Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Steve Huffman, of course,
Speaker 1: his co founder and CEO of Reddit. He joins us
Speaker 1: here live at the Bloomberg Tech Conference earlier this week.
Speaker 1: I was covering your earnings and the first earnings that
Speaker 1: you guys had as a publicly traded company.
Speaker 2: You guys just knocked out.
Speaker 3: Of the park. We had a nice quarter. We're happy
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 4: Revenue forty eight percent, users thirty seven percent. I think
Speaker 4: it's a great way to start, and I think we're
Speaker 4: pretty happy.
Speaker 2: What was it that worked well for you for the quarter?
Speaker 4: Well, look the way I've been describing the folks as
Speaker 4: our work is working. And so this has been really
Speaker 4: a multi year effort of making and Reddit like it's
Speaker 4: easy to say, it's easier to use, faster, easier to
Speaker 4: sign up, easier to find your home, and it's paying off.
Speaker 1: We should know when you stay multi year, you don't
Speaker 1: just mean like a couple of years. I mean, Reddit
Speaker 1: is like a company that is almost as old as
Speaker 1: as Facebook focus.
Speaker 2: Point, and it was a much longer path year in
Speaker 2: ibo So.
Speaker 4: We started the company in two thousand and five, I mean,
Speaker 4: and we've had a journey.
Speaker 3: We sold the company and spun out. I left, I
Speaker 3: came back.
Speaker 4: I'd say, really the kind of modern era of Reddit
Speaker 4: started at twenty fifteen, that's when I came back, But
Speaker 4: it was really a couple of years ago where I
Speaker 4: told the company. I was like, we need to but
Speaker 4: being so academic about our work and just make credit better,
Speaker 4: just focus on quality.
Speaker 5: Well, so how talk to a little bit about how
Speaker 5: you do and continue to make it better. There was
Speaker 5: a quote I think on the earnings about you say,
Speaker 5: building the next generation of Reddit. So how do you
Speaker 5: think about that? Steam in a world where we are
Speaker 5: talking a lot about AI.
Speaker 6: We know of the data that you guys have.
Speaker 5: On your platforms, it's smart data, it's targeted data.
Speaker 6: What is the next generation of Reddit? What does that
Speaker 6: really mean? So?
Speaker 4: Reddit is people, right, people create community that have incredible conversations.
Speaker 4: So really what we're doing is revealing that now as
Speaker 4: it happens. People are users, but any people really they
Speaker 4: have I think a deep down need or community and
Speaker 4: a sense of belonging, and that's what we provide now.
Speaker 3: At the same time as conversations.
Speaker 4: They're having are totally unique on the Internet where increasingly
Speaker 4: more and more content online is written by AI, is
Speaker 4: written by machines. There's a premium now on content that's
Speaker 4: made by humans or it comes from humans, and I
Speaker 4: think people have a craving increasingly through that realness as well.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering about the content policy that you guys rolled
Speaker 1: out today, because the whole idea here is to create
Speaker 1: a place for Reddit content to actually help train AI models.
Speaker 1: So you have a deal right now out there with
Speaker 1: Alphabet's Google to help it train its AI models. What
Speaker 1: works about Reddit's content and how do you balance that
Speaker 1: with making sure that the people who contribute there feel
Speaker 1: like they're not contributing to developing an AI algorithm.
Speaker 4: So Reddit has been open for a long time, and
Speaker 4: we love that about Reddit, and we've been very well
Speaker 4: indexed in search and Google Search for example, and I
Speaker 4: think of AI the AIS that we see as like
Speaker 4: search two point zero, and so it's important for us
Speaker 4: or we like Reddit being out there and our content
Speaker 4: being out there. It helps users find their home on Reddit,
Speaker 4: it helps people get answers to questions. I think this
Speaker 4: is very powerful. But what we announced this morning is
Speaker 4: that we can't just be completely permissive. We have to
Speaker 4: be very picky about who we work with, and we're
Speaker 4: gonna work with partners like Google who will do so
Speaker 4: on our terms, right, not reverse engineer the identity of
Speaker 4: our users, not try to use public content and Reddit
Speaker 4: to target ads or things like that, but really use
Speaker 4: it for what it's attended for. It's just advancing the
Speaker 4: state of the art and helping people find their home
Speaker 4: on Reddit.
Speaker 6: It does feel like we're.
Speaker 5: Going into a new generation, maybe a more informed generation,
Speaker 5: if you will, when it comes to this social media world.
Speaker 5: Is that fair after seeing some of the stumbles of
Speaker 5: kind of the first round, if you will.
Speaker 3: So, the way I think about this ecosystemic and I'm.
Speaker 5: Not just saying Reddit, I'm just talking about broadly social media.
Speaker 4: Well, so Reddit, remember we started in two thousand and five,
Speaker 4: so we actually pre date the word social media and
Speaker 4: the idea of influence.
Speaker 6: There was a time when that happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so I feel like we're kind of going
Speaker 4: through this this evolution where Reddit's becoming more mainstream and
Speaker 4: increasingly people who maybe have grown up with social media
Speaker 4: are seeing that hey, there's another way, and this might
Speaker 4: be a better way or a better fit for them. Right,
Speaker 4: Because Reddit is free of a lot of the I
Speaker 4: think incentives or misincentives that calls people to behave unnaturally.
Speaker 4: Like on Reddit, people just help each other and you
Speaker 4: don't get credit for it in real life.
Speaker 3: So the only reason you do it is.
Speaker 4: Because you enjoy doing it, and I think that's really special.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I'm actually so late to the party.
Speaker 1: I've talked about this, talked about I can't tell you
Speaker 1: what time he talks about it. I'm not a young person,
Speaker 1: and like, I basically feel like I just discovered Reddit
Speaker 1: and it's probably the platform that I spend the most
Speaker 1: time on. It has communities for you know, I'm a cyclist.
Speaker 1: I live in a certain part of New York. Like
Speaker 1: I can follow all of these communities and it's like
Speaker 1: it's super helpful too, with like home improvement stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm finding it.
Speaker 1: How do you get more people like me to find it?
Speaker 1: Sort of later in there.
Speaker 3: Hey, you're doing your part. But I feel like like.
Speaker 1: My brothers are like, yeah, this has been around.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: So this is the funny thing about our demographics that
Speaker 4: we're actually what we're seeing as people age out or
Speaker 4: social media and they age into reading, and so it's
Speaker 4: kind of pick people up. You know, we call them
Speaker 4: a merging adults EVE in their early twenties, late teenage.
Speaker 4: The peak of the bell curve is maybe twenty five,
Speaker 4: but I've inc recently seen sixty and seventy year olds
Speaker 4: on reading. The way I describe it is whatever you're
Speaker 4: into or going through just in life, it's on Reddit somewhere.
Speaker 4: It's just people, and so yeah, I think the platform
Speaker 4: is a little older.
Speaker 1: Well, something that you've brought up a lot lately is
Speaker 1: the idea of when you're googling something, you actually find
Speaker 1: Reddit answers in Google. How big of a traffic driver.
Speaker 2: Is that to you?
Speaker 4: It's a big one, Like how big it's it's coming gone,
Speaker 4: it's coming gone. Over the years, but we've been seeing
Speaker 4: more traffic from Google because we made the website much faster,
Speaker 4: and Google like speed, so faster website rank higher. And
Speaker 4: then again, I think there's been this secular shift towards
Speaker 4: people want to hear from other real people, and that's
Speaker 4: what we provide. I think Google's pretty good just as
Speaker 4: a search engine of figuring out what are people actually
Speaker 4: looking for?
Speaker 3: It happens to be Reddit right now.
Speaker 6: What's it like to come back to the company, you know.
Speaker 4: So it was nine years ago when I came back
Speaker 4: to Reddit. It was going through difficult time. But look,
Speaker 4: I love Reddit so much. I think Reddit is so
Speaker 4: important and the opportunity is so big that I mean, honestly,
Speaker 4: it's my dream job. I feel so thankful to have
Speaker 4: this job, and to really to have had it twice,
Speaker 4: you know, once the first time, and having come back.
Speaker 3: It's sometimes I just kind of pinched myself. I feels
Speaker 3: so incredibly fortunate.
Speaker 6: And being a publicly held company.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's I think ipoing is it's a big milestone.
Speaker 3: But I've likened it to getting married.
Speaker 4: A lot of planning, a big special moment, you know.
Speaker 4: But we went out. We went out on a Thursday
Speaker 4: and on Monday, It's like, okay, work.
Speaker 1: Where do you see yourself fitting in in this?
Speaker 2: In the social media ecosystem?
Speaker 6: Is it?
Speaker 1: You have TikTok, you have meta platforms or Jones, Instagram,
Speaker 1: I mean, you have YouTube.
Speaker 2: They just dominate. Where do you fit at?
Speaker 3: We've been doing our own thing for such a long time.
Speaker 4: If you were to look at our traffic, you would
Speaker 4: not see the rise or fall of any other social
Speaker 4: media platform. So we've we've kind of grown up in
Speaker 4: our own image.
Speaker 3: We we like the way we do.
Speaker 4: Things, and what we're seeing is that people increasingly just
Speaker 4: appreciate the Reddit way versus maybe what you find somewhere else.
Speaker 5: The biggest challenge for your guys going forward, what do
Speaker 5: you see that as?
Speaker 4: So I think similar to that last question, uh, staying
Speaker 4: true to our values from the way we do things.
Speaker 4: And so I as and remind the company we're here
Speaker 4: for our reason. We get to survive because we've done
Speaker 4: things to Reddit way, and it means sometimes we've maybe
Speaker 4: not grown as fast as we could have because we said, hey,
Speaker 4: that doesn't fit the.
Speaker 3: Way we do things.
Speaker 4: And so I think we have to take pressure to
Speaker 4: grow and pressure to do things this or that, Yeah,
Speaker 4: and just filter them through, well, how does it fit
Speaker 4: with Reddit?
Speaker 3: And how do we make sure we stay true to ourselves.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we should be tough as a publicly held company, as.
Speaker 3: You know, it can be tough, but I think we're
Speaker 3: ready for it.
Speaker 6: Listen, Steve, you are ending our show and our coverage
Speaker 6: here and just on a high point. So thank you
Speaker 6: so much and good luck with everything.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, you really appreciate it and Steve.
Speaker 6: Helped me, the co founder of Course and CEO of
Speaker 6: Read It. That's a wrap, guys
Speaker 5: A Bloomberg Business Week finishing up here at the Bloomberg
Speaker 5: Technology Summit