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Comment by axaxs | Hacker News Reader

The only problem I have with Reddit from a valuation perspective is that it doesn't really offer much 'secret sauce.' The tech itself is not great, and I don't really know of anyone who likes the redesign. Point being, the value is all in the users and content. Users are fickle, and as we saw from Digg (and lesser extent, StumbleUpon), can flee en masse at any moment. That's a tough pill for me to swallow as a potential investor.

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I think it'll be interesting to see if reddit can survive when they inevitably shut down third party apps.

If you don't think this is something they might do, just hop on over to their mobile site real quick. It's full of banner ads and misleading layouts (clicking the image in a image post takes you to a download the app page, you have to click the tiny link below it).

It seems like their big problem is monetization. They're probably reluctant to monetize too aggressively given past experience with companies like Digg, where the users saw the system turning against them and fled.

Somehow Facebook managed to do it, but you still hear grumbling about how big of a mess the news feed is and people searching for something that can replace it.

Well, that was kind of my point I should have expanded on. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, et al have a -lot- of interesting tech behind them. From "creepy" suggestion algorithms, calls/video calls, face filters for pics and videos...the list goes on and on. Sure another company could do it, but it's got a higher barrier to entry. Reddit has nothing interesting or proprietary. An unreliable clone would probably take a single person all of a day or two.

The social media cycle. Get popular by being good, get bad by monetizing, lose enough valuation to be bought by the next big social media trend.

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