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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:
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
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!
I suspect half that drop is from me alone, lol.
Reddit lost a LOT of their power users. Even if the general traffic isn't that badly dented, it means a lot of the best content and conversations will not go back. Reddit will spiral down to a 9gag clone.
I lurk the frontpage occasionally and I've already noticed the Reddit atmosphere has gotten ... weird.
Little-known, content-churning subreddits are bubbling to the top because of all the other blackouts and desertions. Fringe viewpoints and wacko opinions that would normally get downvoted to the bottom of a thread are now out in the open because there's no voice of reason to hold them back.
And the kind of people that are still on there, acting as if everything is fine (or, God forbid, better(???) than it was before the revolts) ... it's a very strange place now.
If only people would actually stop using Reddit instead of doing these useless “protests” like they do in /r/videos. They're still using the site, that's what Reddit wants...
I've been waiting for my third party app to break. Boost finally stopped working an hour ago so I signed up here.
Looking at the pages for lemmy.ml, beehaw.org, lemmy.world, kbin.social, as well as lemm.ee paints an interesting, if expected, picture.
For one thing, lemmy.ml is categorized as "Games > Games - Other (In United States)" which made me scratch my head to the point of hurting my scalp. The rest are uncategorized (which is better than being miscategorized, imo).
Now, for the stats:
| Instance | Total Visits for June 2023 | % Change from May 2023 | Bounce Rate | Pages per Visit | Average Visit Duration | #1 Incoming Traffic Source (from social media) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| reddit.com¹ | 1.7B | -3.36% | 37.98% | 6.21 | 8:24 | Youtube (52.48%) |
| lemmy.world | 3.5M | n/a² | 38.12% | 6.62 | 8:44 | Reddit (97.29%) |
| kbin.social | 2.9M | +5000% | 26.24% | 11.2 | 9:18 | Reddit (93.92%) |
| lemmy.ml | 1.5M | +1716% | 51.79% | 5.55 | 3:54 | Reddit (98.86%) |
| feddit.de | 791.7K | +5000% | 55.88% | 2.76 | 3:57 | Reddit (98.31%) |
| beehaw.org | 790.1K | +5000% | 35.48% | 4.50 | 5:44 | Reddit (96.24%) |
| lemmy.ca | 186.4K | +1615% | 69.14% | 2.45 | 1:05 | Reddit (100%) |
| lemm.ee | 167.5K | +5000% | 29.58% | 6.73 | 5:18 | Reddit (86.81%) |
reddit.com is included as a point of comparisonlemmy.world didn't exist yet in May 2023We can see that the larger instances are already performing well in comparison to reddit when it comes to "interaction" statistics. It's a surprise, however that kbin.social trounces everyone else it was compared to--even comparing favorably with lemmy.world in visit numbers. In comparison, lemmy.ml performed quite badly especially in bounce rate and average visit duration. Someone who's better equipped than me in analyzing these figures can perhaps do a better anaylsis, but from what I can see, we're not doing that bad here.
I've also added lemm.ee into the mix just for good measure (and perhaps as a proxy for smaller-ish instances), and it's doing quite good as well.
EDITS:
I see a lot of people saying, "I can't believe it was only a 3% drop," and I'd like to offer some context as to why there's not enough data here to really tell a story, yet. It could go a few different ways.
The Reddit protests in June were a big deal, not just on Reddit or Lemmy, but to the media at-large. Traffic surely saw a huge influx of people wanting to look at the dumpster fire. I know that I myself used Reddit a lot leading up to the blackouts, since it was, in a sense, the last hurrah of Reddit as we knew it. The Spez AMA would have driven traffic. The NSFW sub protests would have driven traffic. All those news articles linked to Reddit directly, and they would have also driven traffic.
Even with all that, there's still a decrease in traffic. As others have said, July will be a better metric for the actual damage done, since the media has largely moved on and aren't driving as many visits, and 3PAs are toast.
These numbers would have been more representative if we could have had more than a quarter to look at. What was the QoQ trajectory before this? For all we know, this could have indicated business as usual, or it could have indicated something much bigger, depending on what the traffic metrics over the past 12-24 months could show us.
I also would have liked to see the history for unique sessions and unique visitors. If there was a huge influx of unique visitors compared to the past few months, but traffic was still decreased overall, then that would indicate it came from news clicks or bots.
Basically what I'm saying is that the data doesn't paint any kind of real picture right at this moment. That doesn't mean there was no impact though. Time will tell.
This is for June. Third party apps were still working, and personally I didn’t change my Reddit browsing habit much during June. Now that third party apps are officially dead, I’ve been on Reddit a lot less, and been spending more time on Lemmy. Curious to see what the numbers look like for July.
They’ve been astroturfing with bots to pump those numbers
There are soooo many GPT comments and threads on Reddit, at least when I left on the first. I imagine it’s going to get worse and worse now.
I just realized that today is the first day in YEARS that I didn’t access Reddit. Sad, but it is what it is, and entirely their fault.
It was my primary social media site for over 10 years, and only one in probably the past five after ditching Facebook.
All I ever used to access it was baconreader. When the first talk of killing off the API started with the rate hike, I had a sinking feeling this was the end.
Rode it out till the last day, and reflexively kept opening baconreader just to realise again it was offline.
Decided to give Lemmy a try, and while it took a couple days to get it sorted, I have to say, for my daily browsing fix, it's more than enough.
Yes, reddit is a giant database, and when google searches take me there I'll view the info, but for everyday use, lurking, posting, and commenting, never again.
Not sure of its bias, user saturation, bot, shills, demographic, or what, but while smaller, the quality and content of the comments here just seems better. It reminds me of the early days on fark or even back on IRC.
It really does piss me off that greed over an IPO ruined something that had been a part of my life for so long.
I am enough of a grumpy old bastard that unless they fix the API and baconreader starts up again, I'm done. The internet is a big weird place, and I'm happy to go see other parts of it.
I never realized how significant killing third-party apps would be for me personally, but since Apollo stopped working my desire to use Reddit on my phone has dropped to zero. I've completely replaced it with Discord and "traditional" social media in my downtime.
If they kill old.reddit on desktop too, that will be the final nail in the coffin for me.
I was a heavy user before, for sure. I used to scroll Reddit for hours a day. I uninstalled my app when the blackouts started. If I do a google search where the answer is on reddit, i'll still look at that answer. But for the most part, I am gone. Seems like a lot of people are all bark no bite though.
This gets made back by September.
95% of people who use reddit use the official app or website, and don't notice a single thing except the occasional stray John Oliver meme.
Not enough hobby communities left.
I thought about this comment, and realized that somehow, I just don't care so much anymore. Instead of worrying about what I left behind, I'm looking forward to what's ahead of us.
I think it's because even before the whole 3d-party-app drama, there already was this undefined feeling that Reddit's best days are behind it. Maybe it's the effect of ad money and monetization, or it's the inevitable trend towards low quality content that comes with mass adoption, probably it's both.
Whatever the cause, in most subreddits, the old Facebook-style rot had already set in. Once-cool subs now being an endless barrage of tired memes, bots farming karma, and people being assholes. The things I joined for years ago, the engaging discussion, random encounters with amazing experts, the cutting-edge internet anarchy, it's all already long gone.
When I opened the app (Baconreader in my case), I only did it out of habit, to then spendy time scrolling through an endless list of things that made me slightly go "heh".
So, maybe most people will stay on Reddit for now, and probably I will have to leave behind certain communities instead of finding direct replacements. But I see that as a good thing. As long as even just 2% of Reddit's users make it here, I'm excited it will grow into something much better than what I left behind.
Most of that traffic is probably lurkers and content consumers. Reddit will continue chugging along for a bit, but the loss of power users and mods is about guaranteed to wither the platform over time.
There are enough reposts to keep them busy for a while I think. I swear the same post would get reposted a few weeks after the original and get just as many or more upvotes than the first time. And the top comments were usually the same or similar.
Havent been there since the day of the blackout, not missing anything.
One point to keep in mind is that drama also brings engagement IN, not just out. When the drama subsides, the temporary boost in activity from new users or lurkers will go down too.
That being said, the percent decrease was always gonna be in the single digits. The average redditor was never gonna stick with a prolonged protest of a service that remains free to use.
I still visit reddit maybe once a day for 10 minutes for niche subs or communities that aren't built up here. If those communities develop here, I will fully cut out reddit.
Edit: also when noting that I use Lemmy amount 90% of the time now, but my overall usage of Lemmy/reddit has gone down. Probably for the better, because I started reading again.
If it wasn’t for my photography, I’d delete instagram. Holy shit is it pay-to-play a cesspool. And I’m being targeted for ads for all kinds of ponzi schemes and crypto and FOREX scams. Probably from watching Coffeezilla videos.
We’ll see how Lemmy picks up. I’m really liking it, thus far. Right now we’re looking at Reddit like a former, toxic partner that we want to spite. Lately I was just going on the World News, Ukraine war mega thread.
That may sound like not a lot, but Facebook as been hemorraging users for a few years now, if they're losing users at about the same rate as Facebook, that's a big oof.
I think the big deal will be if it's sustained. Losing a bunch of users for a month isn't a big deal if they come back, or at least stop leaving. If Reddit loses 3% of its users every month for a year then things will be pretty dire for them.
Can't say I've got much sympathy for Reddit, though.
I'm genuinely surprised the Lemmy exodus has been as large as 3%. Reddit will be just fine. This isn't like Digg > Reddit.
I mean, this is actually a lot like Digg > Reddit, the same class of user has migrated. It's just that Reddit has long outgrown that techy/nerdy demographic. I doubt they'll miss us much.
Nor do I want that other 97% to follow us to Lemmy, especially.
It will be much more interesting to see a year from now, after most of the actual content posters and decent mods have left. 🍿
I don't think that many content posters will leave. Sure, in tech oriented communities they will, as they are the ones most receptive to fediverse or other alternatives.
But painters, photographers, historians, chefs... etc are a large part of what make reddit great. And plenty of those don't really give a fuck about the platform. They will just use the official app and move on.
This is likely to not even include the exodus from the 1st of July onwards also. That's when my partner and I moved over here. Will be interesting to look again at the start of August, check the true scale of their fuck-up.
Zero surprise. Most people are living life on autopilot. They will continue to ignore major issues—like politics, climate change, and corporations mistreating people—to our collective long-term detriment. Anecdotally, I have friends who don’t give two fucks about such important things. Instead, they focus almost purely on MMA, reality TV, and stand-up comedy.
I mean, we all have hobbies but damn, pay attention and take a stand on serious issues that affect us all.
Not enough to matter. Not even out of step with any other social media site lol. We’re doomed
Reddit doesn't need to be destroyed in order for Lemmy to succeed. There is plenty of room on the internet for multiple communities.
Appears that this doesn't include July numbers. I think most of the people leaving Reddit, myself included, didn't do it until our 3rd party apps actually got killed on July 1st. Will be interesting to see these numbers at the end of the month.
I would really like to be a fly on the wall at their meetings to know if that is in line with their expectations or not.
Note that this only goes up to June. The July numbers are the more interesting ones IMO. Stats I've seen show that post/comment volume is about the same, but they could have bot accounts making up the difference.
I wonder if spez will be dumb enough to try to hide their bot use from investors and get sued after the deal when things get revealed. Or maybe he'll be stuck covering that up for the rest of his life.
Lol the only reason I clicked into this is because the front page truncated "Discord" to "Disco" and I wanted to learn more about this next new social networking site...!
Lemmy.world is on there too - it wasn't tracked in May but in June it was up to 3.5M visits with 970K unique visitors, so starting off pretty well.
Source: https://pro.similarweb.com/#/digitalsuite/websiteanalysis/overview/website-performance/*/999/3m?webSource=Total&key=lemmy.world
A well deserved outcome. Companies need to realize that they are nothing without their customers/users. An undeserved arrogance can only lead to eventual downfall.
To be fair, 3% of traffic missing is not going to be their downfall. They managed to rid themselves of virtually all third party clients in one swoop and had to trade in only a fraction of their monthly engagement - they'll sell it as streamlining.
Need to be take SimWeb data with a bit of a grain of salt. Having used in previous businesses their results are indicative. They smooth big m2m changes from memory.
Remember about the Pareto principle: roughly 20% of users is probably responsible for the 80% of the content. This 3% is quite a lot in this context, especially considering the active people are probably much less complacent in this regard.
The 90-9-1 principle may also be relevant here: 90% are lurkers, 9% are contributors, and 1% are creators.
Are you saying the closure of many of the subs from June 12-14 and beyond had a negative impact on website traffic?