

I gladly donated to reddit but I won't pay for it - aresant
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/croqe/i_gladly_donated_to_reddit_but_i_wont_pay_for_it/

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machrider
It's funny, when I saw the reddit blog post about the new features, I
immediately thought they're shooting themselves in the foot. When you use a
donation model, people donate what they feel they can afford, and some will be
quite generous. As soon as you give specific rewards, it switches to a value
decision in the user's head. Are the new features worth the price? The result
of adding these features might be fewer people making the switch to "gold".

~~~
kmak
This was mentioned in "Predictably Irrational", essentially, this is exactly
what you don't want to do, changing a decision from social to being
economical. Unfortunately, you can't change it back easily.

I believe the example given was that of a daycare center. It used to be looked
down upon when you pick up your kids late, and parents try to avoid it as much
as possible. The center then added a penalty of some small monetary amount.
This allows the parents to rationalize this as an economic decision, and many
more chose to pay the fine. Even after they took the fine out again, they were
unable to get the lateness rate down.

------
zbrock
Reddit just needs to hire a sales/bizdev team. They have plenty of traffic,
they just don't seem to have anyone creative or even competent trying to turn
that traffic into cash flow. The first step might be actually selling some of
their ad inventory. At least half the reddit pages I go to have ads for
reddit. Digg has actually done some pretty innovative work around social ads
that reddit could steal without too much effort. But again, they'd need
someone to sell those ads.

------
s810
Disgruntled redditors will be coming here.

As one of them, I genuinely hope we don't make you feel as though Eternal
September has come at last for this place, but you can't say you weren't
warned or that you couldn't see it coming.

~~~
andreyf
When you get a chance, please read the guidelines:
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
s810
>If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying
that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

I am genuinely not trying to start a flamewar (as stated in line 3 of the
comments section of the 'guidelines'), but I don't think it's going to be an
illusion for much longer.

This site seems to be mentioned very often recently (along with metafilter and
buzzfeed) as becoming the reddit refugee camp for those who don't like what
they're doing over there for a variety of reasons. Anyone who frequents both
can attest to this.

P.S. my account here is more than a year old, having said that though, i never
did read the rules until now. A good read. Thanks for listening.

~~~
Locke1689
There's nothing directly wrong with people coming from Reddit to HN. I never
really spent a lot of time with Reddit as even when I transitioned I felt that
Reddit was already in its downward spiral. My only fear would be that some of
Reddit's mainstream users would make the transition but I feel this is
unlikely, given the nature of the site. By having an established technical
presence, along with progressive karma unlocks, new accounts have
comparatively little influence on the moderation itself.

In addition, while Reddit facilitates anonymous discussion, Hacker News has a
substantial transparency in its population. My real name and address, for
example, are trivial to find out using the information in my HN profile -- and
that's kind of the point. You'll find that this practice is far more common on
HN than on Reddit.

~~~
andreyf
_In addition, while Reddit facilitates anonymous discussion, Hacker News has a
substantial transparency in its population. My real name and address, for
example, are trivial to find out using the information in my HN profile -- and
that's kind of the point. You'll find that this practice is far more common on
HN than on Reddit._

I hadn't noticed this, but it's very true. As a side-effect of the "would you
say this in person?" question, I treat HN users as I would people I would have
no hesitation of meeting in person. On reddit, although someone could put in
the effort to find/meet me in person, I assume no one will.

------
tommynazareth
If I were in their position, I'd try to swing the donation model. Reddit
offers value and should receive value in return.

There is nothing wrong with trying to monetize an audience through
advertising, but in some circumstances it is insulting to users. Reddit's
value is derived from a strong sense of community and identification with that
community: Secret Santa, University of Reddit, Reddit Island, and on and on.
This spirit might not co-exist with aggressive advertising.

There is also nothing wrong with a premium subscription, but I think the
author of the linked post makes a clear case for why this is harmful to the
Reddit community.

Fundraising, however, would only tie the community together even more and
intensify people's relationship with the site. Focus on the introducing the
idea of ongoing donations into the culture, and focus on steering users away
from the massive hive-mind sub-Reddits where there is less likely to be a
sense of obligation to the site, and get more people involved in smaller
Reddit communities where they are more likely to feel a personal connection.

I'd hate to see Reddit die, but I'd really hate to see it ruined because they
can't figure a congruous business model.

------
thought_alarm
Not me.

I'm holding out for Reddit Platinum so I can look down my nose at those common
Gold members.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
If the board of Conde Nast decide they want to have their cars washed in
cristal again at next years board meeting instead of letting reddit have
enough to pay for an extra engineer then it's sure to come along.

------
davidw
Seems like backwards thinking to me. You'll gladly "help out" a billion-dollar
corporation, but won't pay for some genuine extra services?

I'm seriously thinking I should ask for donations for LangPop.com - people
like it but don't click on the ads. Maybe I could have a donate-o-meter for
different languages.

~~~
vampirical
Speaking as a donor who isn't considering "subscribing", others probably felt
as I did, that we were donating to help out the reddit team rather than Conde
Nast.

I have no interest in paying for reddit on a regular basis and cannot imagine
any feature or service they could add that would make me change my mind. A
donation to give the reddit team an opportunity to get their heads above water
and start making positive progress was what I signed up for.

The last 6 months to a year, reddit has had regular scaling/feature/etc.
problems and the communication from the admins and devs has always had the
same tone of overwhelm. I'd love to see a site I use so often and enjoy so
much get out of that hole and though I don't see this as being the way I wish
them the best of luck.

(A bit off-topic but EC2 sticks out as the big money sink they need to fix,
the last number I remember them quoting was $200,000 a year for their EC2/S3
usage. I would have loved to hear the money was going to outfitting a few
racks and moving things back out of the cloud.)

~~~
davidw
> we were donating to help out the reddit team rather than Conde Nast.

In other words, you and the other donors lost a game of chicken with Conde
Naste, and are paying for something that they now do not have to.

I suppose it's possible that they really would have shut things down or just
let the site rot, but it seems a bit odd. Hard to know without more
information though.

------
zackattack
Has YCombinator funded any legitimately profitable companies?

~~~
iamelgringo
Yes, but a lot of them don't find it necessary to openly talk about their
balance sheets.

I'm sure Wufoo and the Weeblies are profitable. Grapevine says that MixPanel
is profitable already. AirBnb came out early in the press and said they were
ramen profitable and then talked about the advantages of being "pizza"
profitable shortly thereafter. I'd be very suprised if Dropbox wasn't making
decent money, although they may be focused on scaling rather than maximizing
profit. I could be wrong, but at the work at a startup event, a couple of
companies said that they were profitable already. Listia, maybe? Don't quote
me on this.

From talking to YC founders, there's a pretty heavy emphasis to getting ramen
profitable as soon as possible to gain leverage in fund raising negotiations.
Starving founders tend to give away more equity and get worse terms than
founders that can feed themselves and pay the rent.

p.s. Nice to talk to you, Zack. How are things?

~~~
zackattack
Things are OK. Thanks for asking. I'm too disorganized, trying to get a half
dozen projects going at the same time, so I am planning on hiring a life
coach.

How are things with you?

