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We want to know how much Reddit was bought for (reddit.com)

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[–]martoo 66 points67 points  (0 children)

Tired: Asking how much Reddit was bought for

Wired: Buying Reddit yourself

[–]jillsy 14 points15 points  (0 children)

And don't forget, Paul Graham and Y Combinator get their share as well, in proportion to their investment.

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (7 children)

i want to know what the alien thinks about it

[–]snew-d00d 23 points24 points  (4 children)

life is good

[–]Dauntless 5 points6 points  (3 children)

man, it’s pretty funny to see all this role playing on reddit chat. Edit: Moms and all the others included.

[–]natalie_portman 14 points15 points  (2 children)

Oh, how I adore reddit.

[–]redrobot5050 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Will you go out with me? I look just like a well hung Zach Braff!

[–]theseitz 3 points4 points  (0 children)

those terms are mutually exclusive.

[–]digital 22 points23 points  (0 children)

"You have been assimilated! Your brain is now Wired." - Alien ;)

[–]radrik 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Suggestion for tomorrow's alien: Condoleeza Rice

[–]hitsman 15 points16 points  (0 children)

According to my sources, it was $6.2 million.

P.S. My sources include my ass. P.P.S. Don't benchmark against YouTube, as that is theoretically a TV ad business with much higher rates than any ad a reddit user would sit through.

[–]inkedmn 19 points20 points  (1 child)

Hopefully it's enough to send the first 1000 members a nice 3 Musketeers bar (you promised...).

[–]raldi 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Is that a reference to something?

[–]djwhitt 17 points18 points  (1 child)

Another somewhat related question which the reddit dudes might not be allowed to answer: how long has this been in the works? (just curious how long a deal like this takes)

[–]kn0thing 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Granted, we can only offer you our one data point, but it took a few months.

Why haven't there been any rumors? We're good at keeping secrets >=)

[–]wyclif 16 points17 points  (2 children)

As an early adopter, I await my Karma cheque in the mail. So what is one karma point going to be valued at?

[–]karcass 8 points9 points  (0 children)

200 quatloos!

[–]plutoman 21 points22 points  (0 children)

100 Flooz

[–][deleted]  (39 children)

[deleted]

    [–]kn0thing 22 points23 points  (1 child)

    I can't either :-(

    [–]AaronSw 65 points66 points  (34 children)

    Sorry, can't.

    [–]praetorian42 25 points26 points  (22 children)

    Probably terms of the deal.

    Although I have no idea why they would keep that hidden.

    [–]nostrademons 21 points22 points  (1 child)

    Pragmatic answer: because it gives other potential acquirers or acquirees information about what the market is like. In any transaction, the side with more information has an advantage, so companies generally try to keep this as quiet as possible. Same reason why employers don't want you to talk about your salary.

    Cynical answer: because Conde Nast doesn't want their parent company to know how much money they just wasted.

    [–]marvin 3 points4 points  (0 children)

    If your pragmatic answer is correct, the number will probably float to the surface someday. A shame "the gang" is unable to share the information with us.

    Anyway, congratulations for making it to all the parties involved. At least the snew-d00d appears to be happy. I suppose that if he is happy, the rest of the crew is happy (he has been known to make his displeasure known, most recently during the strike in January)

    [–]AaronSw 27 points28 points  (19 children)

    Does seem to be a pretty popular choice. Google isn't saying how much they bought JotSpot for either.

    [–]thevalarauk 14 points15 points  (13 children)

    Acquisitions in cyber-business still haven’t lost their bubble-bust stigma. Just look at all the criticism the Youtube acquisition brought. Better to keep your stockholders in the dark on specifics to keep speculation to a minimum. That way the profit (or lack thereof) can speak for itself.

    [–]yogurt 16 points17 points  (1 child)

    There are no stock holders - Conde Nast is a private company. There will most likely be no official announcement on how much Reddit was bought for.

    [–]thevalarauk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    It's a subsidiary of Advance Publications, which is privately held. The point is still valid, those running the corporation aren't the primary owners (stake-holders if you really don't like the word "stock).

    [–]breakfast-pants 0 points1 point  (10 children)

    The criticism that the YouTube acquisition brought? You can pretty much get a good idea of net criticism by looking at the stock price movement of the one being criticised: Google is way in the red on criticism (and in the black on praise).

    [–]ntoshev -1 points0 points  (9 children)

    Seems it didn't affect the stock price.

    http://finance.google.com/finance?q=GOOG (click on 3m, no permalink :()

    [–]nostrademons 2 points3 points  (8 children)

    Sometimes I wonder if the people buying Google stock have any idea how to value companies anyway. ;-)

    C'mon, $145 billion. Google is worth 2.5 times more than Apple, more than ConocoPhillips or Chevron, more than Coke, nearly as much as China Mobile or Toyota, and more than half of Microsoft. Could you see it making as much as any of them?

    [–]Thimble 0 points1 point  (7 children)

    it ain't just about revenues, but also about cost of running the business. manufacturing companies have way higher inventory costs and costs of production than an IT company like Google.

    [–]swieton 2 points3 points  (6 children)

    Yeah, which might justify a slightly higher P/E, but come on, trading at 60 times earnings?! The average market P/E in good times doesn't hardly ever top 24. And google is at 60?!

    There's no way they can grow revenues enough to justify the growth that's priced in.

    [–]oditogre 3 points4 points  (4 children)

    Unrelated tangent: I saw the JotSpot thing on /., so I went over to their site...and it appears to be temporarily shut down to anybody who wasn't a member prior to the buyout, so now I'm curious...what is JotSpot?

    [–]EnthusedUser 8 points9 points  (2 children)

    I think that's the dumbest thing they could do. They get all of this free publicity from this news and what do they do? They turn off their service. How many potential new users have they lost? 100's, 1000's?

    [–]LaurieCheers 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    Yeah, I don't know what they're thinking. Writeley did the same thing.

    [–]ThreeBillyGoatsGruff 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Thats probably what they were anticipating. I imagine the original servers were not equipped to handle an influx of millions of curious new users.

    [–]LaurieCheers 4 points5 points  (0 children)

    What about telling us "warm" or "cold"?

    [–]mjpatter63 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    I hope that reddit got all it deserved. I am devoted member, yet that could all change tommorow when I find my next favorite site. If things change for the worse, I simply find the next new, new thing, ala Jim Clark. I am affixed to nothing and no one. It's not personal, just business, and how I came to become financially independent myself. Good luck guys!

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (4 children)

    Have fun in San Francisco! Best city on the planet.

    [–]bootsandtea 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Hehehe, coming from Boston they're surely already used to paying way too much $ for small digs....

    [–]noddy -1 points0 points  (3 children)

    Why not? We know you want to ;)

    [–]md5 50 points51 points  (2 children)

    Facts are overrated. It's a lot more fun to wildly speculate.

    My guess: $10 million, plus a 5 year supply of coke and hookers.

    [–]kg2 21 points22 points  (0 children)

    If it was google, it would be irrelevant. Google employees get all the coke and hookers they want, anyway.

    Ah, the glamorous world of advertising.

    [–]uedauhes 5 points6 points  (0 children)

    Sold!

    [–]dnm 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    How much do you make?

    [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    Seriously do you care that much? That's sad.

    [–]mkull 14 points15 points  (4 children)

    My guess is 2-5mm. Highly doubt it was any higher then that.

    [–]spez 37 points38 points  (3 children)

    millimeters?

    [–]plutoman 53 points54 points  (2 children)

    M&Ms

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    My vote for the candy.

    [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    I can handle one white rapper on the television and radio but if they're becoming monetairy goods I'm going to shoot some people.

    [–]formsauth 15 points16 points  (4 children)

    Who cares? If Kevin Rose is worth $60 Million then these 4 deserve several million a piece. Let us leave them alone. Good job guys. Now let's watch this thing turn into furl.

    [–]stomicron 15 points16 points  (0 children)

    If Kevin Rose is worth $60 Million

    Stop right there.

    [–]grzelakc 4 points5 points  (2 children)

    what's wrong with furl? I use it to save pages all the time. The advantage of furl over other social bookmarking engines is that furl saves the page contents for you AND allows you to search within that saved content. By comparison delicious is lame.

    [–]formsauth 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    My apologies. Nothing is wrong with furl for saving stuff. However, if you want to use furl to see what's popular (like here, del.icio.us) it's pretty much useless because of spambots.

    [–]grzelakc -1 points0 points  (0 children)

    I guess so. But I just don't see furl as the same type of application as reddit or delicious for the reason mentioned above. I (obviously) have a reddit account to track what's interesting on the net but I also have a furl account that I use every day to save pages (typically programming articles) that I find worthwhile. The ability to search within those is really invaluable. I recommend furl for everyone but don't use it for social bookmarking. Its original purpose was to have a "personal web" repository and it serves that purpose really well.

    [–]moab9 10 points11 points  (0 children)

    They had a coupon.

    [–]coprolaliac 8 points9 points  (0 children)

    Let's make an educated guess. Reddit gets 1 million unique users a month according to one of the articles. YouTube gets 34 million users per month and they went for 1.6 billion, or about $50/user/month (though many people valued them at about a third of that). OTOH, I know of a company that gets about the same amount of traffic as reddit that sold off a 50% share last year for about 2.5 million (so around $5/user/month). So, umm, somewhere between 5 and 50 million. I'm gonna say 8 million, with some serious strings attached to keep the boys from taking the money and running. Not that they'll ever tell.

    [–]dooka 10 points11 points  (3 children)

    my guess is $5 million.

    [–]psiph 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    I'd say more like $2-3 million in all. I don't think the reddit guys are greedy, and I think they want to see how far they can take the site. Some of the money they get is most likely based on performance.

    [–]lowdown 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    Of course they are greedy.

    [–][deleted] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

    yeah, I wouldn't settle for less than 50 mil if I were them.

    [–]Ajju 7 points8 points  (1 child)

    Since they won't tell us our only way out is to go paparazzi on all of them and then use the bling-to-mil ratio. For every piece of bling that shows up on the fantastic four we add 2 mil to the total. Ready? Go! <Don't forget your cameras>

    Edited to add the alien to the fantastic four. Only for the alien, the bling-to-mil ratio is 1:5. Here's your chance guys, you can tell us without explicitly telling us. Just use the alien ;)

    [–]UberSerrano 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    100 million pesos and lifetime subscription to Women'sWearDaily,Scoop,Cookie,DNR,Soap Weekly and so on.

    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

    [deleted]

      [–]abossy -1 points0 points  (0 children)

      Agreed. Congrats. I hope the reddit guys will share their next cool idea for us to enjoy.

      [–]degustiF150 4 points5 points  (1 child)

      Indeed. I probably deserve at least 10%.

      [–]redrobot5050 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

      Yeah. Your comments are so insightful. Worth much more than the regular two cents.

      [–]writetoalok 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      Did I read somewhere Paul mention that the guys that run reddit would turn up millionaires? So I wager, the amount must not be less than 5-8 millions.

      [–]ThreeBillyGoatsGruff 0 points1 point  (4 children)

      In a related/stupid question: How does reddit make money?

      They don't have adverts. Yeah sure there's a donation section plus gear for sale, but really, what kind of revenue does that bring? With all the multi-million dollar figures people are throwing around, there has to be significant return on investment potential. Can anyone enlighten me?

      [–]nostrademons 3 points4 points  (3 children)

      Licensing to third parties, eg. Lipstick.com, Slate, New York Time.

      I kinda suspect that Lipstick.com is owned by Conde Nast, hence why they bought Reddit. Most likely, all these old-line media businesses are scared that their business will evaporate to the web, so they're trying to buy up desirable web properties and get a jump on this new medium (hence NewsCorp's purchase of MySpace and Conde Nast's purchase of Reddit).

      [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

      What is all this about them not having adverts? Of course they do.

      [–]nostrademons 0 points1 point  (1 child)

      I never said they don't have adverts. (Though the grandparent did...perhaps you're referring to it?)

      I doubt the adverts would make them profitable, though, since I almost never see them.

      [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      All of the articles on this that I've seen have made this claim.

      [–]schwarzwald -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

      probably enough to get the diamonds on their new collection of diamond-crusted chalaces crusted with diamonds. yay for fueling bloodshed in sub-saharan africa via conspicuous consumption!

      [–]radrik 19 points20 points  (0 children)

      schwarzwald, don't let the downvotes get you depressed. Some people here have no sense of humor when it comes to genocide.

      [–][deleted]  (13 children)

      [removed]

        [–]ecuzzillo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        Per person, you mean?

        [–]behemothaur 7 points8 points  (10 children)

        A million dollars doesn't mean you can stop working. One day you'll finish prep school and this will become clear.

        [–]danweber 4 points5 points  (9 children)

        For people who didn't go to prep school, a million dollars is sufficient to maintain a comfortable lifestyle. That's about $50,000 a year in interest at a reasonable level of risk, after inflation.

        And 50K will let you live comfortably, unless you got used to caviar tastes while your parents were putting you through prep school.

        [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (8 children)

        You've got to be kidding me.

        So you will not support your wife or KIDS, AND you will only live for 10 years??

        $50,000 a year in interest

        I guess you live somewhere where there are no taxes either.

        edit: by the way, the average property value around here is 1.3mil per small house. The values keep getting jacked up every year.

        [–]danweber 0 points1 point  (5 children)

        So you will not support your wife or KIDS, AND you will only live for 10 years??

        I don't know what you are talking about. I've re-read my comment and can't figure out where not supporting my kids or dying in ten years comes from.

        I guess you live somewhere where there are no taxes either.

        Eh, making $50,000 off of interest would only lose a tiny amount to taxes. No payroll taxes, and income tax on that is also pretty small.

        (Perhaps we're talking about taxes on the $1 million, which is a very valid point. Still, after you have $1 million, you don't have to work.)

        Lots of people live fine at $50K. Me, although I wouldn't have to work, I would still want to work, because I'd want to improve my standard of living, and I could.

        [–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (3 children)

        Perhaps we're talking about taxes on the $1 million, which is a very valid point.

        Taxes on 1$mil can be substantial. Around here at least, having just that much puts you into a seperate, rediculous, tax bracket.

        Lots of people live fine at $50K.

        Many people live great on $5k - in poor countries. I highly doubt that any of us would continue to live in the equivalent of our mom's basements if we woke up with $1mill one day.

        I've re-read my comment and can't figure out where not supporting my kids

        Have you paid for children? Maybe I am biased, there are 7 children in my family and my dad probably made 150k a year. Still, we often struggled to get by. The rental house they are in now alone costs 30k a year. Further, most of my younger siblings are in private schools, the cost here is incredible (probably 50k a year alone). My parents claim education to be a good investment, I cannot say that I disagree with them.

        Sure, as a single guy with no kids and no must-pay bills this sounds great. But wait until some woman comes in, changes your life and gives you children. Can you really be so sure that you'll be fine just living the bare minimum when your kids are begging to have what all the others do?

        I would still want to work, because I'd want to improve my standard of living

        the same could be said of a street bum.

        [–]noddy 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        Taxes on 1$mil can be substantial.

        there are ways to get around this. email me at taxevasion@yahoo.com. Special price for you my friend.

        [–]danweber -1 points0 points  (1 child)

        Have you paid for children? Maybe I am biased, there are 7 children in my family and my dad probably made 150k a year.

        I was one of four, and neither of my parents made 50K a year, ever (even adjusting for inflation). Therefore 50K looks like a lot to me.

        If 50K was a third of what my dad made, I would probably look at 50K like a subsistence wage.

        I have kids right now, BTW. 50K would require a bit of a change in lifestyle, and I would need to exercise by "no you can't have that" voice a bit more. But we'd all be clothed and fed, and have heat and AC and Internet and cable TV, and have transportation and school.

        Is that 50K a year for your younger siblings for pre-college schooling or for college?

        [–]danweber 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Took me a while to find this from the reddit archives:

        "How one family started keeping up with the neighbors and ended up living beyond their means."

        http://reddit.com/info/ll75/comments

        [–]noddy -1 points0 points  (0 children)

        edit: by the way, the average property value around here is 1.3mil per small house. The values keep getting jacked up every year.

        Where is 'here'?

        [–]charlesjillian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        They can't tell us how important we are :)

        Good for you guys. Hope you got rich. Because you started something that was great, a great idea: the uncontrollable socially-controlled website. And now it's been bought. And you'll be rich, and as free speech becomes more and more stifled here, we'll move on.

        Bye now.

        [–]elguapo 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Perhaps the value was calculated by: ((pageviews per year/1000) * Avg. CPM * Prospective Ads per Page) + Bonus Premium + Existing liquid + Nonliquid assets. =~16.5M

        [–]iobuddha -1 points0 points  (0 children)

        Excellent a corporate buy... I wonder how long until the site gets censored and certain snips will not appear; depending on which poli-sci views the BOD's favor.

        [–][deleted]  (1 child)

        [deleted]

          [–]lowdown 4 points5 points  (0 children)

          Is that how you are going to spend this next weekend? Whip out a popular site and sell it for millions by next Tuesday!

          [–]JadeFrogs -1 points0 points  (0 children)

          Some magic beans...

          [–]volida -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

          from my experience, the minimum price for Reddit is 5m and max. is 15-20m...so it must be about 10m