I hope this turns out to be the absolute disaster I am expecting.
I hope investors will see that the technology powering Reddit is no longer novel in execution or deployment. ActivityPub and its derivatives like Lemmy have proven this fact in practice.
The value of Reddit lies in its userbase and quality of dataset. As Reddit evolves to become increasingly hostile toward its userbase, the most valuable members become the most heavily impacted. This leads to the migrations away from the platform and eventual degradation of data quality. The sale of user data to AI ahead of the IPO is an important indication that the Reddit c-suite is keenly aware of this.
Hopefully the financial world will view the IPO as a cash-out for investors and not a viable investment into a sustainable business model.
That’s a nice fantasy, but the reality is that only a tiny portion of people actually migrate off a platform these days. Reddit knows that they can abuse their userbase for profit without considerable fallout, which is why they do it. Users don’t have the desire or patience to create new communities these days. They’re not interested in going somewhere with fewer people. Of course some users are interested, those users are us. But what was the percentage of people during the mass Exodus? I think it was less than 1% if I remember correctly.
Reddit is already starting to replace permanent bans with little two or three day bans because they can’t afford to lose the active users that tend to get reports.
I really can’t see anything other than the stock price tanking immediately at the IPO. These people are getting in on the top floor.
I am laughing the valuation of Reddit right now on Reuters. 10 billion.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-raise-700-million-over-10-billion-valuation-2021-08-12/
How the fuck to they dream up there numbers.
Last quarter they made 100 million from advertising revenue. Thats a maximum gross income of 400 million a year. Last year the same time they made around 30 million.
If they maintain the 100 million income revenue, that’s only 400 million per year. It will take 25 years to generate 10 billion gross income.
the thing is people don’t really care about numbers anymore - it’s all just based on hype. Here are some fcf yields:
- nvidia - 1.4%
- tesla - 0.7%
- amazon - 2%
- meta - 4.2%
- amd - 0.4%
- and so on…
these are all in the same ballpark. The market right now behaves like a 13 year old crypto lover that doesn’t have the mental capacity to do basic math. I can totally see reddit skyrocketing after the IPO. No chance I’m be buying in, though.
Yeah, I think the current owners will do well in the IPO but most of the others will regret buying immediately. But once the market settles on a more realistic price, as much as I’d like to see it fail, I don’t think it will. It’s still better than Facebook and they are doing pretty well despite their mierdas touch.
