@smkinoshita me too. online advertising and marketing doesn't have to suck. It's possible to reshape that entire relationship between brands & communities & even products. Won't be easy, though.
@Erik: I have to agree for now, but I'm hoping that will change in the near future and that one day online advertising won't make me want to take a pick-axe to it.
@paul: In general, for the same reason marketers are not that interested in reddit itself (relative to it's size). They are lazy. Big brands and marketers don't really understand how to *really* interact with a community, much less it's data.
Thanks Erik for taking time out to be with us. Great answers overall and wish you guys all the very best as you strive too take Reddit to the next level. Is there any talk of going IPO anytime in the near future?
Is the old school look of the Reddit front page deliberate? It reminds me of message boards which were around ten years ago (not that it isn't functional)?
@Erik-- another good (recent) example would be the son of the guy who wrote "Cotten Eyed Joe" and his plea to the community for help. That showed folks coming together from all over to help and support.
@nicole: I think the specific bill is great, but I'm even more excited that people are getting involved in crafting *any* bill, or involed in something like Test PAC (a real political action commitee formed on reddit), or a subreddit like /r/runforit, where redditors are helping each other figure out how to run for various public offices (mostly local). Those types of grassroots activites are where the real potential for change is, not in any one bill or event.
@Erik: Moving away from data then, what about the community itself? One of the community memberes described Reddit as being made up of mostly obnoxious white teen males. What do you think?
@paul: I think on reddit international users cross polinate and mix it up more than on FB/twitter across a bunch of topics. Plenty of global interaction on FB/twitter, but because of subreddits I think you see more interaction even on a very niche topic than you would on those.
@Erik: For example, could you answer something like "What are the top 100 links voted up by people who subscribe to the "World News" and "Gaming" category? Or metrics on comments?
@Erik, Is Reddit proposing alternative legislation called the Free Internet Act? Or is that something that was initiated by the community on Reddit? I read something briefly about it and am wondering what it's all about.
@paul, our users are very concerned about privacy in general, so it's always something we are thinking about and discussing with the community. There have been issues when we've tested out 3rd party tracking items (i.e ComScore), so we don't use those in general.
@smkinoshita we don't require anything to sign up other than username and password, so almost no info along those lines. We do use google analytics, so we track information that is available through that tool, and we track and target advertising based on what subreddits someone is subscribed to, but not much more than that.
@Erik: Much has been written about your claim that Reddit will allow all kinds of content on the site that may skirt close to the edge of the law. After the "Jailbait" incident, did your view on this change?
One of my techs likened Reddit to a "safer place than 4Chan to find all your _news_" He meant that in a good way. And, insert whatever you want where "news" sits.
@paul, this article sums up the clues about journalism better than I could: http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2011/08/13/reddit-and-community-journalism/
Actually it dawns on me that because Reddit allows anonymous behaviour, it's actually in a great marketing position considering the privacy is built it, so Reddit can just collect data on the number of people behaving in a certain way.
@Erik: How much data does Reddit collect about its massive group of anonymous users?
@Erik: what are some of the legal challenegs you guys have had to face over the years. We have seen sites like Craiglist coming under increase surveillance for their erotic section ads, which they finnaly abadoned.
@Kim: Great question, but to counter-point -- does marketing need to know the IDENTITY of the person, or just HOW MANY PEOPLE BEHAVE IN A CERTAIN MANNER?
@Erik: I am very interested to know if, by allowing people to use handles/false identities, you have given up on the whole idea of tracking user behavior for marketing reasons?
It's time the RIAA and the motion picture lobby (acronym?) realised how out of step they are with consumers. Then their PR reps might start to find a suitable voice.
@Mary: witness the disgraceful RIAA OpEd piece in the Times yesterday, which insisted the public had been misled, but went on to give a completely unfair account of the bills. PR disaster.
@SMK: There was some content awhile back that involved child photos. Reddit didn't take the subsite down right away but did so after it appeared a contributor was sending illegal photos.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
