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Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

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dijit

eh, I disagree.

Reddit doesn't really have network effects the same as Whatsapp and Facebook.

When I say "network effects" I mean two things:

1, A self-fulfulling draw

2, An increase in the utility the more people exist

So, having everyone on whatsapp means you can have group chats.

Having everyone on facebook means you can plan events.

Reddit kinda doesn't do that, in fact it optimises for a loose coupling of many independent and semi-isolated communities.

It doesn't really take advantage of any network effects; and like Lois Rossman mentions: there is next to no benefit being on reddit than using private forums except having a single login. Which is essentially a solved problem these days because SSO is easy and ubiquitous (thanks google/github!).

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I have to disagree with this. Sure, it's different from 'all my friends are there' like on Whatsapp and Facebook. With Reddit it's 'all the info is there'.

I'm looking for a set of binoculars? Check the discussion on Reddit. Looking for some info in flashing Tasmota? Check the discussions on Reddit. Need some info on debugging my 3D printer? Same.

I've resorted to appending 'Reddit' to my Google searches whenever I'm looking for experiences people have with products or services, because it's a pretty sure bet for getting useful answers. It's also well indexed by search engines as opposed to Facebook groups and it has a much lower barrier for asking questions than Stack.

The only reason all of this content is there, is the network effect of those loose communities all being attached to the same domain and having a single account to interact with all of them. And of course, not having to search all over to find the best community / private forum for whatever thing you're interested in. As a man of many hobbies, Reddit is great and I really hate that Discord is starting to become the alternative, because searchability is crap and discussions are impossible to follow.

How you find the information on reddit though?

I'm going to take a leap and say it's not by typing reddit.com/r/binoculars or by using reddit search (which has been terrible since inception and shows no signs of improving).

I'd guess instead you use DuckDuckGo or more likely Google.

So what you say you really get from Reddit is a site that has a modicum of trustworthiness that it won't ruin your computer and that maybe there's an opinion here that reddit is the canonical place where all binocular enthusiasts will also participate.

Am I right in this assumption?

If I am, doesn't that completely break down the moment a decent chunk of communities decides it must not be on reddit?

As in, it's not really network effects, it's more "all or nothing" because anything other than everything brings doubt into the trustworthiness of the site/communities.

If there's a very popular and well known community (Linus Tech Tips for great example): then their forums are more trustworthy and have much richer densities of information. And you would find that information the same way as you would on reddit if I'm not mistaken.

> not by typing reddit.com/r/binoculars

That's exactly what I did. Most of those subs have either a pinned guide or a wiki with recommendations and considerations. And often I do use search, because it's fine for simple things like searching for model numbers.

> If I am, doesn't that completely break down the moment a decent chunk of communities decides it must not be on reddit?

That's the point of it being a network effect, right? Like, when people collectively start using Facebook in stead of Myspace, so Myspace died?

> Am I right in this assumption?

No, I don't exclusively use Google to search Reddit and when I do, I explicitly mention site:reddit.com.

> And you would find that information the same way as you would on reddit if I'm not mistaken.

So, no, you are mistaken. Because I didn't even know those forums existed and they don't seem to show up on Google often.

Recently, I was looking for a monitor for example. Say I'd want to know more about the 'G95SC' entering 'G95SC review' in Google shows mostly review sites like CNET. I want to see regular people's opinions so I look on Reddit and see those. And I can do the same thing for 3D printers, cars, brake pads, track tires, laptops, android car stereos and pretty much anything else. In stead of having to find the relevant forums.

> doesn't that completely break down the moment a decent chunk of communities decides it must not be on reddit?

Of course it does. We only search with Google and site:reddit.com because it works. But it works VERY well right now. Remove that site:reddit and you don't instead get quality content from lots of other community forums. Instead you get garbage and ads. Reddit's only "moat" right now is that I, as a rational human being, will add site:reddit.com if I want to find an answer to a question.

There are other specialized communities that I will search using site:xyz.com. And there will be many more if communities leave Reddit and setup elsewhere. Time will tell if this will happen.

The single account for me it's a lot more important than you'd think An old account that has been consistently interacting with multiple subs and hasn't been banned tells me that at least the account isn't a low effort bot

It could be that what you're calling the "network effect" is what keeps people tethered to Facebook or Whatsapp, but I doubt it. Speaking only for myself, I certainly don't keep my Facebook account open for events. I also don't care for groups on Whatsapp. I have to have both solely because I value the relationships that I have with the people that I expressly added as friends/contacts on both.

Reddit may be different, but only in the sense that its overall value is less tied to individual relationships, but rather to the communities themselves. Each is a treasure trove of searchable, moderated, insightful, and trusted (if sometimes opinionated) information.

One obvious similarity is how difficult it is to migrate communities. I've seen so many attempts. None convincing. All such successful migrations that I've witnessed were actually slow organic growths of new networks that progressively made the older ones obsolete or redundant. I don't recall a successful one that was a mass exodus from one platform to another. The fine prints never made the unanimity (new moderation rules, etc). It seems that you really need to have a new destination that people can agree to gradually join and use concurrently with the old one, before abandoning the latter altogether.

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