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
On the one hand, this doesn’t seem like a lot. But on the other, this is just for June. A lot of people left or drastically cut down their usage at the very end of June, and we’re not seeing this reflected in the data yet.
Even so, no company wants to say they’ve lost 3% of their customers. With 1.7 billion total, that’s still 51 million people. It’s a notable loss, especially for a company trying to become profitable and have an IPO.
no company wants to say they’ve lost 3% of their customers
Reddit doesn’t see users as customers.
They are the product. A number that you can sell to advertisers and shareholders.
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.
overly simplistic way
It was hyperbolic of course. But really,
Users are the primary customer, and they don’t provide any direct revenue
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?
Looking at the pages for lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, lemmy.world, kbin.social, as well as lemm.ee paints an interesting, if expected, picture.
For one thing, lemmy.ml is categorized as “Games > Games - Other (In United States)” which made me scratch my head to the point of hurting my scalp. The rest are uncategorized (which is better than being miscategorized, imo).
Now, for the stats:
| Instance | Total Visits for June 2023 | % Change from May 2023 | Bounce Rate | Pages per Visit | Average Visit Duration | #1 Incoming Traffic Source (from social media) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| reddit.com¹ | 1.7B | -3.36% | 37.98% | 6.21 | 8:24 | Youtube (52.48%) |
| lemmy.world | 3.5M | n/a² | 38.12% | 6.62 | 8:44 | Reddit (97.29%) |
| kbin.social | 2.9M | +5000% | 26.24% | 11.2 | 9:18 | Reddit (93.92%) |
| lemmy.ml | 1.5M | +1716% | 51.79% | 5.55 | 3:54 | Reddit (98.86%) |
| feddit.de | 791.7K | +5000% | 55.88% | 2.76 | 3:57 | Reddit (98.31%) |
| beehaw.org | 790.1K | +5000% | 35.48% | 4.50 | 5:44 | Reddit (96.24%) |
| lemmy.ca | 186.4K | +1615% | 69.14% | 2.45 | 1:05 | Reddit (100%) |
| lemm.ee | 167.5K | +5000% | 29.58% | 6.73 | 5:18 | Reddit (86.81%) |
- ¹ –
reddit.comis included as a point of comparison - ² –
lemmy.worlddidn’t exist yet in May 2023
We can see that the larger instances are already performing well in comparison to reddit when it comes to “interaction” statistics. It’s a surprise, however that kbin.social trounces everyone else it was compared to–even comparing favorably with lemmy.world in visit numbers. In comparison, lemmy.ml performed quite badly especially in bounce rate and average visit duration. Someone who’s better equipped than me in analyzing these figures can perhaps do a better anaylsis, but from what I can see, we’re not doing that bad here.
I’ve also added lemm.ee into the mix just for good measure (and perhaps as a proxy for smaller-ish instances), and it’s doing quite good as well.
EDITS:
Added lemmy.ca into the table as well, because, damn, what a ride! I suppose given from the explanation I was given regarding lemmy.ml’s figures, it wasn’t able to cope well with the flood of incoming users, I suppose?
I suspect half that drop is from me alone, lol.
Reddit lost a LOT of their power users. Even if the general traffic isn’t that badly dented, it means a lot of the best content and conversations will not go back. Reddit will spiral down to a 9gag clone.
I lurk the frontpage occasionally and I’ve already noticed the Reddit atmosphere has gotten … weird.
Little-known, content-churning subreddits are bubbling to the top because of all the other blackouts and desertions. Fringe viewpoints and wacko opinions that would normally get downvoted to the bottom of a thread are now out in the open because there’s no voice of reason to hold them back.
And the kind of people that are still on there, acting as if everything is fine (or, God forbid, better(???) than it was before the revolts) … it’s a very strange place now.
The meltdowns are something else.
On one smaller sub that participated in the blackout people were seriously accusing mods of rigging the votes to stay closed for longer. Of course nothing actually indicated that, and neither did they present any evidence, they just couldn’t stand not getting their content.
Not enough to matter. Not even out of step with any other social media site lol. We’re doomed
I thought about this comment, and realized that somehow, I just don’t care so much about what happens to Reddit anymore. Instead of worrying about what I left behind, I’m looking forward to what’s ahead of us.
I think it’s because even before the whole 3d-party-app drama, there already was this undefined feeling that Reddit’s best days are behind it. Maybe it’s the effect of ad money and monetization, or it’s the inevitable trend towards low quality content that comes with mass adoption, probably it’s both.
Whatever the cause, in most subreddits, the old Facebook-style rot had already set in. Once-cool subs now being an endless barrage of tired memes, bots farming karma, and people being assholes. The things I joined for years ago, the engaging discussion, random encounters with amazing experts, the cutting-edge internet anarchy, it’s all already long gone.
When I opened the app (Baconreader in my case), I only did it out of habit, to then spendy time scrolling through an endless list of things that made me slightly go “heh”.
So, maybe most people will stay on Reddit for now, and probably I will have to leave behind certain communities instead of finding direct replacements. But I see that as a good thing. As long as even just 2% of Reddit’s users make it here, I’m excited it will grow into something much better than what I left behind.
A well deserved outcome. Companies need to realize that they are nothing without their customers/users. An undeserved arrogance can only lead to eventual downfall.
