You don't understand network effects and information lock-in which is exactly why "legions of developers" fail at replacing reddit. Reddit is where the people are and because it is where the people are it is where all the information is and because it is where all the information is it is where the people are and etc etc. Until you break that loop you don't have a chance at replacing reddit no matter how much better your UI is.
There's a significant non-zero probability Reddit will break that loop themselves once they become beholden to big shareholders combined with their questionable internal decision making.
What I guess will happen is that it won't die for long time. But IPO won't go great and it will be slow fall to zero, and then someone takes it private and then it continues as zombie being moved from one dying empire to next one.
“In social networking, there is a huge advantage to have scale. You can find almost anyone on MySpace and the more time that has been invested in the site, the more locked in people are"
