Ask HN: Why is it assumed to be harder to bootstrap a Reddit-type site today?

mikequinlan · 2 years ago

How do you get millions of people to decide to stop going to whichever site they are currently going to and go to your site instead?

ActorNightly · 2 years ago

Basically create a website that has some monetary rewards for participation, tied with some mechanics that leverage trading, FOMO and gambling.

If you need proof this (i.e participating for a shot at monetary reward) works, look back at when Valve first implemented the ability to trade cosmetics with TF2, and look at how that evolved.

Its actually simple enough to where Im surprised this hasn't been done already considering this happened https://finematics.com/vampire-attack-sushiswap-explained/

ManlyBread · 2 years ago

That's a great way to get large amount of people who are interested in exploiting your site for profit while getting no genuine users whatsoever.

WheelsAtLarge · 2 years ago

It's hard. I read somewhere that a new product must be at least 10 times better than the original for users to switch over.

I wonder how that translates to creating a new Reddit?

ttymck · 2 years ago

> new product must be at least 10 times better than the original for users to switch over.

Which product manager told you this? How does one measure how much "better" a product is than another? How does one then measure "willingness" to switch?

Nevertheless, if reddit gets "10x worse", isn't that where the opportunity lies?

mikequinlan · 2 years ago

It is very hard to start a new subreddit. You have to somehow initially get enough people to join and participate to create enough posts and conversations to get other people interested in joining.

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mustafa_pasi · 2 years ago

It doesn't have to be millions. What if profit is not a motivation? What if you just want to be the host of some good communities or a less toxic web2.0 experience?

mikequinlan · 2 years ago

On Reddit I mainly participate in the subreddit for my town. The town subreddit has 50,000 members; the town plus neighboring towns has a total population of about 900,000. How will you get enough participants for it to be worthwhile for me to switch?

r/Compilers has about 14,000 members. Again, how will you find that many people willing to contribute on that topic to make it worthwhile?

r/ProgrammingLanguages has about 90,000 members.

You have a chicken and egg problem -- until you have enough actively participating members, there is no benefit to moving.

the-printer · 2 years ago

Unless you don’t have anything indicative of a community already in place then this isn’t a sound enough motive.

EA-3167 · 2 years ago

The snarky voice in my head says, "Sell it to Elon Musk."

More realistically though the truth is that mismanagement, changing circumstances and incentives (Reddit shifting from open platform to IPO prep for example), and a lack of innovation to keep up with changing demands all stand as risks to an existing platform. Arguably your job isn't to convince millions to drop their old site, it's to strike when said site does that themselves.

If there had been a working, scaled, viable alternative to Reddit last month... Reddit would no longer exist.

Alex3917 · 2 years ago

All of these. Jonah Peretti has a good explanation here:

https://medium.com/matter/buzzfeeds-jonah-peretti-goes-long-...

It's not impossible, but it is much much harder.

brudgers · 2 years ago

Reddit has the moat of being the simplest thing that might work.

If you have domain expertise or just domain interest, it’s easier to start a new subreddit than build a new platform. Because you offload a bunch of busywork like security and ddos prevention and account verification.

Of course UI comes along for free too, but content is king.

So content not UI is where to start if you’re building your own thing. That means focusing on a specific audience, not everyone.

And it means having exclusive domain knowledge and/or enthusiasm. And so that means attracting experts.

If that expert isn’t you, it probably won’t happen. Assume other experts already have sufficient online outlets for online expression.

Basically if you build it they won’t come. Build it anyway if you must. Don’t build it for numbers.

Good luck.

Lk7Of3vfJS2n · 2 years ago

> but content is king.

I would like to see content is king go up against cash is king in a site.

brudgers · 2 years ago

How much cash you got?

brucethemoose2 · 2 years ago

> Is it just the discovery itself that would be hard? Is the market already over-saturated with options?

These two. There are a bajillion dead or deserted Reddit clones.

> Is it because they have a shorter attention span and would get too bored with a slower website?

But this is possibly a factor too. Reddit doesn't have the instant gratification and engagement of, say, Discord or TikTok.