this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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They looked at the leaves, and failed to see the forest, thinking that simply not killing old.reddit was enough to avoid Digg-ing the grave. Because from their view that's how Digg died - v4 happened, users couldn't go back, they got pissy, and they left.
@[email protected] is also right when he says that they compared Reddit with other social media platforms and took the wrong conclusions. What keeps people in Facebook aren't "content creators" or what have you, but their relatives and friends; in Reddit there's no such thing, people weren't there because of more people but because of the content that those people created, so their connection with the platform is considerably weaker.
I also think that the trust thermocline played a role. It wasn't the first time that the platform pissed its own users.
Agreed on the reasons why FB stayed relatively strong despite its reputation going down the drain. What kept many people from leaving FB for good is actually network effects: that one's friends and family, coworkers and colleagues, are more likely to be in FB than not in it. Huffman's site? Not so much. I don't care if someone I know IRL is in it, and I sure as hell wouldn't want them to know I used it.
The platform formerly known as Twitter is a more apt comparison, to be honest, but it's still way too early to tell if it has actually weathered the storm, or has become so rotten on the inside that it'd spectacularly fail in the near future.
Perhaps Twitter is a third can of worms, it's neither about content (as Reddit) nor the users' social circles (as FB), more like a few anchor people keeping the others there. Due to that Musk's idea (to pay creators to stay there) might actually help.
I still think that it'll fail due to other decisions Musk took, but less spectacularly than Reddit. Musk is at least trying to think by himself, Spez is simply following others.
I think Steve Huffman is only after the possible profits he'd make on the IPO. He doesn't care if his reputation would be sullied amongst the proles like us, nor does he care if he's being original and ground-breaking. He just cares about the money.
Will it work though? I want to bet on the possibility that his IPO will fail due to all the bad news about his site as of recent, but given that the world in general has been disappointing recently, I'll just keep my money to myself, lol!
He is after the IPO money but Dunning-Kruger is the hell of a drug, Spez is simply not a good CEO and he doesn't know how to maximise pre-IPO numbers. So odds are that he thought "who's in the same situation as me? Ah, The Iron Man¹! He's a cool guy, has lots of money and a platform like mine. I assume that he knows what he is doing², so I'll ape what he did!". Musk killed 3PAs and got rid of the people criticising his platform, so did Spez.
And killing 3PAs pre-IPO does actually have some merit. They created value³ for Reddit, but detracted from the immediate profit; but if you're selling the company you don't care about the value, you care about the immediate profit to show your potential buyers "see? This company is profitable, gib lotsa moni". However odds are that things happened faster than Spez predicted, odds are that he assumed that the protests would last a bit and die, not that people would say "enough of this shit". And now odds are that he lost that "magical" window of opportunity to maximise Reddit's price to the potential new buyers.
Hahahaha~ If it's any consolation to you, I also cringed reading the part that made you cringe while writing it. More than enough cringe for all of us to share around!
Yeah, you actually said out loud what I was just thinking to myself when I wrote my previous reply. Not exactly what you wrote, but I was thinking that if it worked for others, it's good enough for himself. Why think of a good idea when you can just copy others'? Something along those lines. However, copying ideas actually does take some work as well. It's not enough to just copy what they did and apply it to your situation. You've also got to think about whether or not what you're copying is a good fit for your circumstances.
About the third point though, the way I see it is that Huffman tried his best (the key word is ‘tried’) to increase the profitability of his site to entice potential buyers, which even though it'd detract from immediate profitability, would add to the money he'd cash out at the IPO in the end—or so he imagines. Agreed with how things didn't happen according to how Steve anticipated them though. And in fairness to Huffman, other flareups have ended in a similar way. What he didn't anticipate is how these changes (the API changes) will affect how a lot of people (and the ones that contribute a lot of content) would interact with his site. So, yeah!