How do you address the concerns of users who feel that Reddit has become increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement?
We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive. Unlike some of the 3P apps, we are not profitable.
Is there any social media company that is profitable? Facebook is an advertising platform with a side-hustle as a social media site. Other than that, Twitter was losing money and since Elon is losing much more, Reddit is losing money, Discord is losing money, Snapchat is losing money.
Social media is an advertising platform. YouTube is a form of social media that’s profitable too, at least now, and it’s all from ads.
YouTube is Google. Google and Facebook are advertising companies who have side hustles doing other things like showing videos. So far, nobody else has managed to do that. Is it possible another ad company with a social side-hustle could emerge? Sure, but Facebook and Google are going to do whatever they can to either buy up or destroy any company that got too successful at that.
Well, TikTok is the most recent contender. ByteDance is a private Chinese company though, so it’s hard to get accurate numbers.
Yeah, there are a few Chinese apps that may be profitable like Weibo, WeChat, TikTok, etc. But, it’s hard to really know. Also, the ones that are China-based may not be profitable outside China. Like, apparently WeChat is more a platform than a social media app, and people use it for payments, gaming, and all kinds of other things. That might not translate to any other country.