The slow, steady, frustrating, relentless, remarkable rise of Reddit

Social media is not a new idea. Even Facebook — by now, a senior citizen of the online scene at the ripe old age of 20 — wasn’t the first social network. That badge is typically pinned on SixDegrees.com, a site built on the degrees of separation theory that launched in 1997, right at the cusp of the internet’s infancy… before shutting down just three years later.

SixDegrees is one of dozens, if not hundreds, of short-lived social-media sites. Throughout the digital age thus far, we’ve already said “RIP” to beloved networks like Vine, Myspace, MSN, BBM, and Bebo, to name but a few. Getting people’s attention is hard… and keeping it is even harder.

Reddit seems to be an exception to the what-goes-up-must-come-down rule of social-media hype. The mostly anonymous San Francisco-based social platform, built around a collection of “subreddits,” has served as a motley online agora since 2005, providing a gateway to the more outlandish corners of the web by facilitating public discourse about… well, anything.

What’s so remarkable about Reddit is that it only now seems to be hitting its stride, after a gradual increase in interest — at odds with the typical attention economy of the internet. Data from Google Trends reveals that Reddit reached its peak search volume only this September, and, in its most recent earnings, the platform reported adding 31.2 million new daily active users (+47%) in the last 12 months alone… nearly two decades after its launch.

r/Booming

In the run-up to its much-hyped IPO, Reddit’s management implemented some structural changes as they attempted to finally get the company into profitable territory. The company has sought out a host of new revenue streams — including striking content-licensing deals with Google and OpenAI, allowing the tech giants to train AI models on users’ posts, as well as expanding its advertising offering. Reddit also began charging for access to its application programming interface (API), leading to the closure of some of the site’s third-party apps, which was met with a huge uproar from the site’s volunteer moderators and (notoriously unruly) communities.

The frustrating thing for redditors upset by the move is that it worked. Reddit’s latest report, published Tuesday, also saw the company post its first-ever profit in its 19-year history to the tune of $29.9 million, compared with a loss of $7.4 million in the same quarter last year. In response to the better-than-expected results, Reddit stock rose by more than 40% the following day, adding an eye-watering $5.7 billion to the company’s market cap and building on a few good months for the stock, which is now up more than 120% since March.

But what really gets investors excited is growth. Whether it monetizes them through ads, AI deals, or premium features, more users gives Reddit more opportunities to make money.

Loose threads

Organized similarly to the earliest versions of internet forums, part of the reason Reddit is so beloved by its users is that those posting within its multifarious threads feel a sense of community with other Redditors who share their interests, however unique — a feeling that’s even more sought after in the age of AI.

Subreddits are places where people gather to discuss everything from movies to memes, tennis to tattoos, gardening to ghosts, investing to interior design, and everything in between. It follows, then, that possibly the most frequent apprehension people have about joining Reddit is a simple one: it’s maybe just a bit weird? 

That idea has been a hard one for Reddit to shake in its bid to break into the mainstream. There’s r/Purrito, for pictures of cats in burrito-shaped blankets; r/WhatsThisRock, which is “dedicated to identifying mysterious rocks and minerals”; r/TraumatizeThemBack for “traumatizing those that traumatized you”; and 89,000 people have signed up to r/OLED, a subreddit for “news and discussion of OLED displays,” with a focus on TVs and computer monitors. 

Even ignoring the litany of NSFW and adult content, Reddit’s users find ways to push barriers. There’s a subreddit called r/HaveWeMet, in which members pretend they live in a fictional place called Lower Duck Pond, role-playing improvised interactions. It has 146,000 members. Clearly, those more niche offerings are a draw: as Reddit has grown, the sheer volume of its human-to-human interactions (by way of screen-to-screen) has grown exponentially.

Today, Reddit serves millions of people as something of a search-engine/self-help/specialized-subject Franken-forum — which provides some explanation as to why Reddit is only now hitting the summit it’s been slowly climbing for years. If you’ve ever found yourself adding the word “Reddit” to the end of a Google search because you want to read an actual human being’s opinion on something, you’re not alone. Every movie review, political debate, complaint against a company, request for advice, and, crucially, every picture of a cat posted on Reddit adds to the back catalog of searchable content that could pull in another new user.

Ghosts in the machine

Reddit’s utility as a hub for everything everywhere all at once, is showing up in its user base. In fact, unlike on Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat, the majority of Reddit’s daily active users are lurkers who aren’t logged in.

Generally speaking, the survival of any social media depends on two factors: its functionality (how useful the platform is in people’s everyday lives) and its status (the more ineffable “cool” factor that means people want to join, and thus be associated with, the platform).

Both are necessary to ensure the popularity and longevity of a social network. Myspace and BeReal, for example, enjoyed brief stints of cultural status when they broke into the mainstream, but perhaps lacked the usefulness to become fully integrated into people’s daily habits. Similarly, the functionality of chat rooms like MSN were quickly undercut by the growing ubiquity of instant messenger apps.

With no meaningful way to prove that you are “high-status” (traditional mechanics of likes and followers don’t really play a role in the same way on Reddit), the platform doesn’t offer celebrities and influencers a place to show off their charmed lives. Reddit isn’t “cool.” However, as the number of subreddits has multiplied, and then multiplied again, Reddit has arguably matured from edgy-internet hangout, with its slow and steady accumulation of human experiences snowballing into a place that can actually be... useful.

Bot to the top

Moving forward, the company has expressed plans to continue looking to AI to keep its top line ticking up, building its existing ad model that — as we’ve noted before — is theoretically a marketer’s dream: specific subreddits are a perfect target for tailored advertising.

One application of AI that Reddit has been using is in translating its content into new languages, which, as discussed on the excellent “Snacks Mix” podcast, is helping Reddit grow outside the US.

In a letter to shareholders, CEO Steve Huffman accredited Reddit’s new AI translation feature as a major driver of growth in the company’s latest results. But, as Reddit continues to sharpen its AI tool belt, Huffman also touched on the major thing that keeps the company ticking: “In 2024 so far, ‘Reddit’ was the sixth most Googled word in the U.S., underscoring that when people are looking for answers, advice, or community, they’re turning to Reddit.”

And, failing that, some people really are just looking for pictures of bread stapled to trees.