Slashdot Mirror
Reddit Users Are the Least Valuable of Any Social Network (cnbc.com)
Reddit's latest funding round values its users at a lower price than any other social network. "The company announced Monday it had raised $300 million in its Series D investment round at a valuation of $3 billion," reports CNBC. "CNBC previously reported the company's annual revenue topped $100 million, according to sources familiar with the matter, and at 330 million monthly active users (MAUs), this would make Reddit's average revenue per user (ARPU) about $0.30." From the report: That estimate would make Reddit's ARPU significantly lower than other social networks, even those with similar MAUs. Twitter, for example, reported 321 MAUs for its latest quarterly report, and with annual revenue of about $3.04 billion in 2018, that would make its ARPU about $9.48. Facebook reported 2.32 billion MAUs in its latest report and ARPU of $7.37. Snap does not report global MAUs, but reported $2.09 ARPU in its latest quarterly report.
Pinterest, which has yet to go public but is preparing for an IPO this year, says on its website it has 250 million monthly users. Pinterest declined to comment on their revenue, but a September article in The New York Times said the company was on track to top $700 million in revenue for 2018. That would bring its ARPU to about $2.80. While Reddit's value per user is much lower than its peers, it is betting its access to a valuable demographic will appeal to advertisers and potentially even draw their dollars from larger rivals like Facebook and Google. The company said half of its MAUs are between the ages of 18 and 24.
Pinterest, which has yet to go public but is preparing for an IPO this year, says on its website it has 250 million monthly users. Pinterest declined to comment on their revenue, but a September article in The New York Times said the company was on track to top $700 million in revenue for 2018. That would bring its ARPU to about $2.80. While Reddit's value per user is much lower than its peers, it is betting its access to a valuable demographic will appeal to advertisers and potentially even draw their dollars from larger rivals like Facebook and Google. The company said half of its MAUs are between the ages of 18 and 24.
OK, so how are we going to interpret this?
Is Reddit bad at selling their users data or is it that Reddit users doesn't share as much of it as users on other platforms.
In the case of social media "being worth the least" means that you keep your important data private and won't get fooled by personally targeted ads.
Reddit got the investment, and now any post that gets too popular and is negative about the Chinese government gets removed from /r/all and /r/popular. It was proven quite quickly because several BIG posts about Tianamen Square were removed that day.
Basically, reddit has become an arm of the Chinese propaganda department.
Reddit users and their personal aren't being exploited for profit like other social networks. Simple as that. Reddit is a social network made to serve the users; not to serve the users as a dish to someone else. If others do not see Reddit users as a high commodity, all the better!
Wasn't Slashdot's value written down to $0?
That would be an underachievement for Slashdot users if we were merely valued at $0.
I would hope that advertisers see us as a highly negative value.
In other words, advertising to us actually hurts their product sales.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I assume all of the big online companies would count that way. At least it's objective, and it's likely to give bigger numbers than any plausible alternatives I can think of.
I'm more interested in this:
While Reddit's value per user is much lower than its peers, it is betting its access to a valuable demographic will appeal to advertisers and potentially even draw their dollars from larger rivals like Facebook and Google. The company said half of its MAUs are between the ages of 18 and 24.
There is a reason that today's young adults are referred to as "Generation Me" in marketing circles and that the phrase "entitlement culture" is heard so often. As someone who has worked in this field, it's not particularly surprising to me that a business where so many of its users are young adults also has much lower revenue per user. If I were starting a new business today, the 18-24s would be literally the last age range I would want as my target market. They have little money, they tend to care more about experiences than possessions, and when they do spend they are heavily fashion-driven and quick to change. What is surprising is that Reddit reportedly thinks this is a valuable demographic.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I would think that Slashdot's eyeballs are pretty valuable, as most of us are probably 40+ year old IT workers with six figure salaries.
Compare that to Reddit, where most of their customers are broke college students sharing dumb memes with each other and downvoting everyone that disagrees with them.
Sure, most of us here are smart enough to use ad blockers, but it seems that Slashdot has found ways around that and snuck in enough sponsored content to keep them afloat.
There is a reason that today's young adults are referred to as "Generation Me" in marketing circles and that the phrase "entitlement culture" is heard so often. As someone who has worked in this field, it's not particularly surprising to me that a business where so many of its users are young adults also has much lower revenue per user. If I were starting a new business today, the 18-24s would be literally the last age range I would want as my target market. They have little money, they tend to care more about experiences than possessions, and when they do spend they are heavily fashion-driven and quick to change. What is surprising is that Reddit reportedly thinks this is a valuable demographic.
Bizarre rant. Points for that, but probably wrong.
More likely these users are not as valuable per unit because there is less information to ferret from reddit accounts. They are less "sticky" and don't require or promote as much voluntary disclosure. Facebook, as we have seen, is one step away from being your personal KGB guardian angel, they appear to infest your life and suck everything that you don't explicitly forbid, and a few things that you don't know you haven't forbid yet. We have also seen exactly how valuable that data is to marketing and even hostile foreign nations. Obviously they get paid well for their espionage. Google is only slightly better.
For what it's worth, our numbers wouldn't support your theory. We do get decent returns on Facebook ads (and our Facebook metrics do support the theory that 18-24s don't spend much) but we also get decent returns running old-school untargeted ads or referral schemes through other websites or press relevant to our products and services. Facebook has the advantage of being huge and therefore scaling up where often websites for interests have well qualified but small audiences, but it's far from clear that all the profiling is making much of a difference to any metrics that actually matter compared to just advertising in places relevant to whatever interests you're catering for.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.