Reddit Is Profitable For the First Time Ever (theverge.com) 40
In Reddit's third-quarter earnings results, the company reported a profit of $29.9 million, with $348.4 million in revenue -- a 68% increase year over year. The Verge reports: The company hasn't been profitable at any point in its nearly 20-year history. Since going public, Reddit lost $575 million during its first quarter on the market, but it decreased that loss to $10 million last quarter, and is now finally in the green. Reddit also grew to 97.2 million daily users over the past few months, marking a 47 percent increase from the same time last year. That number exceeded 100 million users on some days during the quarter, Reddit says.
Reddit's advertising revenue grew to $315.1 million, while "other" revenue reached $33.2 million on account of "data licensing agreements signed earlier this year." Both Google and OpenAI have cut deals with Reddit to train their AI models on its posts.
Reddit's advertising revenue grew to $315.1 million, while "other" revenue reached $33.2 million on account of "data licensing agreements signed earlier this year." Both Google and OpenAI have cut deals with Reddit to train their AI models on its posts.
Obligatory (Score:1)
We did it reddit!
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Reddit is all bots and partisan moderators. Watch the post volume drop dramatically after the election.
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But really any chat forum eventually becomes what you just described.
Fuck /u/spez (Score:1, Insightful)
Profit beats quality (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, unless you want cat videos and other ephemera, Reddit is not what it once was.
Maybe this is because many of the moderators left or, essentially, internet communities tend towards entropy.
Re:Profit beats quality (Score:4, Insightful)
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Agreed - using a search engine improves the signal to noise ratio for targetted consumption (i.e. reading about a specific thing).
Reddit, on its own, tends towards noise in some subs of interest to me (accepting this is a self-selected sample). This untargeted consumption (i.e. scrolling through a sub) is often not what is once was.
Reddit was designed for consumption related to ones interests - i.e. untargeted consumption within your choice of subs.
Re: Profit beats quality (Score:1)
"and is now finally in the green." (Score:4, Informative)
Should be:
"and is now finally in the black."
If using proper accounting terms.
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"Black" carries an association with oil and carbon. This is the new, environmentally friendly Reddit, so they say "green" instead -- "green" is associated with clean power and sustainability. It's especially associated with sustainability in the sense of having dollar bills. You know, to pay the bills. Which are usually printed in black ink.
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Generally speaking an accountant is going to be looking at a fiscal year for profitability, although in some cases a quarter can make sense.
Once again showing (Score:1, Flamebait)
That Slashdotters have precisely zero business sense. Just like the claims that Reddit will go bankrupt after what they did a few years back. Or the claims that Netflix will lose all its subscribers, or the claims that Meta can't keep spending money on VR, or that Uber will cease to exist, or that Tesla can't afford to make EVs, etc. etc.
Slashdotters are effectively the tech world equivalent of Jim Cramer when it comes to understanding business. They make a lot of noise, and usually the exact opposite of wh
Re:Once again showing (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdotters have precisely zero business sense
Slashdotters haven't had one unified opinion on any of those things, ever.
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Slashdotters haven't had one unified opinion on any of those things, ever.
Howeer 99.999% of slashdot commenters believe that Trump was sent by god to rid the USA of the godless commie bastards from "the left". While they may not know business, or history, or how to predict successful technology, they do know how to unify behind an internet troll.
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I'm assuming 99.998% of those accounts are sock puppets based on the abundance of very high UIDs. There's even tools which automate account registration and comment posting here.
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That Slashdotters have precisely zero business sense. Just like the claims that Reddit will go bankrupt after what they did a few years back.
The claims were mainly that the decisions would impact the creation of new content. It's entirely possible the decisions led to a short-term profit but jeopardized the company's future prospects (assuming it had any...).
Depending on your understanding of "business sense" that might be good or bad: after all many only really care about the short-term profits.
Bingo (Score:3)
It's entirely possible the decisions led to a short-term profit but jeopardized the company's future prospects
The death of a company doesn't have to be sudden and spectacular, like an Enron. Many of them take years or even decades to accomplish, like a Kodak.
Think of Reddit like a company who owned some land with oil beneath it. They weren't an oil company themselves, so one day, they decided to sell their valuable plot of land to an oil company to mine it. Wonderful decision in the moment, because now t
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Don't know if it's lack of business sense or wishful thinking, that these moves in a rational world should face backlash from customers as they are against the best interests of the user base. That a user base would protect their self interests and reward alternatives that treat them better. Perhaps remembering that is pretty much how the tech industry generally played out back in the 80s-90s. The user base was comprised of significantly more particularly invested individuals. Now with that slice of the
So it's still in the hole... (Score:3)
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20 years in the red, losing $$, how did it survive ???
The simplest answer is, it probably shouldn’t have.
But one can make that ‘simple” argument about billions in valuation in the market. Snapchat filed in their IPO practically bragging about how they’ve never made money. Was losing 500 million a year. What was the stock market response? A valuation north of 20 billion. Where are they today? Well:
Snapchat has not recorded an annual profit, it made a net loss of $1.3 billion in 2023
And people still wonder why stock market crashes are inevitable.
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Follow the money.
Allegedly intelligence cut-outs filtered through VC's.
In exchange for a surveillance/censorship version of Usenet.
It's just what always happens with centralized services.
Product (Score:3)
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All I got out of reddit were weird porn, bots, permabans for having the wrong opinion, more bots, circlejerks and hidden ads.
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Re: Product (Score:2)
They only had to sell of the data for AI training (Score:2)
Wonder what will happen when the AI bubble bursts and they find many users and mods are not there anymore.
So about same as B4 but sell user data ($31M) (Score:1)
They mention advertising growing... sure, it is slightly better than last year but advertising didn't grow that much
The big reason they are profitable is they now have $31 million dollars more from data to train models
A little side-dish of facism for your profit (Score:2)
Here. Have a little side dish of Facism to go with your profit.
https://thefederalist.com/2024... [thefederalist.com]
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Was it worth it? (Score:2)
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did somebody say AI? (Score:2)
Didn't they make a deal with OpenAI this summer?
i noticed an uptick in reddit clickbait (Score:2)