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.
I used Apollo right up until it shut down, and I haven’t touched Reddit since. I’m guessing I’m not the only one.
Wefwef all the way now
I downloaded Memmy yesterday, and so far I like it.
Memmy ist really awesome! Intuitive, fast, great looks! Love itt!
And it is officially on the App store now!
It’s absurd just how good wefwef is as a web app. Such a natural transition from Apollo.
Since I’m here, RIP Apollo and thanks for all the hard work Christian!
WefWef on the desktop and Memmy for Lemmy on the phone…
I was also an enthusiastic Apollo user.
Other than Lenny, do you replace Reddit with anything else? This thread we’re in now is an exception - there are a lot of posts here. But most threads on Lemmy are pretty empty.
Thats why its up to all of us to start participating.
Protip: If you really want to start a conversation/get engagement, follow Cunningham’s Law:
So, fill those empty posts with confidently incorrect statements and watch that comment section fill up as people rush in to correct you.
Actually, Cunningham’s Law says nothing of the sort. If you look at the source material as I have done - and in the original Phoenician, because so much is lost in translation otherwise - you’ll quickly note that Cunningham is really attempting to convey the hopeless sense of man’s search for purpose in a cruel, unforgiving world. While some scholars debate the literal truth to this sentiment as expressed by the author, it is generally thought plausible if not outright likely that these writings followed a catastrophic life event of some sort - the loss of a child or death of a spouse, witnessing the end of a great civilization, a dick pic delivered to the wrong person. While the specifics aren’t known, what we do know about the author is that he would likely be further distraught at the loss of control and ownership experienced with a misattributed “law” on the internet should such a thing even be imaginable.
I like this law
Most people didn’t create content and don’t interact with it (ie most people are lurkers). Take it upon yourself to comment and interact with posts and others will almost always join in and have something to say.
Oh no, not Lenny!
Same with me. I haven’t deleted my Reddit account yet, but will be doing that soon, after I delete or overwrite my comments of 10 years there.
Between Lemmy, Kbin and Mastodon, I have plenty to keep me occupied in what used to be my Reddit-scrolling time.
I used sync up until the 13th or so, then started limiting my reddit usage, and increased my lemmy usage until July 1st. Now I’m solely on lemmy on mobile, and only see reddit on desktop when I come across a search I need.
Same. I still have the app as a reminder but this is my home now.
Weekend I’m going to see about spinning up my own instance.
I really missed Reddit at first and it took a while to get TestFlight on Memmy and figure this out but it’s looking good so far.
Yep. Just check the site to see if my data request has been processed. Replied to a message in which someone was asking about Lemmy. But that’s it.
migrated to wefwef, would prefer a native app, but nevertheless i’m not even looking back. 13 year club.
Same, it took me to 7/1 for me to finally uninstall RIF. Let’s wait and see what July’s numbers look like
Same
I agree. The real change will be from 1 July onwards since none of us can use our apps anymore.
Eh, reddit could’nt even do that right. They’ve not shutdown all apps
Yeah, I don’t exactly understand how but RIF is working for me, despite the fact you can’t log into it. I only kept it as a momento, but it still works as long as you have the subs you want to see memorized…
hate to be that guy, but I also want to contribute with content, so: It’s memento
It’s like reddit never left.
Yea, Infinity is still working
Infinity has Spez’s cock down their throat and is going subscription based.
It’ll be interesting to see how many users stick with the apps that are continuing. I think the devs are crazy to think that even more than 5% of the users they had will continue to use the app for $5/month. Especially when you can’t view NSFW content.
For whatever it’s worth, I doubt it comes anywhere near their throat.
Good one!
I am not paying, Its working.
I would love it if that was true, but think the impact of the blackout making ALL users unable to access whole swathes of the site might be bigger
I think there are still some subs that are private, and I know a couple went NSFW and a bunch are getting harassed by admins to reopen or remove the NSFW tag.
My friend told me the cyberpunk sub couldn’t reply to the email they got telling them to turn off the NSFW tag. Because nearly full on sex scenes, decapitation, huge hogs with giant titties is absolutely SFW.
Even if 3% is a low number, I guarantee that 3% were reddits more active users and content creators.
If most of the quality content slows to a trickle users will continue to leave and look for more viable platforms.
It’s not 3% of users, it’s 3% of traffic. This could be caused by 0.1% of power users leaving.
Reddit doesn’t see users as customers.
They are the product. A number that you can sell to advertisers and shareholders.
That model started with literal radio. It’s not a new thing. We are the consumers and the advertisers are the customers. It’s kinda like how children are the consumers of toys but the parents are the customers. It actually makes business much harder because you have to keep two groups satisfied. The product is still airtime(radio), and nobody likes ads but they are sharing the space and funding the transmitter.
Don’t forget to donate to your local independent stations, folks. Radio is not free! Neither is Lemmy.
No company wants to say they’ve lost 30% of their top development, marketing and QA personnel.
They can still sell the raw product numbers, for as long as advertisers and shareholders don’t realize the product has turned to shit.
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.
It was hyperbolic of course. But really,
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?
It might be better if the terms are swapped. I’m only calling them primary because they have to come first before the secondary, and they’re the foundation for everything. There’s probably a better way to term them.
Oh, I’m not denying that the users are the foundation for the business model but when Reddit makes business decisions, they first listen to those who pay them.
They also don’t want to lose 3% of their product.
How many people are less engaged in the internet at the beginning of summer because they’re on vacation or partying? I would think drops like this as the weather improves are pretty normal.
Alternatively, people with more time sign up and shitpost. I recall every summer break Redditors would complain. 🫣
That’s a good point although with smart phones, I wonder how much of the teenager traffic is baked in year round now. Summer Reddit was terrible but then it just became Reddit.
spaz: were not profitable, heres ways were gonna become more profitable.
redditors: ugh leaves
spaz: your small protest from the landed gentry cant hurt me.
redditors: ok, bye.
spaz: jgvbefgbaegbeQANGBLEw
In history terms, 3% is everything. I remember seeing a documentary where a guy claimed that every coup in history, in which 3% of the population were ardently dedicated to the cause, has been successful.
I am wondering how user count is calculated.
I guarantee you that a huge percentage of Redditors have multiple accounts. Many of which might be inactive. Are all accounts ever created on Reddit still considered part of their current total or are only accounts active in the 6 or 12 months count? If people are legitimately leaving Reddit, I think their losses are going to steamroll because they won’t just lose one user, but instead they will lose that one user and their 2 or 3 alternate accounts as well.
Next month or three are going to look like a bloodybath for Reddit.
Can’t wait!
Yeah, I was using Lemmy and Reddit in parallel throughout June (aside from the blackout days, where I stayed off of Reddit out of solidarity,) and only really drastically reduced my Reddit usage this month.
Same. I spent most of June trying to find a lemmy instance to join. Quit cold turkey on 1st July along with nuking my post history. Keeping my account till 31 July just in case they decide to revert my deleted posts.
Think of how many ‘users’ are bots that likely won’t continue to work since no one would pay the monthly sub to bot Reddit like in the past.
Also, this data isn’t from Reddit. It’s from SimilarWeb. They track browser access to websites, not API calls. Reddit absolutely won’t report their drop in API access, which is where the largest drop will be.