Reddit has a partnership with Reddit, where its pages are being surfaced more frequently and readily by Google. The way to succeed in this environment therefore appears to be to get into bed with those that own the platform and the disturbution
great breakdown, Elena! in the AI landscape, it’s also about who owns intent, not just traffic loss. Some AI startups are already category-defining e.g. Suno gets more searches than ‘AI music creation.’
What I read from this is : platforms that foster community and authentic user-generated content are seeing a resurgence, proving that trust and human connection still reign supreme. People still don’t trust the blackbox behind AI enough , and prefer something has a human behind the machine
What's interesting about stack overflow is that it is one of the few compilations of errors and failures. The fail fast mindset or failure is cost in most skill spaces, means that failures are not recorded and certainly not published. This means that LLMs are only train on successes which is not a real model of the world.
Honestly, Quora is dying because they relaxed their rules and got rid of what little moderation they had, which has made it a cesspool of humanity. Experts who once may have answered questions on there left long ago.
- Substantially fewer ads or ways to pay to remove ads
- Very clean consumable content with responsive sites and native apps
- UGC with monetization for creators that’s clean and clear
Is it AI driving the web wars? Or just the reality of trash content and too many ads = site sucks?
The one exception in that list is Stack Overflow, whose most valuable content is still _very_ valuable but surely the large amount of pure syntax low value content is being chewed.
Even though I agree with the main premise (AI disrupting how people interact with specific channels like Google search, which these companies relied on for acquisition), I think organic traffic data from a source like SEMrush or any other tool (Ahrefs, SE Ranking, etc.) isn't enough to tell the full story. It's similar to the HubSpot screenshot on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, which lacked important context as to what the traffic loss means, where it comes from, and (most importantly) whether it really impacts the business. Thanks for sharing this, Elena.
Reddit has a $60M contract with Google to stay afloat - it's a pay to play game (they earn on both fronts)
Reddit has a partnership with Reddit, where its pages are being surfaced more frequently and readily by Google. The way to succeed in this environment therefore appears to be to get into bed with those that own the platform and the disturbution
Partnership with Google, I mean
Related, great write up on AI’s impact on Cheng: https://open.substack.com/pub/platforms/p/chegg-chatgpt-and-the-changing-nature
great breakdown, Elena! in the AI landscape, it’s also about who owns intent, not just traffic loss. Some AI startups are already category-defining e.g. Suno gets more searches than ‘AI music creation.’
What I read from this is : platforms that foster community and authentic user-generated content are seeing a resurgence, proving that trust and human connection still reign supreme. People still don’t trust the blackbox behind AI enough , and prefer something has a human behind the machine
What's interesting about stack overflow is that it is one of the few compilations of errors and failures. The fail fast mindset or failure is cost in most skill spaces, means that failures are not recorded and certainly not published. This means that LLMs are only train on successes which is not a real model of the world.
Honestly, Quora is dying because they relaxed their rules and got rid of what little moderation they had, which has made it a cesspool of humanity. Experts who once may have answered questions on there left long ago.
The sites that are growing have..
- Substantially fewer ads or ways to pay to remove ads
- Very clean consumable content with responsive sites and native apps
- UGC with monetization for creators that’s clean and clear
Is it AI driving the web wars? Or just the reality of trash content and too many ads = site sucks?
The one exception in that list is Stack Overflow, whose most valuable content is still _very_ valuable but surely the large amount of pure syntax low value content is being chewed.
Great observation
What Brian Balfour calls Product-Market Fit Collapse, Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) calls “creative destruction”
Even though I agree with the main premise (AI disrupting how people interact with specific channels like Google search, which these companies relied on for acquisition), I think organic traffic data from a source like SEMrush or any other tool (Ahrefs, SE Ranking, etc.) isn't enough to tell the full story. It's similar to the HubSpot screenshot on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, which lacked important context as to what the traffic loss means, where it comes from, and (most importantly) whether it really impacts the business. Thanks for sharing this, Elena.
yea, totally agree. this isn't a complete picture, but it is still interesting to see the trendlines.
It is interesting. Thanks for your reply, Elena! Big fan of your work. 🙏
Substack going strong 💪