"They believe that if they have a billion unique visitors a month, that they have a property that is going to be worth a ton of money in some way eventually."
This is stupid; users are fickle and visitors mean nothing if you can't monetize them. And usually attempting to monetize visitors causes them to leave to the next platform trying to reach a billion unique visitors.
I can't believe intelligent people think this is a valid way to run an Internet business. It might work for small startups looking to be bought out by a larger company (who will then try and monetize it, driving away all the users) but for a company like reddit it's a bit ridiculous.
I think the idea of reddit collapsing entirely is much harder than a single news site for instance. It's not one product, it is hundreds of strong communities that have gathered from different places on the web. There are discussions and communities that I would not know how to find elsewhere on the web.
Reddit is not profitable. Your strong communities are supported by investors hoping to get a return on their investment. If the growth stops, the investment stops, and the servers go away.
The fact that the communities are strong matters not.
This is stupid; users are fickle and visitors mean nothing if you can't monetize them. And usually attempting to monetize visitors causes them to leave to the next platform trying to reach a billion unique visitors.
I can't believe intelligent people think this is a valid way to run an Internet business. It might work for small startups looking to be bought out by a larger company (who will then try and monetize it, driving away all the users) but for a company like reddit it's a bit ridiculous.
(Edit fixed typo)