What could transform today?
It’s typical for community- focused world begin- ups to fight with balancing monetisation and community engagement, said Mr Li Jianggan, CEO of tech venture builder Momentum Works.
He pointed to China’s movie- sharing system Bilibili as an example that has” suffered great time” since its IPO.
While Reddit has an older and more restricted file compared to various community- concentrated platforms like Discord and Pinterest, it” amazingly has attracted and retained a fresh audience”.
Three crowdfunding methods were highlighted in the Reddit proposal.
- Advertising
Now, ads are displayed on the project’s “home” and “popular” feeds, and on society fibers.
Advertising in reply fibers and search pages, as well as movie advertising, have been identified as potential future possibilities.
Reddit also wants to use artificial intelligence ( AI ) to predict user engagement with ads and expand ad reach, as well as to track conversion ( actions that consumers take after interacting with an ad ).
These support to provide and show return on investment, which was in turn help attract more advertisers.
Prof Crystal pointed out that in Singapore, native influencers , are purposeful about tying up advertisements with their personal anecdotes.
” But material, as opposed to just advertising for advertising ‘ sake, is something that Singaporeans are more tolerant towards”, she said.
” If you’re talking about Reddit just posting ads and interrupting our encounter … that’s not going to be very, very helpful”.
- Data licence
Reddit has started allowing next parties to get user- generated data, for purposes including training big language models for AI. The US Federal Trade Commission is looking into these AI- related deals.
Another potential purpose is data targeting, where companies take the demographic information of users to tailor content and ads, as outlined above.
One of Reddit’s features is that users are pseudonymous, so the community is not bound by its members having” a singular, coherent, long- term user identity and chain”, Prof Crystal said.
A” throwaway culture” also exists, where individuals have several handles, sometimes in order to” safely and actively participate in conversations that may be frowned upon in Singapore”.
Parts of this could be compromised in the name of more effective data targeting.
Prof Crystal pointed to Facebook, which implemented a real- name system in 2014. But she also noted that this would not necessarily be the case with Reddit.
” It’s just that you have to now be loyal and committed to the one account… which is probably going to be off- putting to a lot of Singaporeans who are already familiar with tabbing”, or the practice of switching between different accounts, she said.
National University of Singapore Associate Professor Natalie Pang pointed out that advertisers will want to know who they’re reaching and targeting. Marketplaces also cannot function without a form of identification.
But she said it would also be possible to target ads based on topical interests and locations already identified through subreddits.