If they're unable to build a profitable product off of the existing foundations then, yes, I absolutely want them to fail. This is how capitalism works.
> Reddit is not profitable. They need a path to profitability to continue operating in a high rate environment.
They've had over a decade to innovate their way to success just like every other tech company of that era.
From a business standpoint, they are an abject failure and don't deserve to exist if they can't hire people smart enough to monetize without alienating the entire user base.
I'm very sympathetic. Doesn't seem like alienating all the volunteer labor is the way to go though.
Without much inside info, I think what they should have done is something like: 1. Make actually-good first-party tools for moderators, 2. Figure out how to monetize everything else.
But trying to make money off of the volunteer labor is not the way to go, IMO.
It really reminds me of Twitter. Why can't these super high traffic sites where all the content is contributed for free figure out how to make money?
Seeing as Reddit is already in the top visited sites in the US by many metrics [1] I find it somewhat hard to believe that they can't find a way to better monetize than astronomically increasing its API access.
Reddit is not profitable. They need a path to profitability to continue operating in a high rate environment.