Motley Fool Money - Reddit CEO on Ads, AI, and Search Engines

Episode Date: September 21, 2024

“Reddit” was one of the top ten most searched words on Google over the past twelve months in the United States, searched more often than “map” or “calculator”. The social networking site is a central hub for the internet. Dylan Lewis caught up with Reddit CEO Steve Huffman for a conversation about: - What’s driving Reddit’s 50% year-over-year user growth. - How the social network targets ads. - What Reddit is doing with large language models. Companies discussed: RDDT, GOOG, GOOGL Host: Dylan Lewis Guest: Steve Huffman Engineers: Rick Engdahl, Tim Sparks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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But I will point out far and away, the most common user-written rule on Reddit, on a community-written rule, is some form of be nice. Be nice, be civil, be respectful. And they rate that for themselves. They write that for themselves, and they enforce it for themselves. I'm Ricky Mulvey, and that's Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman. Reddit is a social networking site. If you haven't visited, it's broken up into communities or subreddits for just about anything you can imagine.

news, sports, local food, hobbies, memes. It's more focused on conversation than other social networks, though. My colleague Dylan Lewis caught up with Huffman for an interview about the state of Reddit now that it's a public company. They discuss its ad business, what's driving Reddit's user growth and artificial intelligence, what the company can do with one of the largest corpices of human conversation. We played a part of the interview on Friday's syndicated radio show.

It offers a higher-level view of the business, and that's a great place to start if you're unfamiliar with Reddit, Today's show is a bit of a deeper dive. Both pieces work together, and neither show is a replay of the other. I do want to dig in as some of the company numbers a little bit and talk through some of that. I was impressed as a longtime follower of the business to see the growth that you guys put up in 2024. Because platforms have been around for a very long time. The revenue growth of 50%, to me, not crazy surprising for where you guys are at in the monetization store,

The user growth story of 50% was a surprise. What was behind that growth? There's a couple specific things, which I'll get to. But the big picture idea is, this goes back to what I said when I'm describing Reddit. Everybody's got a home on Reddit. Okay, so then that raises the question. If everybody has a home on Reddit, and, you know, Steve, if you say the content's so great and it's so unique and it's such a great experience,

then why isn't everybody on Reddit already? And so I think there's two possible answers for that. Well, actually three. The first, they haven't heard of Reddit. Well, certainly in the U.S., that's increasingly less likely. Okay, so number two, they tried Reddit and it didn't work for them. That's the group we've really been focused on. is making it so the new users who are coming to our front page or opening the app for the first time,

I either primed to like experience Reddit as opposed to coming from search or something like that, make sure they find a community that speaks to them. And so we made sign up much, much easier, the community onboarding, like helping you find your home on Reddit much more effective. We made both the website and the app much faster. We just redesigned it in a lot of little ways, so it's easier on the eyes, there are fewer bugs. And our home feed has gotten much better at making recommendations

of communities that you might like. And so really getting people into their home on Reddit and then finding all their interests much more effectively. And so that's been working very well. And then at the same time, we made our website substantially faster, two to five times faster. We launched this in May of 2023. Googlebot likes speed. And so faster pages rank higher, and faster pages also get indexed faster.

And so like the Google search works in mysterious ways. And as close a partner as we are with Google, We have no idea how search works. Nobody does, right? Right, nobody does. But speed matters. And so when our website got a lot faster, we started ranking higher. And then combine that with the product improvements, users are having better experience on Reddit.

And so now it creates this flywheel that we're really benefiting from, is we see a lot of new and core users coming from search, and they were much more effective at kind of getting them into their home on Reddit. And so I said there's two things, right? So either you haven't heard of Reddit or it didn't work for you. Those are that number two we're really focused on. There's a third one, which is you don't speak English. And so that's kind of the next frontier of Reddit.

Reddit's corpus today is still mostly English. But growing outside of the United States, outside of English, that's a part of the next chapter of Reddit, unlocking that. What does tackling that look like? What are some of the challenges and things that you guys are working through to make Reddit localized to some of the other big international markets? Sure. So all the things I just mentioned around speed, performance, all that, all that matters.

Right. So that's the foundation. There's other parts of the foundation. Like safety is a big part of it as well. So the foundation helps everybody. But on top of the foundation, there's a chicken and egg problem. You need content to attract users, and you need users to create content. And so we kind of come at this from two ways.

One is just program work. So we target a market and then we, you know, there are users in every market. We're not starting from zero anywhere. So we go to the communities there. We reach out to the mods. We figure out like what communities probably should exist that don't. Like cities, sports teams, you know, local, you know, local passions, things like that. And we work with mods that kind of try to bring those communities to life, make sure they're in discovery, make sure they're, you know,

everything's kind of humming there. The second thing we're doing, which is working very well, or at least off to a great start, is machine translation. So new technology here with large language models, we can actually translate the existing Redic corpus into other languages at human quality. Now, not all the content is relevant, but a lot of it is. So we've been testing this in France, in French,

in the first half this year. And it's gone very, very well. And so now we're adding on more languages. We're doing German, Portuguese, and Spanish. And so that will get us just a bigger content foundation. And then from there, right, we need to see the next step, which is kind of organic growth, or call it kind of native organic growth on top of that. So international is, it's real work.

you know, one of the difference between Reddit and social media is, you know, Reddit's communities. People don't just join communities overnight, let alone create them. And so, and we can't force it. So what we try to do is really create the conditions for growth, but we can't actually force anything. So we're getting a little bit better at that. But that is, you know, there's a lot of, I think, finesse required to get that right. On that note of getting people to join communities, you mentioned people finding Reddit via Google search. And I find that particularly true when it's around stuff like product reviews or information or something where you really want a human's perspective on something. And I know you guys have a split when it comes to your active users.

You have the logged in users and the folks that are not logged in. I imagine some of those folks are coming in through Google Search. what does the process look like for turning somebody like that into an active logged in user or how important is that for you guys? Yeah. So first, it's kind of interesting. So something I learned just last week, if you go to Google Trends in 2024 in the U.S., you can actually literally go to trends.com and see this.

The Reddit is the sixth most searched word. on Google in 2024 in the US last year. So I think it's like number five is news and maybe number eight is like maps. So it's a thing, people are going to Google looking for Reddit. So a lot of those users are already logged in. They're actually core Reddit users.

They're using Google to navigate Reddit. But then if you're also just searching on the internet, there's a good chance you end up on Reddit. But my point is, there's broad consumer demand for Reddit's content. Now, in that moment, we used to be more aggressive. Like if a user visits from Google, we used to be more aggressive about, hey, log in, download the app. We found that that worked in the short term, but long term, it was just kind of annoying.

because in that moment, that person probably has a question. And Reddit likely has the answer. But they're not looking to be on Reddit in that moment or screwing around on the internet. They're trying to do something. I'm trying to buy this thing or I'm trying to get an answer to this question. And so our attitude now is give the user what they want. So give them the answer, let them see all the content, let them go about their day. And trust that, you know, we'll see them again on the front page or opening the app when they're more primed to have the community experience.

But every time they come to Reddit and get the answer, they're learning. Reddit has the answer to my questions. And so that alone, I think, is really valuable. So I think across the Reddit product, our goal is to, to, to give the user what they want. And we have this joke, but it's not really a joke. Like I used to say, people come for the cats and stay for the community.

In this case, right, they're coming for the answers, and then they'll come back for the community. But we understand there's kind of this bimodal, you know, different ways of using Reddit, and that's OK. Knowing that advertising such a large part of the business, in terms of ad targeting, how important is it to have a logged in user versus a logged out user? I mean, you're getting a certain amount of intent

when someone is looking at information from a specific community. You're getting some information about them, but it's not maybe as robust as they would be if they were logged in, I would imagine. So our ad server doesn't care if you're logged out or logged in. They both have a user ID. The main difference between a logged in user and a logged

out user is logged in user spend more time on Reddit. And so yeah, we'll have a more full. some view of what your interests are. Because over time, people join more and more communities on Reddit. You know, when they're, you know, those accounts, you know, when they're as old as yours, you might have 100 subscriptions or more. And a logged out user, you know, doesn't have any. They may have just visited a few subredits.

And so the main difference in value to us between a logged in user and a logged out user is time spent of the logged in accounts. They just have more inventory. But we monetize loggedout users as well. Now, there's broadly two ways that will target an ad. One is based on your explicitly express interests on Reddit. If you join the skiing subreddit, you're likely to see outdoor ads, things like that. And then the other is the context of what you're looking at.

If you're on a comments page, we call them post detail pages now. If you're on one of those specific pages, that page is likely mentioning a company or companies by name and often specific products. And so we can target an ad based on the context as well. And big picture, we think targeting based on your explicit interests or the context of what you're looking at are, I think, healthy. and explainable and non, not creepy ways of targeting ads. What we don't do is we don't target ads based on like your personal information, your

internet browsing habits, like anything like that. It's really, you know, what are you subscribed to? Like what are you into? What are you doing on Reddit? And what are you looking at right now? And so that I think that conversation is, you know, the math behind that targeting is much simpler than, you know, maybe what's required elsewhere. And so that's been working for us as well.

I know in the grand scheme of the ad monetization story, it's still probably early innings for you. One of the places we look when we're looking at a business like yours is average revenue per user, stacking it up against some of the other players in the space and just trying to get a feel both for where you are and also kind of where the opportunity is. A lot of the revenue growth we're seeing is driven by user growth, not necessarily average revenue per user growth right now. How are you feeling about the way that you're monetizing user time, balancing ad load with the experience, things like that? Look, I think we're in great shape. So last quarter, we grew users 51% and revenue 54%.

So, like, we'll be happy with those numbers of any core. Nobody manages ARPOO at Reddit. We try to grow revenue and we try to grow users. And then ARPOO is just, you know, revenue divided by users. So that number can move. The way we think about it is, are we growing users in the right way? Are they finding their home on Reddit? Are they making more community connections?

Like, are they joining communities? And the primary way we grow inventory is by creating happy users. So better user retention equals more users, equals more subscriptions, equals more time on the platform or inventory. And then in the advertising side, it's also a similar line of thinking. Are our customers happy? Or our customers returning? Are the ads performing?

Are we meeting their needs? And so if we're accomplishing both of those things, we feel great. Now, you mentioned ad load. Every investor asks us about ad load. On our list of ways of growing revenue, ad load is like number 10. That delights me as a user. Yeah, it's we grow revenue by creating more inventory, so more users. We can also create inventory by putting ads in places that don't have ads.

So now we've got ads like kind of in the comments. It's something we've been testing. There's a couple opportunities down the road. you know, we create inventory by users coming back more often, you know, by logging in more, all of these things. And so ad load is just not the first thing we go to. It's like it's not, it's just not high on the list. And I think that's just a healthier way to grow. And so, because advertisers, right, they'd much rather show a hundred people, one impression, than one person, 100 impressions.

So we're not trying to get people to go deeper and deeper and deeper for ads. Like, I want you to have a great time on Reddit and make the connection. But I also really, and the answer, and it's in our mission, community belonging and empowerment for everyone in the world. That last phrase for everyone in the world, we're trying to go broader. That's how we create more inventory and ultimately create more revenue as well. On the advertiser side, you know, when they are thinking about their spend, They're looking at you guys, but they're also looking at digital channels, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google search.

And often, ad budget dollars are mutually exclusive. Or there's a little bit of a tradeoff. You spend some money in one place. You don't have it for the other places. What do you feel like the pitch is for advertisers spending on Reddit versus some of the other platforms? What's unique? Well, sure. There's a couple angles we can come at it from.

One, your customer is very likely uniquely on Reddit. 30 to 60% of our users are not on the other platforms. Unduplicated reach is one. Two, because Reddit is so broad, every interest, passion, hobby. And hobbies kind of, a lot of hobbies boil down to, like, What should I buy? Like, the most fun part about picking up a new hobby, I think, is nerding out and acquiring like the new gear.

Yeah, it's all about the gear. Yeah. And so a lot of Reddit comments, like I think like 40% of conversations on Reddit are actually about products or about like kind of product recommendations, people talking about that. So it's naturally commercial. And so we can go to companies and say, look, your customers are on Reddit talking about your brand or maybe talking about your competitor's brand.

or making a purchasing decision in your space. What should I watch? What should I listen to? What should I wear? Where should I go on vacation? What car should I buy? Like, what's the best video game? This and that.

Those are commercial conversations. They're also normal human conversations. And so there's a natural fit there. And then with advertisers, we also get into just how the platforms different. Like how we think about safety, right, we're not trying to make Reddit addictive. We're trying to bring people into conversations. We try to be proactive about safety and having good, fun experiences. And they appreciate all of us.

And then I think one of the other kind of just interesting things about Reddit is you don't, like the way a user may age out of social media, you actually age into Reddit. You know, we start to pick users up. I call them like late States teenagers, you know, and they start to finish high school, start to go into college, emerging adults. So literally when you picked me up. Yeah, yeah. Well, and me for that matter, right? I was 21 when we started Reddit.

And so, and then we just keep them. And so you kind of, you can, certainly I have and many users have, they've gone through life on Reddit. And so your subreddit subscriptions today, I'm willing to bet, are very different from, you know, what they were 10 years ago. And some of them are your hobbies, some of them are your interests, and some of them, I'm guessing, are like, kind of what you're going through right now. And so people's kind of life can play out on Reddit. That's something I didn't appreciate, obviously, you know, two decades ago, but now we've seen it. While we're talking advertisers, I do want to ask.

I mean, we've seen advertisers be a bit more careful about where placements are going to and kind of the trust in a platform. I think this has been very prominent and very in the news with a platform like X or Twitter. You know, and big brands having some concerns about having their ads next to what they would view as objectionable content. You know, Reddit has perfectly benign communities, but there are some controversial ones. There are some political ones. There's adult content on Reddit. And I'm curious how you find the middle ground on something that's good for users, good for the company, good for advertisers. when it comes to moderation,

content policies, things like that. Sure. So first, we should just talk about how kind of moderation works on Reddit. Users submit to content. And then, right, every content starts at zero points.

And so human beings have to vote on a piece of content up and not down to make it popular. So stuff that's out of alignment with the community or if you're being just like a jerk in the comments is likely to get voted down. And so in that sense, every user is a moderator on Reddit

because every user can vote. But then we have users called moderators. They're not employees. These are the users who create communities on Reddit. And so they write the rules that can be as strict as they want for their communities. But I will point out far in away, the most common user-written rule on Reddit,

on a community-written rule, is some form of be nice. Be nice, be civil, be respectful. And they rate that for themselves, they write that for themselves, and they enforce it for themselves. And so that kind of gets you a sense of the kind of tone of conversation I read it. And of course, we have our own safety team. So those are our employees. We enforce our policies at scale.

We have all sorts of fancy tooling for doing so. By the way, we expose as much of that tooling, all the AI stuff, to the user moderators as well. So they have all sorts of filtering and this and that. And so by and large, Reddit is a... I think really safe and welcoming place. Because it's organized by community, we organize advertising by community. So in order for a community to have ads on on Reddit,

it has to be approved by Reddit for advertising. So a chunk of our content on Reddit, there's just no ads at all. And then we also go further and classify some of our communities as like super safe. like rated G. And so we can go to a customer and say, you've got these options of where you are in Reddit. You know, you want to be in that squeaky clean G rated area? We've got that. You want to be on kind of the broad middle of Reddit, which is where most people are. We've got that. And if you want to

be over here, sorry, we don't sell ads there. Like, we're not in the business of putting customers where they don't want to be at the end of the day, right? We want happy customers. And so we just try, Again, we try to make sure everything is intentional, transparent, predictable. And look, when I came back to Reddit, we were not as good at a lot of these things. And so every conversation with advertisers started and ended with brand safety. Today, that's not the case. They may ask, we'll explain it, but they can see the results. And then we spend much more time kind of just trying to find the right home for them on Reddit.

and try to help them be successful and take the right tone with communities. I think brand safety and safety in general is now a home field advantage for us. These days, I'm all about quality over quantity, especially in my closet. If it's not well made and versatile, it's just not worth it.

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Go to QINCE.com slash motley for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash motley. Outside of the ad business, I know it's a small piece of the pie for you guys right now, but you do have a data licensing business. I think it was about $28 million in the recent quarter. That is, as I understand it, allowing other companies to use platform data for LLM training, for AI applications. What was the decision there and what are you guys seeing there? Yeah, so Reddit is one of the largest corpices of human conversation on the Internet.

And for better or for worse, but I think overwhelmingly for better, Reddit has been, an open platform. And so Reddit's content was used for training these AIs. Now, our terms of service are like Reddit's open. You can use Reddit's content for non-commercial use, but for commercial use,

you know, you need a license. And so I want Reddit to stay open. I also want to be practical. like Red's content is useful for these things. And look these AIs, these large language models, you know, they help our business. I think they advance humanity. It's one of the most important technologies, you know, of the last generation.

Help us make Reddit safer. Help make the whole Internet safer. And so we like these technologies existing. And we're proud that Reddit's content can be used to create these technologies or advance them. But I think just as a matter of like business practicality, commercial use of Reddit's content, Reddit's public content, requires a commercial agreement.

And so that's what we've been working on. We still do non-commercial agreements. So we'll give Reddit count on a way to researchers or other nonprofits like Internet Archive. Now, there's terms on all of these things. And so we created a public content policy. We released this earlier this year. So every platform more or less has a private,

our private privacy policy. And that basically says, this is what we do with your private information. So we have one of those two. Now, we don't have a whole lot of private information, but what we do have, we don't share. It doesn't leave Reddit. The public content policy basically says, this is the content that you put on Reddit in a public community. It's on the public internet. Like, you should know that.

If you don't want it on the public internet or in search indexes or showing up in research potentially or potentially being used for training, don't put it on Reddit. So we want the terms of engagement to be clear there. And then we said, look, if you have any agreement, you have to use this content, you have to have agreement with us. And to use it, you can't do certain things, like reverse engineer the identity of our users or use it to target ads against users, things like that. And so I think under those terms and under those policies, we've been able to strike a few

deals that I think are important. So Google and Open AI are the other biggest ones on the training side. And then we've done others with SIGN and Sprinkler, kind of on the social listening, like what are people saying about these brands, that sort of thing. So yeah, it's a new business for us. It's kind of it's it's it's off to a good start. But I'd say we're still kind of in early days in what is quite frankly a developing market. We were talking about. We were talking a little bit earlier about Google search as a path for users coming onto the platform. Search engine pages look a little bit different now than they did a couple years ago, and part of that is AI. We see Google experimenting with the AI overviews,

sourcing things from the web. There is a risk there in how they're featuring information and how that may affect downstream traffic for you guys. What are your thoughts on that? Look, we'll see how it evolves. We have been, I think, a beneficiary of Internet search for a long time. As we discussed, it's a super helpful way for even our core users to navigate Reddit. So there's a lot of value there for our users. And it's how new potential users discover Reddit and learn that Reddit has content communities for them.

And so we'll keep an eye on things. We have partnerships with both Google and OpenAI. I think we've all been kind of, obviously they're going to evolve their products. But at the end of the day, the point of their products is to help people find information. A lot of that information is on Reddit. And so I think we start from the position of let's advance the state of the art. Let's see all this ecosystem evolves. Let's help people find what they're looking for.

And so far, I think it's been going great. I mean, you can see it in our numbers. We're growing faster than we have a long time. So Google algorithm changes and product changes. Like sometimes they help, sometimes they hurt. But we don't live or die by them by any means. I'm curious how AI fits into the picture for Reddit itself and the product, the app, the site experience that users interact with.

Oh, I mean, it's very exciting. So like, there's so much hype around large language models, but one thing that is undeniable is they are very, very good at jobs involving text and words. And Reddit has a lot of text and words. So I think some things I'm most excited about. We've been playing around with this idea of post guidance. So if you're a new user, you've grown up on social media, you've come to Reddit and you're submitting your first post, but you've never submitted to Reddit before. So maybe you don't understand that this is a community space and this community has very specific rules.

What used to happen is you'd submit this post and then a moderator be like, oh, this violates a rule. In the science community, no joking allowed, for example. And then you get banned. That's not a good user experience. And so now we can use things like LLMs to detect like, hey, this is a joke. And you can tell the user, they click some in and say, hey, too funny. Funny is not allowed here. We know you mean well, but try again.

Much, much better experience. The user can adapt their post to something that should be a better fit for the community. The community gets a new user, Redic gets a happy customer. or happy user. So I think that sort of thing is really, really powerful. Obviously for safety, things like harassment and bullying or whatever idiosyncratic rules subredits have, like I was just giving you another example, you know, LLMs can help detect. I think that's really powerful.

I was a moderator for a little bit last year. We have a program called Adopt and Admin, where our employees kind of guest moderate subredits. And so I did it with, am I the app? So, you know, it's a large community on Reddit. Can you explain the community? Yeah. So the post is you submit a post as a user.

I don't know. I wore, you know, a cream colored dress to my, you know, sister's wedding and everybody got mad at me like, am I at the end? To pick a real example for my life. And then the community debates and gives you feedback. Yes, you're the app. No, you're not. And so it's a really interesting community of people basically kind of debating these social situations.

But they have a rule. You can't use the word Karen. And you can't use the word manchild. Now, I've been thinking about rules on the internet for a long time. I don't like word rules. Like you can't say this word because I think they're too brittle, right? Because there's always this context. And indeed, on that subreddit, we'd spend a lot of time adjudicating uses of the word

Karen. Like, were they saying it meanly or were they correcting somebody else or is this the story literally about a person named Karen? And so it's just like so much time spent on that rule. Now, they eventually convince me it's an important rule because it sets a tone for the conversation and a tone for that community. So I came around to their viewpoints like, this is important and it's had a good effect on this community. But I'm looking forward to when an LLM can do that work so that the human moderators can do something else. Because some of the rules are really complex. So I think LLMs will make Reddit safer.

Honestly, for that matter, than the whole Internet safer. I think that's very exciting as well. I don't want to take too much of your time. I have just a couple more questions for you here. One of them is kind of taking a step back on the business as a whole. We talked through some of the different components of it. recent quarter loss has started to narrow for you guys. You have a very high margin business at core when you look at the gross margins.

What does the path to profitability look like for you guys? And is that a near-term priority? Or are you happy with what you're seeing and you want to be able to continue to invest in the business, even if it means running at a little bit of a loss? Well, look, I like the progress we've made. You know, last couple of quarters we've been profitable on an adjusted ebita basis. We've been positive cash flow last couple of quarters. So kind of the next milestone for us is gap profitability.

And we're getting closer to that. So it's an important milestone. We're also a growth company. I think one of the most important levers for us over the last couple of years has been we've been very disciplined. on headcount growth. You know, our costs, Reddit is like the simplest business you'll ever see. You know, ad revenue comes in. We're 89% gross margin last quarter.

We basically spend money on two things, computers and people. And if we're disciplined about how many people we have, we can control costs that way. that way. And so our management goal has been to grow revenue twice as fast as costs. Now we've been able to do quite a bit better than that the last couple of quarters. And so we're getting closer and closer to like kind of gap

profitability. So I wouldn't say it's a direct goal for Reddit on any particular timeline. But I do think it's important to get there. It's a sign, I think, of a kind of healthy, sustainable business, something we've been working towards for a long time. But Reddit's business model is truly advantaged. We basically have no CAPEX on top of that.

So if we can continue to grow users and grow revenue and be disciplined about headcount, I think we're in a great shape. And I think it puts us in a, from business point of view, a unique position. in the market. So here at the Fool, we're, you know, long-term buy and hold investors. We're typically looking at businesses with a five-plus year time horizon. I'm curious with that setup for a multi-year outlook, what type of thing would you like to be graded on?

Or what would you want the rubric to be for Reddit itself and for yourself as CEO? Like, when we set goals internally at Reddit, I like, like to use both words and numbers. You know, I think that the numbers aren't important. I mean, I'll tell you what the numbers are. Right? We want to grow users, DAU. We want to go revenue, right?

Dollars. But not all users are the same, right? There's social media stuff we could do to grow that we've, you know, not done. Not all dollars are the same, right? So you kind of get into short-term, long-term, sustainable or not. And so the answer is in our mission. community belonging and empowerment for everyone in the world. We know if you speak English, everybody has a home on Reddit.

So can we grow users in English by making the product better, by making onboarding more effective? And then can we grow outside of English using machine translation and some of our program work? And on the revenue side, we like having direct relationship with advertisers. and we try to make our ads, you know, more and more relevant, more and more effective for the advertiser. So you should grade us on users. You should grade us on revenue. And then there's all sorts of input metrics that we don't necessarily report, but things that I think about are new user retention. What we call our good visits.

Like when a user visits Reddit, we call it a good visit. If they find a post, they spend more than 30 seconds off. And headcount is another one we report. So hopefully you see high revenue growth, good user growth. You see us building products in harmony with Reddit and its mission and disciplined headcount growth. Those would be the things that I would watch. To wrap us up here on Reddit, you are Spez.

And for folks that haven't used it and want to check it out, what's a subreddit community that you think they should check out to get a good feel for what Reddit is at its best? When I demo Reddit, and this is what I do for investors a lot. I think, broadly speaking, our investors can and should be users. And of course, the inverse is something I was very excited about for our users to be investors. That's one of the reasons we went public. So when I'm showing somebody Reddit for the first time or talking about Reddit for the first time, I often just pull it up. And so I show them Ask Reddit. Because on Ask Reddit, You'll see people asking all these kind of like funny or interesting questions. Like a typical Ask Reddit post might be like what's your funniest memory from elementary school? And then you'll have thousands of people telling stories. They've probably literally never told before. And that's one post out of thousands every day.

So I do Ask Reddit. I often pull up science just so you can see like a serious side of Reddit. And then I'll show them Datit. So Dadit is a subreddit for like dads. I have a couple of kids. And so what I like about Dadit is you usually see like a funny post next to like a serious post asking for advice, maybe next to a like a profound post, right? Somebody, you know, grieving something very difficult that's happened or trying to, you know,

relationship challenges as a result of having kids, things like that, like really stuff that you wouldn't talk about on social media. And then similarly, I might pull up like Photoshop request, which is a subreddit where people pay $5 to $10 to alter photographs. But again, you can pull it up almost any time. You'll see something funny. You'll see something that'll make you cry. You'll see something sentimental.

And it really, I think, captures this idea that this is how humans are, that they spend their free time with no other incentive than like it feels good, supporting each other, helping each other, sharing a few laughs, like just going through life's journey together. I think that's really incredible. And I think it's not a Reddit thing. It's a people thing that Reddit, I think, uniquely reveals. You know, Steve, I have to thank Photoshop request for the birthday gift I gave my father last year because I had found a picture of his father at a store that he ran when he was younger. And there was a famous person who had come and visited the store and it was this great picture, but there were like all these random people in it.

And I wanted to just give a photo of my grandfather and this NFL player. And sure enough, the Photoshop request community delivered. And I wound up being a great son for my father's birthday. And it cost me, I believe, $10 to deliver this alter picture. Yeah, that's what it's all about. That's super cool. Yeah, what a great example. Steve Hoffman, thank you so much for joining me.

Really appreciate the conversation. Thank you. My pleasure. As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell anything based solely on what you hear. I'm Ricky Mulvey. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.