[mustacheemperor]

It's going to be a fun thought experiment at the bar for years now - how would you have brought reddit to profitability starting in Q1 2023?

Maybe there was a way to lever that value for ML training - and the constantly updated nature of the "training database" - into a profit model unlike any other social media app. Not the kind of innovation this team wanted to build, clearly.

[chx]

I am old

I remember Esther Dyson: Release 2.0

She was talking about how, for example a wine forum could make money connecting wine sellers and buyers

do it

Instead of boring ads, make it possible for communities to engage with relevant businesses. Affiliate links, coupons and such. Meaningful dialogue. I am a former mod of /r/usbchardware and we were close to this a few times, with Sanho Hyper and SlimQ. Make yourself the "house brand" of the sub by engaging in good faith and you should be rewarded.

But even just affiliate links, as a former mod of /r/usbchardware, we very often recommend this and that and if we did that with affiliate links then everyone would be better off. And you can make a reputation system here which makes it much harder to just spam garbage.

This is an off-the-cuff idea which probably needs refinement but no way, no way you can't make good money from such hypertargeted communities. Just think outside of the box a little. Corporate spam gets you booted. A company offering insight, honest good advice gets you boosted. It's ... possible. There is a way making money for everyone involved which doesn't involve dirty play.

[danudey]

...or charge users $x/mo if they want to use third-party clients.

None of reddit's monetization so far has been even remotely appealing to me. I don't click on the ads (except by accident), I don't buy the NFTs, I don't pay for gold or get the coins or whatever. It's all stupid, asinine bullshit as far as I'm concerned.

Just like Twitter, the monetization plan is "a bunch of stuff that doesn't make the core experience better". A blue check mark? A stupid-looking avatar hat? Give me something tangible and I'll pay for it.

An MMO selling cosmetics makes sense. A social media site selling cosmetics... not so much.

[sroussey]

Having actually done this, it is a loosing direction (sadly). The idea is great, but people just don’t participate in that way. The closest I got was a Watch community that linked to eBay and I would add affiliate links if there were none. But that was one forum out of a million.

[Semaphor]

I work for a photography site. While money is tight thanks to less money being in the industry, most of the money we make is still with direct contacts, be it the major companies advertising their products, or smaller merchants advertising their stock. All context targeted, not user profiled.

[sroussey]

Photography is great as items to sell into that market can be quite expensive.

[intended]

Not sure if it could be done. Definitely not like their competitors.

Reddit feels like /was 3 firms.

A forum, hosting firm.

A sort of platform? Ads, compliance, support

A media firm - What they had with the old AMA and an employee helping guests.

I dont see any of these hitting Platform numbers. I do see it being a titan in popular culture.

[jstarfish]

Easy. Sell user data to the Chinese, and sell access to (pre-moderation) ingestion streams to domestic intelligence agencies. Win-win.

[nathanaldensr]

A great business plan, if you can keep it.