How Reddit Got Popular
Reddit is a website that allows users to post links and start discussions in virtually any topic. It is currently the fifth most popular site in the United States, but it has humble beginnings. Back in 2005 when it was founded, its founders were disappointed by the lack of users and contributions, so they decided to take matters into their own hands. They began posting as fake users to give people the impression that Reddit had a large userbase in hopes of attracting new users. While the idea seems silly, it worked. Reddit steadily grew in popularity and real users began posting and contributing to the site.
We can analyze Reddit’s strategy for attracting users by relating it to a topic we studied in class: network effects. Reddit is inherently social. The platform revolves around discussions, and you can’t have a discussion without multiple people. In addition, as more people use the site, more creative and novel ideas can be shared, so the perceived value of Reddit increases with the number of users. In class, we studied products and services like this, where value increases with the number of users. For many of these services, a tipping point like the following exists; if the number of people using a service exceeds a threshold, it will continue to grow due to networks effects until it reaches equilibrium, but if the number of people using the service is less than the threshold, it will diminish to zero. Reddit was experiencing a very similar situation. Initially, Reddit had too few users, and downward pressure was preventing the user base from growing. After the founders created fake profiles, the artificially created user base crossed the tipping point. It is interesting to note that even though the user base was fake, network effects still took hold and drove Reddit’s popularity up. This could be explained by the fact that other people believed that the user base was genuine, and hence made a decision to use the website.
Many other sites have followed in Reddit’s footsteps. Quora, a popular Q&A website founded by former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo, attracted users in a similar manner. The founders and early employees populated the site with questions and answers to give the idea that the site had more users than it actually had. After enough real users signed up for the site, network effects came into play and the site grew in popularity organically.
In general, websites and apps that depend on user content often face the problem of gaining initial traction. Many never gain enough users to pass their tipping point and eventually fail. The strategies used by Reddit as well as Quora helped them stand out and show that studying network effects can be extremely beneficial when making business decisions.
http://kirjonen.me/how-quora-and-reddit-solved-the-chicken-and-egg-problem/