Successful CEOs understand their business, their product, and their customer.

In the case of Reddit, it's important to understand the culture of the community that is your product.

In the case of any organization that relies on volunteers, an open line of communication is essential. Positive reinforcement is essential. Fostering a sense of belonging and appreciation is essential.

Ignoring your volunteer base, not having clear lines of communication, and not demonstrating that you volunteer base matters is crappy management. Management works on a top-down structure, hence the phrase, it flows from the top down.

If Reddit's volunteer base migrates, then Reddit would be in a heap of trouble. They would either have to take over active management and moderation of subs, which would cost money and require training. In that event, one would imagine that finding, hiring, and training passionate people with the requisite skills would be expensive. Replacing the current base of passionate volunteers with other volunteers, would be expensive.

Then there's the risk of alienating the redit user base. What you don't want to do is to alienate your active users or give them a reason to consider investing their eyeballs and time into another service.

MBAs have killed off many a site, platform, or service in order to see a return on investment. Others have killed off many a site, service, or platform because they were simply inept and didn't understand or care about the human beings who are in fact real, prone to human emotions, and tend to engage in herd behavior.

I have seen many sites, services, and platforms come and go. There's usually a golden age followed by a decline. Sometimes that decline is quick and sometimes it's a long and slow wind down.

My best guess is, under the current leadership, it will be a fast decline. As Reddit tried to ramp up revenue, they will likely be fighting against the established culture of Reddit, which in turn will create opportunities for new startup services/platforms/communities.

How many times have you seen that happen? I've personally lost count. I don't elect any site to last forever.

However, the beginning of the end, usually starts like this. If and when you try to force a change of culture, I can't think of any time that hasn't ended badly. I think it startd when you couldn't see downvotes anymore. That was a big shift. The other thing that had made Reddit great in my opinion, was that it was Usenet 2.0. That's clearly been changing.

For sure, a community will bitch and moan any time changes are made. However, the thing you just don't fuck with, is trying to force a culture on your community, particularly if it already has an established culture. (No matter how dysfunctional it may seem at times to the outside observer... Or new CEO.)

However, the big one, and it boggles the mind, is not keeping an open line of communication with the volunteers who put in countless hours on behalf of your business and going above and beyond to make them feel as though they matter to your organization. That one is baffling to me. The fact that Reddit managment has to backtrack and apologize and promise to change, seems too much like an abusive relationship cliché.

People tend to go where they are wants and appreciated. It's just human nature.

The fact that management seems to be missing this very basic point, should put some scare into the Reddit board. I would love to be a fly on the wall at the next board meeting. I would also be looking to vote in another CEO and right the ship so I could get my money back out of the company plus a hefty return.

There's a long game to be played with social platforms and web communties, but that all falls apart pretty quickly when your eyeballs roam to the next big thing. And that thing is usually the thing that makes them feel welcome, appreciated, and provides some sort of positive reinforcement rather than punishment in the form of frustration.