What else do you think they should spend their money on?
Serious question, they’re a social media site, their whole goal is to sell ads to consumers, which is all R&D cost and server cost. User acquisition at this point is minimal, Sales is basically “We have a lot of users, want to talk to them.” The goal is to create ways that sales can sell to consumers to make money.
Doesn’t help the consumer base is actively hostile to advertisements.
Yep.
Also - reddit spends 55% of it’s budget on R&D?! WTAF!?!
A decent search tool is right around the corner.
Unironically, yes. As part of Reddit’s deal with Google, they’re supposed to get access to some of Google’s search tools.
Have you ever tried to find something on a corporate Google drive?
It’s kind of impressive how bad Google is at search these days.
site:reddit.com
But Google is crap now for searching.
…and they make SOOO much money because of it. Companies are buying into it to push their results higher using SEO words and phrases to help.
No, it’s actually quite brilliant. Google results return mainly AI posts, and Reddit is now 90% AI regurgitated crap. It’s a match made in hell.
So, they are likely very poorly managed but, R&D is a common slushfund to keep your profit negative so you don’t have to pay taxes.
which makes sense if the r&d gives return on investment.
otherwise you’d be better off paying tax and taking the profits anyway.
Nowadays it’s llm powered bots all the way down.
Shouldn’t most of a midsize tech company’s budget be that?
That said, they’re terrible at it. And having worked with some of the folks they hired, I’m not totally surprised.
Hundreds of millions of dollars each year and in 20 years all they did is two redesigns, both of which sucked worse than what they had originally.
Oof.
It’s expensive to research and develop Spez’s apocalypse bunker.
Or as I like to call it: Super Weenie Hut Jr.
Delivering ads to people who are armed up to the teeth with adblockers requires quite some research effort.
What else do you think they should spend their money on?
Serious question, they’re a social media site, their whole goal is to sell ads to consumers, which is all R&D cost and server cost. User acquisition at this point is minimal, Sales is basically “We have a lot of users, want to talk to them.” The goal is to create ways that sales can sell to consumers to make money.
Doesn’t help the consumer base is actively hostile to advertisements.