> The business model where a company owns a public community and monetizes through ads and search traffic seems to have just been a failed model.
A failure in what sense? That they can't pay the bills or that they can't see the VC-desired 10X ROI? Because my impression (as a layperson) is that the Reddit of yore could have stayed afloat from ad revenue + user donations, but it wasn't turning a huge profit. Anyone else remember the sidebar with the quota for Reddit gold for server costs? I don't remember it being short that often...
hmmmm, what I mean is this. There's been backlash about Reddit's ecosystem, but fundamentally they've transitioned into a business model that monetizes proprietary data for AI training. From that perspective, it's been successful. The problem, though, is that the quality of that data continues to decline. So it looks successful now, but I question whether that will hold in the future.
In other words, if openness and user experience are compromised, the real experts who provide deep, professional insights will disappear. Most experts have a desire for recognition. In Korea, we have a saying: 'Plankton and whales' meaning whales can only exist when there's enough plankton.
Anyway, I think Reddit itself is a successful exit. They sold their past data at a high price. But I question whether this is sustainable in the long run.
It's a difficult trade off: short term profit versus long term sustainability. Given the AI era, the timing seems right in terms of value. But separate from that, any new communities that emerge will likely suffer from long term value depreciation because of this precedent
Maybe I'm just caught up in the illusion of 'sustainability.'
It seems you're viewing this from the perspective of Reddit-the-company, and if your interests are to maximize profits then I don't really disagree with what you have to say.
I miss Reddit-the-communities, personally, whose interests as you observe seem to conflict with those of Reddit-the-company.