7 ms·

Reddit Rumored To Be Raising Money, At A $400 Million Valuation

67 points by xmen 14y ago

tomasien 14y ago
With all the acquisition write-offs we see, it's pretty awesome to see that this one has worked out so well for Condé Nast. It was such an unconventional acquisition, and now it's worth about half of the New York Times. Other giants in fading industries should take note.
- apl 14y ago
  > (...) and now it's worth about half of the New York Times. It's one of those cases where I can't help but think, you know, maybe our metrics are way off.
  - graeme 14y ago
    Off in that the NYT should be worth more because it makes money, or off in that Reddit should be worth more because of it's ungodly amounts of traffic and devotion?
    - markdown 14y ago
      Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. NYT on the other hand... The latter should be worth far more than it is.
      - kami8845 14y ago
        >Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. You don't understand the value of reddit. As I've written in other posts in this thread. It's the community and that's impossible to replace (as evidenced by the hundreds of other forums that have shit communities) Reddit is far and above many, many online communities in terms of breadth & depth.
        DanBC 14y ago
        People would have said the same about MySpace or text-only Usenet at one time. Imgur has some voting stuff now, and it'll be interesting to see if that helps it take off or not. And there are other sites trying to develop good communications. Hubski, for example.
        kami8845 14y ago
        Hubski looks interesting. I'll keep an eye on them, though do they do still look very tiny. I don't think Imgur will ever take off. There is no fostering of individual subcultures like there was with subreddits. Basically their entire content revolves around funny images. Their comments never become thoughtful like reddit's. MySpace started in 2003 and lost the battle to FB in 2008. Reddit was founded and has been growing steady and strong for 7 years, killing competitor Digg along the ride (Digg mainly caused it's own decline but I find the easy availability of a close competitor made it much easier). I stand by the above statement. Reddit's community grew slowly and organically while the admins went through great pains to remain as "hands-off" as they could. They have major respect for their community and understand that that's the make-or-break aspect of the site.
        eurleif 14y ago
        >I don't think Imgur will ever take off. Huh? Imgur already has more traffic than reddit. http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=r&b=ffffff&n=666666&r=2y&u=imgur.com&&u=reddit.com&#38 http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=400&h=220&o=f&c...;
        natrius 14y ago
        When I actively read them, I valued the communities of Slashdot, Fark and Metafilter just as much as I value the Reddit community. Reddit is less unique in that regard than you might think. It is absolutely more replaceable than the New York Times. It's mindboggling that I even had to type that last sentence.
        kami8845 14y ago
    - Turing_Machine 14y ago
      The last I heard the NYT had an estimated value roughly equal to that of the real estate it occupies (i.e. the paper, website, etc. are worth nothing).
      - Turing_Machine 14y ago
        Their stock is down 83% since 2002.
  - kami8845 14y ago
    Why is the NYT this wholy grail, that no company ever can aspire to be worth more than? For me personally Reddit is much more important than the NYT will ever be. If the NYT disappears tomorrow I couldn't care less. There's other publications that will fill its place. Reddit has allowed me to meet great people, have in-depth conversations on topics that no one in my near vicinity cares about and expand my knowledge into fields I never knew possible. It's a great place.
    - majormajor 14y ago
      If "impact of it disappearing" is your metric, I don't think it would take long for new Reddits to pop up if it disappeared tomorrow.
      - kami8845 14y ago
        Reddit has a unique and incredibly community. If you take the time and actually explore all of the amazing small subreddits that have developed their own cultures & rulesets and the content they've created, I doubt you would make this statement. There are great people in the specialist subreddits. Reddit is only worth as much as its community and that is _incredibly_ hard to reproduct and immensely valuable. Just look at HN. Dozens of people have come up with way better web apps to clone its functionality or have proposed redesigns. Nothing sticks and no one cares. The community is what makes sites like reddit & HN.
        majormajor 14y ago
        I'm a part of other great non-Reddit communities, some pre-dating Reddit, some that came later. Some of them have moved across forum software changes, URL changes, and ownership changes. What is it that makes you think Reddit communities are a different animal? Were Reddit to disappear, I'm sure those communities would find new homes. From where I'm sitting, the problem with basing Reddit's valuation on those communities is that Reddit doesn't own those communities. You can't always tell a community what to do (like how one can't build an HN replacement and expect the community to simply follow you there). If the steps Reddit takes to try to make a big return on investment anger those communities, the communities are free to leave. My view is that the network effects of Reddit are not nearly as strong as those of a Facebook or Instagram, and even those appear to be having some difficulty getting as much value out of their communities as they want.
  - stdbrouw 14y ago
    What's worth more, producing excellent journalism that occassionally exposes wrongdoing, or entertaining millions of people every day? Is police officer a more laudable occupation than movie director? What about a farmer versus a politician? I don't think it's so obvious that the NYT does more for society than Reddit. (Though you could argue that Reddit is more replaceable.)
cremnob 14y ago
In recent years I've really grown to despise Reddit, so I'm going to get a kick out of the angst that Redditors will feel when they gradually realize that their interests and Reddit's interests diverge.
- yesimahuman 14y ago
  I love reddit, but I do fear bringing on lots of investors will seriously damage the site and the community. Just look at what appears to have happened with Quora in the scramble to satisfy stakeholders.
  - onedev 14y ago
    What do you think has happened to Quora?
    - kami8845 14y ago
      -- Lost a lot of trust in the userbase when they did the ridiculous "Matt has viewed the following questions" stunt. -- Kicked one of the 2 co-founders, Cheever off, rumour has it he didn't want to go as aggressively after growth as D'Angelo & other powers wanted. -- Widely sneered at in SV as being the company to look at if you want to know what "taking it too far with forcing growth" means. Their "sign-on to view this content" is a joke. Especially if you combine with their "Our mission is to grow and spread the world's knowledge" Personally: -- Their site's JS is a fucking mess. Crashes both my Chrome _as well as_ my iPhone's Safari frequently.
      - paulrademacher 14y ago
        But you don't know that these were to satisfy investors, against the wishes of the company leadership.
        robryan 14y ago
        Doesn't matter that much who thinks it is a good idea. It is still a straight sacrifice of user experience in the name of capturing more user details and monetization.
loceng 14y ago
It will be interesting to see what they do with the money. I wonder too if they IPO if they will provide moderators a sum of money like Geocities did back in the day.
scottlu2 14y ago
It's surprising that Instagam would be considered a billion dollar business, but Reddit a 400 million dollar business.
- kmfrk 14y ago
  Instagram wasn't "worth $1B". It was worth $1B to Facebook (and even more to Twitter, apparently). It has to be viewed in that context. A context in which Facebook was botching mobile major time and described it as its major challenge in public filings.
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    > Instagram wasn't "worth $1B". It was worth $1B to Facebook Which, (given a fixed supply of exactly 1 Instgram) means that it was worth $1B. Whether Facebook overpaid (ie, whether they would have been better off spending part or all of that $1B elsewhere) is a completely separate question - the point is, the market valued Instagram at $1B.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
For what? I hate to be that guy, but I have seen a huge increase in "OP is a faggot" style posts being upvoted in the main subreddits (just in the last 4 weeks). I've always championed finding niche subreddits, and I do, but the result has been me spending increasingly little time on reddit. I check /r/rust, /r/golang, etc but that's about all I can stand.
- sillysaurus 14y ago
  If you have something to say that starts with "I hate to be that guy" then just don't say it. You're not their main audience, and they're massively popular. They're continuing to grow in popularity, and they're becoming increasingly relevant as a primary source of information. Reddit represents a fundamental step forward in how the internet interconnects everyday people. You may not see anything worthwhile, but in reality it's one of the most exciting future prospects of the internet in general. It has the potential to affect and influence generations. Something like that is truly special.
  - drivebyacct2 14y ago
    A year ago I would have bought that. Log out, look at the front page and repeat this with a straight face: >It has the potential to affect and influence generations.
    - batiudrami 14y ago
      That's because the front page is crap though. When they fix subreddit discovery (and Alexis mentioned in a comment reply that they're working on it), so that you actually find communities about what you're interested in, rather than presenting the opening page of the website as a cesspit of juvenile idiots, then it'll be great (again). But, they have to not screw that up first. It's not a simple problem - you have to communicate how the website works, give indications of the kinds of subreddits you can find, and get them to create an account and actually choose some before users get bored and click away.
      - 14y ago
devsatish 14y ago
Reddit is a addictive big-time sink. The only way I can get some work done is by blocking reddit.
elchief 14y ago
Doesn't reddit have 400M users? Sounds like someone picked "a buck a user" outta the air and, voila, valuation

67 points by xmen 14y ago

With all the acquisition write-offs we see, it's pretty awesome to see that this one has worked out so well for Condé Nast. It was such an unconventional acquisition, and now it's worth about half of the New York Times. Other giants in fading industries should take note.

apl 14y ago
> (...) and now it's worth about half of the New York Times. It's one of those cases where I can't help but think, you know, maybe our metrics are way off.
- graeme 14y ago
  Off in that the NYT should be worth more because it makes money, or off in that Reddit should be worth more because of it's ungodly amounts of traffic and devotion?
  - markdown 14y ago
    Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. NYT on the other hand... The latter should be worth far more than it is.
    - kami8845 14y ago
      >Reddit is replaceable. Shut down today, a dozen clones would rise up tomorrow. You don't understand the value of reddit. As I've written in other posts in this thread. It's the community and that's impossible to replace (as evidenced by the hundreds of other forums that have shit communities) Reddit is far and above many, many online communities in terms of breadth & depth.
      - DanBC 14y ago
        People would have said the same about MySpace or text-only Usenet at one time. Imgur has some voting stuff now, and it'll be interesting to see if that helps it take off or not. And there are other sites trying to develop good communications. Hubski, for example.
        kami8845 14y ago
        Hubski looks interesting. I'll keep an eye on them, though do they do still look very tiny. I don't think Imgur will ever take off. There is no fostering of individual subcultures like there was with subreddits. Basically their entire content revolves around funny images. Their comments never become thoughtful like reddit's. MySpace started in 2003 and lost the battle to FB in 2008. Reddit was founded and has been growing steady and strong for 7 years, killing competitor Digg along the ride (Digg mainly caused it's own decline but I find the easy availability of a close competitor made it much easier). I stand by the above statement. Reddit's community grew slowly and organically while the admins went through great pains to remain as "hands-off" as they could. They have major respect for their community and understand that that's the make-or-break aspect of the site.
        eurleif 14y ago
        >I don't think Imgur will ever take off. Huh? Imgur already has more traffic than reddit. http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=r&b=ffffff&n=666666&r=2y&u=imgur.com&&u=reddit.com&#38 http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?w=400&h=220&o=f&c...;
      - natrius 14y ago
        When I actively read them, I valued the communities of Slashdot, Fark and Metafilter just as much as I value the Reddit community. Reddit is less unique in that regard than you might think. It is absolutely more replaceable than the New York Times. It's mindboggling that I even had to type that last sentence.
        kami8845 14y ago
  - Turing_Machine 14y ago
    The last I heard the NYT had an estimated value roughly equal to that of the real estate it occupies (i.e. the paper, website, etc. are worth nothing).
    - Turing_Machine 14y ago
      Their stock is down 83% since 2002.
- kami8845 14y ago
  Why is the NYT this wholy grail, that no company ever can aspire to be worth more than? For me personally Reddit is much more important than the NYT will ever be. If the NYT disappears tomorrow I couldn't care less. There's other publications that will fill its place. Reddit has allowed me to meet great people, have in-depth conversations on topics that no one in my near vicinity cares about and expand my knowledge into fields I never knew possible. It's a great place.
  - majormajor 14y ago
    If "impact of it disappearing" is your metric, I don't think it would take long for new Reddits to pop up if it disappeared tomorrow.
    - kami8845 14y ago
      Reddit has a unique and incredibly community. If you take the time and actually explore all of the amazing small subreddits that have developed their own cultures & rulesets and the content they've created, I doubt you would make this statement. There are great people in the specialist subreddits. Reddit is only worth as much as its community and that is _incredibly_ hard to reproduct and immensely valuable. Just look at HN. Dozens of people have come up with way better web apps to clone its functionality or have proposed redesigns. Nothing sticks and no one cares. The community is what makes sites like reddit & HN.
      - majormajor 14y ago
        I'm a part of other great non-Reddit communities, some pre-dating Reddit, some that came later. Some of them have moved across forum software changes, URL changes, and ownership changes. What is it that makes you think Reddit communities are a different animal? Were Reddit to disappear, I'm sure those communities would find new homes. From where I'm sitting, the problem with basing Reddit's valuation on those communities is that Reddit doesn't own those communities. You can't always tell a community what to do (like how one can't build an HN replacement and expect the community to simply follow you there). If the steps Reddit takes to try to make a big return on investment anger those communities, the communities are free to leave. My view is that the network effects of Reddit are not nearly as strong as those of a Facebook or Instagram, and even those appear to be having some difficulty getting as much value out of their communities as they want.
- stdbrouw 14y ago
  What's worth more, producing excellent journalism that occassionally exposes wrongdoing, or entertaining millions of people every day? Is police officer a more laudable occupation than movie director? What about a farmer versus a politician? I don't think it's so obvious that the NYT does more for society than Reddit. (Though you could argue that Reddit is more replaceable.)

cremnob 14y ago

In recent years I've really grown to despise Reddit, so I'm going to get a kick out of the angst that Redditors will feel when they gradually realize that their interests and Reddit's interests diverge.

yesimahuman 14y ago
I love reddit, but I do fear bringing on lots of investors will seriously damage the site and the community. Just look at what appears to have happened with Quora in the scramble to satisfy stakeholders.
- onedev 14y ago
  What do you think has happened to Quora?
  - kami8845 14y ago
    -- Lost a lot of trust in the userbase when they did the ridiculous "Matt has viewed the following questions" stunt. -- Kicked one of the 2 co-founders, Cheever off, rumour has it he didn't want to go as aggressively after growth as D'Angelo & other powers wanted. -- Widely sneered at in SV as being the company to look at if you want to know what "taking it too far with forcing growth" means. Their "sign-on to view this content" is a joke. Especially if you combine with their "Our mission is to grow and spread the world's knowledge" Personally: -- Their site's JS is a fucking mess. Crashes both my Chrome _as well as_ my iPhone's Safari frequently.
    - paulrademacher 14y ago
      But you don't know that these were to satisfy investors, against the wishes of the company leadership.
      - robryan 14y ago
        Doesn't matter that much who thinks it is a good idea. It is still a straight sacrifice of user experience in the name of capturing more user details and monetization.

loceng 14y ago

It will be interesting to see what they do with the money. I wonder too if they IPO if they will provide moderators a sum of money like Geocities did back in the day.

scottlu2 14y ago

It's surprising that Instagam would be considered a billion dollar business, but Reddit a 400 million dollar business.

kmfrk 14y ago
Instagram wasn't "worth $1B". It was worth $1B to Facebook (and even more to Twitter, apparently). It has to be viewed in that context. A context in which Facebook was botching mobile major time and described it as its major challenge in public filings.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  > Instagram wasn't "worth $1B". It was worth $1B to Facebook Which, (given a fixed supply of exactly 1 Instgram) means that it was worth $1B. Whether Facebook overpaid (ie, whether they would have been better off spending part or all of that $1B elsewhere) is a completely separate question - the point is, the market valued Instagram at $1B.

drivebyacct2 14y ago

For what? I hate to be that guy, but I have seen a huge increase in "OP is a faggot" style posts being upvoted in the main subreddits (just in the last 4 weeks). I've always championed finding niche subreddits, and I do, but the result has been me spending increasingly little time on reddit. I check /r/rust, /r/golang, etc but that's about all I can stand.

sillysaurus 14y ago
If you have something to say that starts with "I hate to be that guy" then just don't say it. You're not their main audience, and they're massively popular. They're continuing to grow in popularity, and they're becoming increasingly relevant as a primary source of information. Reddit represents a fundamental step forward in how the internet interconnects everyday people. You may not see anything worthwhile, but in reality it's one of the most exciting future prospects of the internet in general. It has the potential to affect and influence generations. Something like that is truly special.
- drivebyacct2 14y ago
  A year ago I would have bought that. Log out, look at the front page and repeat this with a straight face: >It has the potential to affect and influence generations.
  - batiudrami 14y ago
    That's because the front page is crap though. When they fix subreddit discovery (and Alexis mentioned in a comment reply that they're working on it), so that you actually find communities about what you're interested in, rather than presenting the opening page of the website as a cesspit of juvenile idiots, then it'll be great (again). But, they have to not screw that up first. It's not a simple problem - you have to communicate how the website works, give indications of the kinds of subreddits you can find, and get them to create an account and actually choose some before users get bored and click away.
    - 14y ago

devsatish 14y ago

Reddit is a addictive big-time sink. The only way I can get some work done is by blocking reddit.

elchief 14y ago

Doesn't reddit have 400M users? Sounds like someone picked "a buck a user" outta the air and, voila, valuation