean that my company is actually worth a million dollars.
There's also a large difference between really early investments, where the investor is probably more willing to see the company do something risky and unproven (and likely fail), and ones you get at later stages. The investors that are putting $500M into Reddit when it's 12+ years old and well-established won't be looking for them to suddenly try doing something crazy that might destroy the company.
Similarly, even though Twitter is public, people that buy Twitter stock are (in theory) valuing it based on the revenue they think the company will make in the future. That judgment is currently being based on assuming that they'll continue to make a lot of money from advertising. If Twitter suddenly announced that they were removing all their ads, their stock (and valuation) would drop massively because people would no longer know what to expect for future revenue. They could end up being worth even more in the future if they do manage to find a better revenue source, but a lot of investors won't be interested in taking that risk.
I think I can probably answer at least part of that. For VC investors to cash in their chips, the company needs to go public or get acquired, however reddit's are likely incredibly wary of going...
I think I can probably answer at least part of that. For VC investors to cash in their chips, the company needs to go public or get acquired, however reddit's are likely incredibly wary of going down the IPO route due to 2019 being the year of startup unicorn IPO failures. See: Uber, Lyft, Peloton, and the final nail in the coffin, WeWork. Turns out Wall Street isn't as blind to profitability and forgiving of unsustainable models as business valuators and VC investors are. ;)
Reddit is still trying some crazy ideas. They are doubling down on Reddit awards and also messing around with crypto . Now I think both of these options are worse than traditional advertising for...
Reddit is still trying some crazy ideas. They are doubling down on Reddit awards and also messing around with crypto . Now I think both of these options are worse than traditional advertising for the user (it's why I found tildes!), but Reddit is definitely trying to diversify it's profits.
They also have this "Special Membership" thing they've been trying to do in a few subreddits (which ties into some of the crypto stuff, I think). And they recently sent out this message to some...
They also have this "Special Membership" thing they've been trying to do in a few subreddits (which ties into some of the crypto stuff, I think).
Cause both Twitter and Reddit are super duper effed if people are no longer interested in paying for people's attention in the ways they were built to maximize.
Cause both Twitter and Reddit are super duper effed if people are no longer interested in paying for people's attention in the ways they were built to maximize.
Because, most likely they'll need to convince their users, and especially potential new users to pay a subscription for what they're reading and watching, when their primary purpose is often just...
Because, most likely they'll need to convince their users, and especially potential new users to pay a subscription for what they're reading and watching, when their primary purpose is often just to be a feed people scroll down. Imagine a paywall to read Twitter?
While monopoly can certainly make people pay quite a bit for social media and subcriptions tend to be pretty advantageous for centralization (one big bundle with all Google software is much cheaper than paying for all of those things individuually), people will have at least a passing interest in what is being done with their money, and for something as universal as social media, it might feel like taxation, and it's not hard to imagine people blaming programmers for not getting paid a minimum wage like everyone else.
I see what you are saying but I actually don't see that as far fetched idea today. A lot of people are tired of the "everybody should have a say, all the time, no matter what". But then again it...
Imagine a paywall to read Twitter?
I see what you are saying but I actually don't see that as far fetched idea today. A lot of people are tired of the "everybody should have a say, all the time, no matter what". But then again it would be with the notion that these companies would want quality over quantity and with the current business models that doesn't seem likely.
App.net tried to do that in 2012... they lasted less than 5 years back then. Their released their source code (or most of it, didn't really check): https://github.com/appdotnet
App.net tried to do that in 2012... they lasted less than 5 years back then.
I see...although this example seems different from reddit. Maybe a system where subs decides for themselves about subscription. I could see that work because the more serious subs have more...
I see...although this example seems different from reddit. Maybe a system where subs decides for themselves about subscription. I could see that work because the more serious subs have more dedicated users. Sort of like the difference between having an account/not having an account.
I'm totally fine and not worried about anything at all. Like the Financials page says, it's really intended as more of a long-term milestone and reminder that Tildes can't really be thought of as...
I'm totally fine and not worried about anything at all. Like the Financials page says, it's really intended as more of a long-term milestone and reminder that Tildes can't really be thought of as a sustainable, independent project until it's able to reach that level of donations consistently.
We'll actually be even further from the goal pretty soon, because it looks like we're going to hit the $5000 cap on the GitHub Sponsors Matching Fund either this month or next, and that's currently the source of about $500/month. So we're not close to reaching that sustainability goal yet, but that's fine. The site's costs to keep running are minimal, there's no risk of ever needing to shut down.
I'll most likely end up taking a part-time/full-time job somewhere eventually and treating Tildes as more of a side project for a while, but I'm happy with that.
Okay! I was thinking that we should be emphasizing growth more since it's not happening on its own, but if you're fine being patient then I guess it's not that urgent.
Okay! I was thinking that we should be emphasizing growth more since it's not happening on its own, but if you're fine being patient then I guess it's not that urgent.
Yeah, we probably should be pushing for more growth anyway, but we can do it for the right reasons and not just out of a need to try to get more donations.
Yeah, we probably should be pushing for more growth anyway, but we can do it for the right reasons and not just out of a need to try to get more donations.
"And yet since it doesn't affect me and also makes me richer, I don't care"
“I know for many of you, [Trump] is simply a symbol of hate and there’s no getting around that — what he represents,” Huffman said. “And as a result, many of you have very real anger towards him or fear of where the country is going or sadness around where the country is going, and believe me, I share a lot of those emotions around the state of our country — the polarization of political discourse, the inflammatory rhetoric, the incompetence from our government. It feels like we are regressing.”
"And yet since it doesn't affect me and also makes me richer, I don't care"
Since other people are probably also flummoxed with how to square this quote with Huffman's position, here's the actual justification: So the justification boils down to, essentially, "political...
Since other people are probably also flummoxed with how to square this quote with Huffman's position, here's the actual justification:
" ... We will have a role to play in this election no matter what. And political ads are a part of the political process. And if there’s a chance that Reddit can show another more healthy, more effective way, or add to the political conversation I think we should take it. ... "
So the justification boils down to, essentially, "political ads promote healthy discourse." Yeah, right.
I did this with r/hiphopheads the day it was an option. Everytime a post hit All before we'd get a flood of trolls. They also made us a default sub in the Reddit mobile app for months if a user...
I did this with r/hiphopheads the day it was an option. Everytime a post hit All before we'd get a flood of trolls. They also made us a default sub in the Reddit mobile app for months if a user said they "like" music when signing up, which brought in a ton more of these. Opted out the minute we realized why it was happening.
That's a good idea. We've only got 170k subs so we're smaller than some, but being a sports sub means we will occasionally get some very high upvoted posts that make it to /r/all.
That's a good idea. We've only got 170k subs so we're smaller than some, but being a sports sub means we will occasionally get some very high upvoted posts that make it to /r/all.
So they're going to allow ads that are directly counter to what they say they support/stand for. Then they are going to not allow comments on it because of the obvious shitshow they will be. It'll...
So they're going to allow ads that are directly counter to what they say they support/stand for. Then they are going to not allow comments on it because of the obvious shitshow they will be. It'll be shitshow if they allow Comrade Cheeto's team to moderate them, it'll be a shitshow if reddit admins moderates them, so instead users will be given an option to share the ad to other subs where reddit expects their army of unpaid and ignored moderators to shoulder the burden of the shitshow while also increasing the ad's reach.
@Deimos, have we thanked you lately for ensuring that Tildes is not reliant on ad revenue?
Thank you.
For anyone who is grateful, if you're financially in a place to do so, consider donating to Tildes monthly as a show of support (if you're not already). We as users are not monetized for our views or behavior here, so it is on us to cover costs and keep this place afloat.
Thanks! And yes, this is a perfect demonstration of why it's important to get away from these influences.
We've talked about it with other companies like Twitter recently, but we're seeing massive drops in advertising revenue all over the internet. Reddit isn't considered one of the "top-tier" social media platforms, so I suspect it's even worse for them because companies will be a lot more willing to stop advertising on Reddit than Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc.
Reddit has taken a ton of venture capital recently ($500 million in the last 3 years), and was supposed to be gearing up for an IPO sometime in the near future (they previously said 2020). A huge revenue drop is a really big problem for that, so they probably can't even truly consider turning down these ads, whether they want to or not.
Judd Legum said last week that the Trump campaign was spending $5.4 million per week on Facebook ads. Regardless of what Steve or the other executives/employees actually think about it, I doubt it's even a realistic option for Reddit to turn down a deep-pocketed advertiser like that in this situation.
And thanks for the reminder - I updated the Financials page and put the donation goal meter back into the home page sidebar.
As someone who has done a bit of very targeted, low cost advertising on Reddit, it's not really very hard to see why they aren't considered a top place to spend money. The RoI even in the absolute best case scenario is abysmal compared to even poorly optimized Facebook ads. Redditors hate ads, and don't want to see them or click them, even in the event that you are advertising a free event hosted by a non-profit for the benefit of a community, meanwhile Facebook gets organic engagement and brings in underserved and underrepresented folks like it's magic.
The real decision I don't understand here is the Trump campaign wanting to spend money on the platform. The users are obviously going to be overwhelmingly not receptive, and the age, education, etc demographics are bad as well. I'm not sure the campaign gets anything other than a pile of angry redditors out of their ad spend.
That could actually be a goal. Not to actually influence the average redditor, but to wallpaper it with ads, hoping that one of them or a meme of it goes viral . Then despite the thing that went viral being a mockery of some Trump policy, the media is forced to talk about it for a cycle or two.
I remember years ago people were already talking about how advertising revenue was falling and internet real-estate was becoming increasingly less profitable, and yet somehow companies like Reddit and Twitter keep insisting it's the way forward somehow...
I think the core of it is that even with all of advertising's downsides and risks, it's still the only business model that's gotten any social-media-like services to billion-dollar valuations. And when you've taken large amounts of venture capital, that's the only real goal. VCs are usually investing in dozens (or hundreds) of companies, and just want a few of them to hit those massive valuations. They'd rather have all the others fail while shooting for the moon than end up with a bunch of "sustainable" businesses, because those can't give them the returns they need.
I understand what you are saying but I'm confused about one thing: as far as I can tell Reddit and Twitter already attained their high valuations and are now scrambling as hard as they can to make their advertisement-based operation financially solvent. So why do they keep digging in deeper on the proven, unsustainable model rather than taking even more moonshots to try and invent a new model or just cashing their chips and leaving?
That's really a much larger question about business, valuations, venture capital, and more, so it's not easy to answer. Trying to be relatively brief and over-simplifying a lot:
Reddit is still a private company (their stock isn't available for purchase by the public), so their valuation is really just theoretical at this point, based on how much private investors were willing to pay. In their most recent venture capital round, they took $300M from investors for 10% of the company, so that gives them a valuation of $3 billion at that point. But if I was to start a new company and convince someone to give me $10,000 for a 1% share of it, that doesn't necessarily mean that my company is actually worth a million dollars.
There's also a large difference between really early investments, where the investor is probably more willing to see the company do something risky and unproven (and likely fail), and ones you get at later stages. The investors that are putting $500M into Reddit when it's 12+ years old and well-established won't be looking for them to suddenly try doing something crazy that might destroy the company.
Similarly, even though Twitter is public, people that buy Twitter stock are (in theory) valuing it based on the revenue they think the company will make in the future. That judgment is currently being based on assuming that they'll continue to make a lot of money from advertising. If Twitter suddenly announced that they were removing all their ads, their stock (and valuation) would drop massively because people would no longer know what to expect for future revenue. They could end up being worth even more in the future if they do manage to find a better revenue source, but a lot of investors won't be interested in taking that risk.
I think I can probably answer at least part of that. For VC investors to cash in their chips, the company needs to go public or get acquired, however reddit's are likely incredibly wary of going down the IPO route due to 2019 being the year of startup unicorn IPO failures. See: Uber, Lyft, Peloton, and the final nail in the coffin, WeWork. Turns out Wall Street isn't as blind to profitability and forgiving of unsustainable models as business valuators and VC investors are. ;)
Reddit is still trying some crazy ideas. They are doubling down on Reddit awards and also messing around with crypto . Now I think both of these options are worse than traditional advertising for the user (it's why I found tildes!), but Reddit is definitely trying to diversify it's profits.
They also have this "Special Membership" thing they've been trying to do in a few subreddits (which ties into some of the crypto stuff, I think).
And they recently sent out this message to some subreddits too, asking mods if they thought their subreddit would be interested in paying to "unlock features" like longer and higher-quality videos, and gifs and emoji in comments.
Cause both Twitter and Reddit are super duper effed if people are no longer interested in paying for people's attention in the ways they were built to maximize.
Because, most likely they'll need to convince their users, and especially potential new users to pay a subscription for what they're reading and watching, when their primary purpose is often just to be a feed people scroll down. Imagine a paywall to read Twitter?
While monopoly can certainly make people pay quite a bit for social media and subcriptions tend to be pretty advantageous for centralization (one big bundle with all Google software is much cheaper than paying for all of those things individuually), people will have at least a passing interest in what is being done with their money, and for something as universal as social media, it might feel like taxation, and it's not hard to imagine people blaming programmers for not getting paid a minimum wage like everyone else.
Related thread
I see what you are saying but I actually don't see that as far fetched idea today. A lot of people are tired of the "everybody should have a say, all the time, no matter what". But then again it would be with the notion that these companies would want quality over quantity and with the current business models that doesn't seem likely.
App.net tried to do that in 2012... they lasted less than 5 years back then.
Their released their source code (or most of it, didn't really check): https://github.com/appdotnet
I see...although this example seems different from reddit. Maybe a system where subs decides for themselves about subscription. I could see that work because the more serious subs have more dedicated users. Sort of like the difference between having an account/not having an account.
Are you doing outside work? The amount of money Tildes gets each month is far short of the goal.
I'm totally fine and not worried about anything at all. Like the Financials page says, it's really intended as more of a long-term milestone and reminder that Tildes can't really be thought of as a sustainable, independent project until it's able to reach that level of donations consistently.
We'll actually be even further from the goal pretty soon, because it looks like we're going to hit the $5000 cap on the GitHub Sponsors Matching Fund either this month or next, and that's currently the source of about $500/month. So we're not close to reaching that sustainability goal yet, but that's fine. The site's costs to keep running are minimal, there's no risk of ever needing to shut down.
I'll most likely end up taking a part-time/full-time job somewhere eventually and treating Tildes as more of a side project for a while, but I'm happy with that.
Okay! I was thinking that we should be emphasizing growth more since it's not happening on its own, but if you're fine being patient then I guess it's not that urgent.
Yeah, we probably should be pushing for more growth anyway, but we can do it for the right reasons and not just out of a need to try to get more donations.
"And yet since it doesn't affect me and also makes me richer, I don't care"
Since other people are probably also flummoxed with how to square this quote with Huffman's position, here's the actual justification:
So the justification boils down to, essentially, "political ads promote healthy discourse." Yeah, right.
That's their response when people ask them if they'll ban certain awful subreddits, so they're consistent >_>
I did this with r/hiphopheads the day it was an option. Everytime a post hit All before we'd get a flood of trolls. They also made us a default sub in the Reddit mobile app for months if a user said they "like" music when signing up, which brought in a ton more of these. Opted out the minute we realized why it was happening.
I would love to see this become a movement, just so we can watch as reddit changes that setting or some such to ensure the ad revenue is not affected.
I would argue that keeping your sub out of r/all should always be a top priority as a mod.
Is there a list of all of the subs that have opted out somewhere? It would be interesting to see, as there are no doubt quite a few.
That's a good idea. We've only got 170k subs so we're smaller than some, but being a sports sub means we will occasionally get some very high upvoted posts that make it to /r/all.
So they're going to allow ads that are directly counter to what they say they support/stand for. Then they are going to not allow comments on it because of the obvious shitshow they will be. It'll be shitshow if they allow Comrade Cheeto's team to moderate them, it'll be a shitshow if reddit admins moderates them, so instead users will be given an option to share the ad to other subs where reddit expects their army of unpaid and ignored moderators to shoulder the burden of the shitshow while also increasing the ad's reach.
Great fucking plan!
I found a clip of Reddit CEO Steve Huffman when asked why he would do this...