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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   2983 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 3, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What do you guys think about the reddit IPO from an investor's perspective?

Not seeing any good analysis about it on Reddit, but I'm sure there's really a ton of analysis to be had. They're not currently profitable, and the path to profitability isn't entirely clear from what I've read. All the investing subs are generally pessimistic but their reasoning mostly boils down to "reddit bad". I'm sympathetic to that take, I would also agree that the quality of reddit on aggregate has been going down (exacerbated around 2016ish IMO), but that doesn't mean it can't be profitable. Plenty of unprofitable companies IPO and end up profitable down the road.

I'm a boring low-cost index fund kind of guy so I'm staying away from it either way. I just haven't seen any real justification for why someone should or shouldn't buy besides vibes.

From the perspective of a long-term investor, I wouldn't buy. Stocks are a claim on future profits of the company and I don't think their future looks better than other investment opportunities.

  • The user base isn't as sticky as other social media because it is based on interacting anonymously. Other social media has more of a moat due to the connections you have with people you know IRL.
  • Users could easily get similar content elsewhere on the internet
  • Since users can easily leave any attempts to increase profitably could drive users away (such as the API changes). Competitors can eventually capitalize on any errors Reddit makes while chasing profitability.
  • Advertisers continue to shift to more targeted advertising and Reddit has a lot less data that is useful for this type of targeting than other social media that has user's personal details.
  • The utility of the site is going down. It isn't good for truth-seeking. It is a good place for social confirmation but eventually people get bored with constantly seeing variants of the same content everyday.
  • The quality of the data is going down as people get better at gaming the system to push their ideologies or spam.
  • I think there is a general societal trend of getting sick of all the bullshit on social media and wanting to have more authentic connections. At a minimum people are shifting to things like invite-only discords or online communities that require some digging to find.

I'm generally bearish on almost all social media sites being able to be profitable. Google and Facebook make most of their money from being the people who control the ads, not just present the ads. Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, and all the other even more niche social platforms like Strava, Snapchat, Discord, etc. I don't think have a chance at earning much money.

If someone sends you unwanted messages asking you to invest, that's a red flag in and of itself. We're in a crypto and AI bullrun - why would anyone want to buy reddit given available choices?

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