Reddit’s attempt to make the business profitable may have hit a snag with a report Thursday that it is falling short of its targets.

The Information claims that the news aggregator and discussion forum is now only projecting revenue of $20 million this year, up from single-digit millions last year, but below a previously “ambitious” target of $35 million “that some people at the company hoped it could reach this year.”

The same report (via Re/Code) claims that Reddit’s attempt to create a content aggregation site to compete with Buzzfeed, called Upvoted is also “officially dead.”

At the time of writing Upvoted is still being updated and there is no official announcement that it will close, but its online stats would indicate that it has not had a lot of traction, with Alexa stats showing an initial surge of interest followed by its numbers rapidly declining; while Alexa may not be the most accurate way to measure site stats, it’s still capable of giving a rough estimate of trends and the trend for Upvoted is definitely in the wrong direction.

In opposition to the gloomy news, a separate report in Forbes claims that Reddit advertising is actually growing and that the site is starting to attract big-name advertisers, including Coca-Cola and Google, Inc.; while maintaining traditional display advertising, much of the focus is said to have shifted to what is described as “creating what amounts to an in-house creative consultancy for native content” where “Reddit not only would provide space for brands but would help develop their message for the right audience within.”

Struggle

Despite its massive traffic, the struggle for Reddit has always been finding ways to get advertisers to engage with users on the site, particularly when many of those users are not fans of traditional display advertising.

Coupled to this is the struggle in overcoming the sensationalist rubbish constantly run against it by social justice warrior media outlets such as Gawker which seek to tar Reddit as being a site primarily for racist, misogynistic content, when that content makes up barely a fraction of what goes up on the site, and indeed is no different to other social networks and aggregators such as Facebook, Inc.

It would be a shame if Reddit was closing down Upvoted after a short period of time as it does take time for new sites to establish themselves, but that said their focus really needs to be on maximizing the opportunities on their main property first and foremost.

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