More random reddit thoughts:
Another thing about reddit "culture" is that very often people will skip clicking on the website link submissions just to read over the top-rated comments first. Many people won't actually visit many websites from there first. People often just read the comments and interact in the comments, THEN they might visit the website based on what the post comments have to say.
Having your link submissions on the front page of subreddits is awesome for traffic, but consistently getting the top-voted comments in MASSIVE discussion threads within those subreddits might be even better. You might be getting more targeted traffic from your valuable posts in the comments than the actual OP will by submitting their website link.
This also brings up the idea other people have mentioned: the "barrier to entry" is a bit higher for "quality" content+interaction in a lot of niche subreddits than on some random niche forum where a post will likely be forgotten in a few days. Example: People will not hesitate to be extremely critical and point out competitors, tell you everything you're doing wrong and everything your competitors are doing right. Or they'll tell people where they can get a better deal, link to resources that attempt to criticize or dissuade etc.
Obviously lots of general trolling, but there is also a lot of "valuable criticism" that the reddit community appreciates. It's always interesting when I click on a reddit ad that they have allowed people to post comments on, and the comments are ALL negative. Not comments just being critical to be critical either, like people will be having a huge discussion about how horrible this company is with posts of PROOF that company is doing something obviously shady...and the ad is running for weeks. So there is a bit of a "reputation management" angle that a lot of companies I see are probably not really considering long-term, wide-spread implications on a place like reddit...
It's insane how much traffic reddit gets and the site is constantly growing. Something like over 6% of US adult internet users are redditors.
6% of Online Adults are reddit Users | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project
5 years ago hardly anyone I would talk to even knew of reddit. Now it seems like local, national media, TV, journalists just browse subreddits all day for content to write stories on. If you turn on daytime TV half the time I swear they're talking about some popular reddit post from the week before...
Pretty crazy how much "news" comes from reddit submissions and discussions these days. Companies and governments are all over it, and an individual can basically "summon" a huge company or "celebrity" to a "public showdown". So it's similar to how companies are now using Twitter for customer service and I think we will see more companies using reddit like twitter in a way. If you want to get the attention of a company or an individual and you have something of value to contribute to the public discussion like a story or learning experience for others, these companies are recognizing the power an individual has on the reddit platform. People are using Twitter to resolve customer service issues and to name/shame/appreciate brands+people in a way that is very easy to go viral. I see more similar stuff happening with reddit posts/discussions.
Personally, I'm REALLY interested to see what kind of changes or updates Reddit will implement in the near future to bring in more money...as that often affects "culture". How do you guys see the platform generating more money in the future? What kind of features/changes could you see happening? I wonder the same thing about Twitter too.
