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.
Comment on Reddit: Return Of The Junk Stock IPO
athos77@kbin.social 8 months ago
I think the company may never monetize its platform without angering its users and the entire premise of Reddit is user-generated content.
Yep.
Also - reddit spends 55% of it's budget on R&D?! WTAF!?!
blargerer@kbin.social 8 months ago
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 8 months ago
which makes sense if the r&d gives return on investment.
otherwise you’d be better off paying tax and taking the profits anyway.
kbin_space_program@kbin.run 8 months ago
R&D is also a fairly big tax break companies can use.
finthechat@kbin.social 8 months ago
It's expensive to research and develop Spez's apocalypse bunker.
Or as I like to call it: Super Weenie Hut Jr.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Delivering ads to people who are armed up to the teeth with adblockers requires quite some research effort.
Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
rimu@piefed.social 8 months ago
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.
normalexit@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Nowadays it’s llm powered bots all the way down.
Kinglink@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
Nougat@fedia.io 8 months ago
A decent search tool is right around the corner.
n2burns@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Unironically, yes. As part of Reddit’s deal with Google, they’re supposed to get access to some of Google’s search tools.
kbin_space_program@kbin.run 8 months ago
But Google is crap now for searching.
Alteon@lemmy.world 8 months ago
…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.
Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.
jaybone@lemmy.world 8 months ago
site:reddit.com
AbidanYre@lemmy.world 8 months ago
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.