[nostromo]

"Social network envy" will eventually be Reddit's undoing. The fact that they have been trying to position themselves as a social network, unsuccessfully, for several years and they still haven't given up on it is alarming. If Google can't even pull it off with all of their resources and properties (including giants like YouTube and Gmail), I don't see how Reddit will either.

The "me too" features, like the TikTok clone and the chat rooms, are either derided or ignored entirely by the community.

I suppose it's difficult for them to attract dollars and media attention as "just" a message board -- despite seemingly being the world's largest. But that's what their actual users want it to be: the world's best message board. But their product changes keep making it a worse message board in the hope of being more like Facebook.

[paxys]

I noticed this recently when they redesigned the comments view to make the user's profile picture a prominent part of the design. Except after the last few weeks of scrolling through comments, I have come across less than 10 users sitewide who have actually set a picture. It's now just a sea of default icons and a ton of wasted space.

I can't imagine people use the chat function either. It seems like they are prioritizing features for the sake of ad revenue or product team egos over making much needed infra updates. General latency and error rates while browsing reddit.com are almost unbearable now. And search always was and still is a mess. And don't get me started on the mobile apps..

[frenchy]

> I can't imagine people use the chat function either.

Spammers do.

[orange_tee]

I agree. Reddit should have kept their "niche" of being the only large only community (besides 4chan) that is pseudo anonymous.

The profiles bullshit really ruins it. But it's probably profitable in the short term. It's what advertisers want.

[intended]

I agree. Instead of trying to be a social network, I think they should have focused on their media advantage and kept Victoria, who created trust in the AMA.

But no, they killed it. The thing is, their AMA system captured lightning in a bottle very regularly. Engagement was high, the community was happy and it brought positive press to reddit, at least for the US market.

But like you said, social network envy.

[markdown]

> the chat rooms, are either derided or ignored entirely by the community.

The chat rooms were/are ignored because the sub mods can't moderate them at all. They end up being filled with spam/self-promotion.