r/place extension going as expected

awesome_person@lemm.ee to Reddit@lemmy.world – 1147 points –
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The real fuck spez would be a blank canvas. He doesn't care what we write on there as long as he's getting clicks and engagement

Is that why their valuation keeps falling?

I mean I get the idea, but it's not accurate in practice. When your commodity is your community and your community is showing nothing but disrespect towards your plans and authority, you become a very volatile investment.

See: Twit- sorry, X. See X for example.

User engagement doesn't help as much as a literally mutinous userbase hurts.

We can please not bring the "we did it Reddit!" culture to Lemmy?

Reddit is a privately held company. Their valuation is falling because someone at Fidelity arbitrarily said so. Right now, given the current economic trends, almost every consumer tech company is taking a beating (Discord, Substack, etc), so in the larger context Reedit's drop in valuation is expected and smart money is expecting it to rise once the economy becomes hot and more investors have money to risk on consumer companies.

The biggest value of a social media is the influence it has on culture and society as a whole, which is why advertisers want to get in on the action (think of Facebook influencing elections). Engaging on the platform and even constantly talking about the platform is a great sign of it's lasting influence.

So no, spending an hour putting pixels on r/place is not a great way to stick it to Reddit. Constantly talking about Reddit and basically giving it free ad-space and mind share on Lemmy also does not stick it to Reddit. The original poster is correct: best thing is a blank canvas.

And ignore all the click-bait articles about how Reddit is going to fall any day now. They all basically play on your wishful thinking for clicks, they aren't based on reality.

I think this opinion is a bit... strange.

So no, spending an hour putting pixels on r/place is not a great way to stick it to Reddit. Constantly talking about Reddit and basically giving it free ad-space and mind share on Lemmy also does not stick it to Reddit. The original poster is correct: best thing is a blank canvas.

This is basically a rehash of: "There is no bad publicity!"

That's complete nonsense. An advertiser looks at a few things in a website to advertise on. Three very important factors: Traffic, because you want a sufficient number of people to potentially click your ad. Engagement, because people who participate on the website will be more likely to click your ad and then buy something. AND brand identity. That third one is the reason why advertising Disney plus on PornHub might be a bad idea, even if PornHub has great engagement and traffic.

This third factor is the problem reddit is currently facing, and has always been facing: Really big players spend millions on PR so that they are catching the current feeling of what is hip, young, and positive in their advertising and brand identity. They also want to advertise their product on websites which give people the same feeling: They want their product displayed on websites which feel young, hip, and positive. You do not want your product associated and displayed on a website whose userbase is obviously annoyed, negative, and keeps shouting "Fuck Spez", whatever that means.

That has been a reddit problem for quite a long time: It never had a brand identity which was glitzy and positive enough to be very attractive. It isn't young, and hip, and positive. It always had the stigma of being a "nerd cave". Which is fine, if you have a product that you don't mind to be associated with that, and if the userbase is happy with that. "When did the Narwahl bacon?", was cringey as fuck, but it reflected an essentially positive attitude and feeling of a userbase which didn't mind to be associated with the site. As an advertiser you can work with that, and cann piggyback on that.

You do not want to piggyback on "Fuck Spez". Because you don't want your product to be associated with an obvious feeling of negativity and frustration. You don't want your brand to be caught in that. The best option for an advertiser when faced with a website that carries clear negative reputation and connotations, is to just not be there.

So, I think what you are saying here, is not true. It would be better for reddit, if nobody talked about reddit. A bad reputation, and a brand identity associated with "frustration" (in exchange for more clicks and engagement) is far worse than being a "mostly neutral nerd cave", which is a bit less popular.

Guy's whole post opened up as a paradox.

"Can we not do the we did it reddit thing?"

My post was nothing like the "we did it reddit" thing.

Also their post started off needlessly like an attack. Like a reddit post.

Engaging on the platform and even constantly talking about the platform is a great sign of it's lasting influence.

You do realize you're on a sub dedicated to reddit, right? It's hypocritical if you're telling users to not engage yet stay in a sub that talks about the site.

Also, this is wrong. Advertisers do care about the traffic, but they also care about stability and how their brands will be perceived. This is why nsfw reddits don't advertise. Now put yourself in the shoes of an advertiser: there's a lot of traffic on reddit but there's a lot of hate and vitriol, with the threat of users leaving and just a lot of bots propping the communities up. Would you spend money to advertise on such a volatile site when there are literally other, maybe even bigger, sites available to you without all the BS or threats to how your brand/product will be perceived? I mean, you might. But you've probably made tons of better business decisions than that.

But what if we do catch the boston bomber though. Maybe Bernie could still have a chance if so

How does their board measure success? As there is a majority of lurkers, what's the best price of one's effort?

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The advertisers don’t care if the engagement is respectful or not, only that it’s engagement.

It's not really like that, if it's toxic, advertisers don't want to associate their brand with it. Look at how many videos on youtube got demonetized.

I don't know about that. There's a reason why Twitter keeps losing advertisers. If you're Nike, you don't want an ad for Nikes next to a guy spouting a racist rant or hurling a bunch of insults.

I understand what you're saying, but

Profitability != Value

When political power is part of the return.

That's what makes reddit attractive to someone like Tencent.

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its over for reddit right now, and this r/place doesnt change it no matter how much traffic they get from this, its temporary, once it ends, it dissapears, so i dont think having some fun will hurt lemmy or will make spez win

Honestly, even if the whole lemmy.world (for example) joins, it won't matter. The bots and streamers (and their fanbase) alone outnumber us too much for us to even make a dent on their traffic. People here are grossly underestimating the number of bots and reddit users. Like they think because some protestors join it's suddenly going to drastically shoot their engagement numbers up. Lol.

The average user has already forgotten about the API changes

I agree. I'm just not sure how that relates to what I said (not being snarky - just a bit confused).

There are still some people who are unaware of either spez, the protests, or reddit alternatives. Tbh, i still can't believe it. Even if they don't end up leaving, i think it's important for them to know a bit of history to understand things better when reddit pulls another shit like this (which they will probably do more of after the IPO).

"repressed" would be more fitting as many users are even angry that mods are moderating less strict. They don't want to hear that it's gotten more difficult to moderate without the tools, they just want to fuel their addiction and carry on as before.

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