SimilarWeb has just released traffic estimates for June. According to these estimates, Reddit’s traffic has seen a 3.36% month-over-month decrease.
For comparison, here’s how traffic has changed for other popular social networking websites:
- Discord.com: +0.51%
- Twitter.com: -1.65%
- Instagram.com: -1.35%
- Facebook.com: -3.18%
- TikTok.com: +0.77%
- Pinterest.com: -2.27%
- Youtube.com: -2.02%
Source: https://www.similarweb.com/website/reddit.com/#overview
Reddit doesn’t see users as customers.
They are the product. A number that you can sell to advertisers and shareholders.
That model started with literal radio. It’s not a new thing. We are the consumers and the advertisers are the customers. It’s kinda like how children are the consumers of toys but the parents are the customers. It actually makes business much harder because you have to keep two groups satisfied. The product is still airtime(radio), and nobody likes ads but they are sharing the space and funding the transmitter.
Don’t forget to donate to your local independent stations, folks. Radio is not free! Neither is Lemmy.
No company wants to say they’ve lost 30% of their top development, marketing and QA personnel.
They can still sell the raw product numbers, for as long as advertisers and shareholders don’t realize the product has turned to shit.
I think this an overly simplistic way to look at the dynamic. Users are the primary customer, and they don’t provide any direct revenue to the company. Their value is in attracting the secondary customers though, who directly pay the company to access the users. Bring a primary customer implies that the company still needs to treat you as a customer and at least not openly antagonize you. They can’t take you for granted as a product. There is no secondary customer without you.
It’s like bars that advertise free drinks for women on certain nights. The women aren’t directly paying the bar, but the men who come to the bar because of them makes it a net profit. I’m sure there’s other examples of this primary/secondary customer dynamic. Anything cheap for kids that sells expensive stuff to parents for instance.
It was hyperbolic of course. But really,
How can someone who doesn’t provide revenue be the primary customer of a profit oriented company? Ahead of others who actually do, like advertisers?
It might be better if the terms are swapped. I’m only calling them primary because they have to come first before the secondary, and they’re the foundation for everything. There’s probably a better way to term them.
Oh, I’m not denying that the users are the foundation for the business model but when Reddit makes business decisions, they first listen to those who pay them.
They also don’t want to lose 3% of their product.