[aparsons]

I’ve posited repeatedly that when Reddit IPOs, I’ll be reallocating a significant chunk of my portfolio into their stock.

Their management has historically lacked focus, but if Reddit ever builds a half-competent search index, and positions itself as a search-first, discovery-second destination, they will be in the FANG tier of stocks.

They have the data. They have the dedicated, active user base. They have free moderation. The hard parts are solved. If only they get someone like Satya at the helm. (Also a big reason for me to believe that an acquisition may also be a good play for a AMZN/MSFT)

[godshatter]

As the deceased child comment to this post mentioned, reddit's UI is horrible. I strongly prefer old.reddit.com, but I don't expect it to live too long. A good UX designer would make their site much, much nicer to read (and hopefully much more performant). It appears that they are trying to push people to use their app, which I don't particularly wish to do since I'm on a desktop.

As for search, maybe they should just make a deal with another search engine and have it run the query on their site with site:reddit.com or !r in the background and show the results on a branded page. You would think that having access to their own data would make searching easier, but apparently it doesn't.

I am a big fan of reddit, even in it's broken state. As long as you're street smart and know where to stay away from, browsing reddit is a positive experience, at least for the subreddits I hang out in.

I'm really really hoping that one of the big companies doesn't buy reddit. They wouldn't know what to do with it and it would die an ignominious death. In my opinion, of course.

[zozbot234]

Reddit userbase is fast deteriorating. The power users who were responsible for much of its highest-quality content have been fleeing the sinking ship for quite some time - once a fully credible alternative springs up (and some are in the works already, with superior tech underlying them) they'll be as toast as Digg unless they radically course-correct.

[teatree]

Could you share some of those emerging alternatives?

[gfd]

If reddit ever becomes a significant influencer of people's buying decision (like this article is claiming), it too will be gamed.

Think automatic gpt3 bots making up life stories of how he was hiking up mt everest and just so happen to be wearing brand XYZ which saved his life. Along with autogenerated selfies to submit to gonewild to farm upvotes and other stuff to create a realistic user history.

I can't see how reddit can defend against seospam of that type when Google can't handle the simpler problem of content farms. Reddit will die overnight from being replaced by 99% bot accounts.

[tester756]

>they will be in the FANG tier of stocks.

what?

forum moderated by random people for free in their free time

reaching MAGMA stocks?

ok, maybe I'm a bit snarky, but seriously the gap is giaaaaaaant

[jfoster]

I think Amazon or Microsoft acquiring Reddit would probably just be the end of Reddit. They would feel pressured to censor it into non-existence.

[NaturalPhallacy]

They're already owned by Advance Publications, a privately held company.

To buy reddit they'd have to negotiate with the Newhouse family, not reddit's employees.

[Havoc]

They can't keep their website online and their search tech is so broken it regularly fails at returning my own sorted post history, let alone find anything.

You make good points:

>They have the data. They have the dedicated, active user base. They have free moderation.

...but overall I think they're likely to get wiped out mass exodus Digg style due to some black swan mismanaged incident before they enter FAANG tier

[Lascaille]

>They have the dedicated, active user base.

Have you ever used reddit? It's manifestly full of bots, with the second largest usergroup being schoolboys looking for porn and talking about video games.

There's a reason the ads you see on reddit are for absolute garbage products made by companies you've never heard of.

[rvz]

> I’ve posited repeatedly that when Reddit IPOs, I’ll be reallocating a significant chunk of my portfolio into their stock.

I've also repeatedly said I wouldn't buy before the lockup has expired. When it sinks due to the lockup expiry then its a better time to buy.

[sydthrowaway]

The redesign is absolutely horrendous.

[wing-_-nuts]

old.reddit.com and RES is the only way. Every time I have to use their new UI I die a little inside.