

Reddit (YC S05): 1 billion monthly pageviews - tewks
http://www.reddit.com/tb/fdyyf

======
blhack
Wow, good job, Team Reddit!

Since I think you guy still read HN: Something you all seem to do very, very
well is interact with your users. Almost every day I'll see somebody [usually
jedberg] show up in a thread answering a question, or responding to something,
or even just saying hello.

Like this:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/fdyyf/reddit_billions_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/fdyyf/reddit_billions_served/c1f7h8g)

That's awesome :).

~~~
StavrosK
Awesome? Would you still feel that way if _your_ employees spent all day on
reddit?!

~~~
emmett
I imagine so, if they were productive enough to reach 1 billion page views per
month while doing so. What makes you think that their community involvement
isn't the reason reddit has thrived while competitors have failed?

~~~
StavrosK
I'm just kidding!

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citricsquid
120,000,000 is what we (minecraft forum and minecraft wiki) hit for January
(as per quantcast) which I think is pretty neat too, for anyone who likes
pretty stats.

~~~
Mikushi
<http://i.imgur.com/jgXrf.png> If you like pretty stats, here are ours ;)
Congrats to the Reddit folks, one of my favorite website on the internet
nowadays!

~~~
phlux
Those would be the stats for what???

~~~
fairlyodd
Yea, I don't think there are 50 sites out there that could boast those
numbers.

~~~
Mikushi
Smokinn got it right. Stats that doesn't appear, we stream 1.2Billions
videos/month (doesn't count embedded content).

~~~
phlux
Can you reveal any $ numbers; e.g. CPM, conversions to paid accounts,
anything?

~~~
prs
I am not affiliate with Manwin but found the article that was submitted here
recently insightful. It partly deals with their operations:

The Geek-Kings of Smut <http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/70985/>

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bryanh
That's 380 pages every second consecutively. The reality is probably much
grimmer, say, 1000+ page a second during peak usage.

Very, very impressive.

~~~
jedberg
Yeah, usually up to about 1200-1300 per second, but that's just from our app
servers. Our caches can get up to 2500+ per second at peak.

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maverhick
For a co. that is handled by just a few developers, this is just phenomenal.
Hats off to the team! :)

~~~
phlux
Reddit is an amazing site and an amazing community - there are a lot more
factors that go into its success.

However, I think quality has suffered slightly recently based on the amount of
content that is FFUU comics and just plain pics.

While I have been a user for 4+ years, and I love the site to death - there
are some improvements in the UX tat could be made -- the most specific would
be to allow further tags of images/image types. Since a fair chunk of the % of
content is now images, I would be love to be able to unsub from specific image
types.

E.g. FFUU/rage based comics, regardless of their content/message, I just
personally dont prefer them. Cute pics, etc...

Reddit is king of my online content experience, but I am starting to need
further granular control that is better that just /r/subreddits.

~~~
StavrosK
Fun fact: I created the F7U12 subreddit. I'm sorry, but it's a fantastic way
to unwind and a great community due to the fact that most comics are common
annoyances everyday people have.

Besides, you can always unsubscribe.

~~~
phlux
More power to that /r/!

However - I am not a subscriber - and the FUU comic as a visual style has
become a way of communicating in many other subreddits.

I just want the _style_ /genre of a pic to be taggable so I can opt-out.

Regardless of the content of a FUUU / rage style comic, they never seem to be
seen as appropriate view-at-work material.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh, I agree with that. I hadn't realised there were comics posted in other
subreddits that much, maybe I didn't notice because I am subscribed to FU...

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raheemm
What does that translate to in ad revenues?

~~~
zachallaun
This is clearly simplified, but nevertheless...

    
    
      [deleted]
    

[edit] Info from comments demonstrates these results, though simplified, to be
incredibly optimistic. Assuming a CPM of $1.00 and taking into account the
ratio of paid advertisement to Reddit advertisement, the Monthly Revenue
number would dip _significantly_ to $100,000.

~~~
staunch
No site like Reddit can fill 1 billion impressions at $2 eCPM. Closer to $0.25
I'd bet.

~~~
blhack
I've run the "sponsored link" ads before, and it's usually $0.40-0.70 CPM.

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thomasfl
This proves that it doesn't have to have a negative effect on the page count
to open source the code. Reddit source code: <http://code.reddit.com/>

~~~
redthrowaway
It's probably been beneficial to them, given the number of people who've
identified vulnerabilities in the code then responsibly disclosed them.
Reddit's never had a serious security breach, which is doubt due in large part
to no sensitive information being linked to accounts, but also because they've
had quite a few people point out potential problems to them.

There's a lot to be said for free code review.

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kbd
In light of the threads lately about how well StackOverflow does with their MS
stack, I'm wondering how their traffic compares to Reddit, which runs on
OSS/Python + Java.

~~~
jbellis
\+ Cassandra :)

~~~
kbd
Cassandra was most of why I included "+Java" ;)

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spinlock
I have mixed feelings about this statistic. On the one hand, I get to feel
cool because I was into reddit before it got popular. On the other hand,
reddit has jumped the shark with all of the awful people that have recently
joined to get it to the 1 billion monthly pageview category. But, then again,
that's kind of a good thing because I don't visit reddit anymore so I'm a
million times more productive than I used to be :)

~~~
ilovecomputers
Having more people is a blessing and a curse. Same with having a tight nit
group of people.

With more people, the pro is that there is more activity. With this, you have
an effective mechanical turk of some sort since there are so many people to
get help from and one of those people can be very useful. The con is that
conversations are overloaded, so many try to post one liners to achieve top
listing status in a thread. This discourages those with better experience and
insight to make a comment since they have to spend a long time on a comment
only to have it buried and ignored. The other con is that only pop submissions
or submissions that take the least amount of time to consume (r/pics) have the
most upmods. Take Hacker News. I remember when it was like reading a
programmer's mailing list. Now with so many people, the most we can relate to
are tech gossip.

With less people conversations are more focused and detailed. The con is you
have to be lucky to have experienced individuals to provide better insight.

Still, don't quote me on this stuff. This is something a social scientist can
explain better.

Nonetheless, complaining about the degradation of an online community isn't
really something to get worked up about (and this is from a guy with a signed
reddit bobble-head and a first issue reddit sticker). Entropy is a fact of
nature. It's like a group of friends who had such a fun time together for a
certain era then end up hating each other. Or like Forrest Gump who reminded
me as a child that how your life is setup now isn't how it will always be. I
cried when I saw that movie as a child for I knew my care-free childhood life
was gonna be over anytime now and...shit, I just realized that happend.

~~~
thinkalone
> Take Hacker News. I remember when it was like reading a programmer's mailing
> list.

Well, there's <http://news.usethesource.com/news> :)

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fairlyodd
If you can't monetize a billion pageviews in ways other than Reddit Gold,
you've got to be kidding me.

~~~
slouch
reddit has a self-serve advertising system that's been in place longer than
reddit gold.

------
asdkl234890
If the reddit team had had (errr... how's my use of English past tense?) the
$150K deal, they might have lasted this long on just that. They probably would
not have sold to Conde Nast when they did.

~~~
sgentle
"Had" or "had had" are both correct, even though the latter sounds a bit
silly.

See also:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_ha...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher)

Welcome to English. We're sorry.

------
Loic
Congratulations!

Also, YC S05, we are in 2011. Work hard, play for the long run, listen to your
customers. Go through the lows and the highs, never stop, for nearly 6 years.
This what I take from this story :)

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Pewpewarrows
Huge congratulations to the reddit team, old and new.

Does this mean you'll be doing your next round of hiring for a new dev soon?

~~~
redthrowaway
They've hired one guy (spladug), and I believe they're further along in the
process on another. They announced a few months ago that they were hiring. [1]
Raldi or Jedberg would be the best people to ask. I'm sure one of them will
drop by this thread.

[1][http://blog.reddit.com/2010/11/thank-you-mr-nast-may-we-
have...](http://blog.reddit.com/2010/11/thank-you-mr-nast-may-we-have-
another.html)

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ryanb
this is really impressive, especially considering that they have just a couple
of engineers

