Cashing in Stage 3
Old Reddit’s community scale is real; new Reddit’s interface and API drama show extraction: third-party clients curtailed, ads more prominent, and moderation burden pushed to volunteers. Still usable, but the surplus has clearly moved toward business customers and shareholders—classic stage 3.
- Since
- 2005
- Function
- Social
- VC-backed
- Yes
- Public
- Since 2024 (NYSE: RDDT)
News signals
More in Social
-
Discord
2 Hard to leaveStrong real-time product for communities, but your social graph and server history are deeply embedded—switching means rebuilding social capital elsewhere.
-
LinkedIn
3 Cashing inThe default résumé graph for many industries, increasingly monetized via feed ads, recruiter tools, and upsells—users are the inventory.
-
Mastodon (fediverse)
1 Plenty for usersFederated microblogging with no single owner; rough edges, but user surplus and exit to other instances is real.
-
X (Twitter)
3 Cashing inAPI paywalls, algorithmic feeds, verification products, and ad load shift surplus toward the operator and advertisers—classic extraction on a still-central public square.
