Strategies to help Reddit users Discover Relevant Communities
Product Strategy: What strategies would you as a Product Manager implement, to help new Reddit users discover relevant communities quickly?
Reddit is a collection of thousands of interest-based communities where people share posts, discuss topics, and build group identity; the product challenge is getting new users into the right communities fast so they feel at home and keep coming back.
New users who quickly find relevant communities are far more likely to engage, subscribe, and return.
The discovery experience must balance relevance, trust, and low friction so people feel comfortable joining and participating.
Clarifying questions
Ask clarifying questions to narrow scope, choose trade-offs, and size experiments,
Are we optimizing for mobile app, web, or both? Mobile behavior often needs even faster signals.
Do we need to support many languages and regions from day one, or focus on a few key markets?
Do recommendations need to align with current ad/product placements or can we change default surfaces?
How much onboarding friction is acceptable? Quick quiz vs. longer profile capture.
What is the timeline for results? short-term activation (30 days) or long-term retention (6–12 months)
Any business targets or guardrails to meet?
Goals and Success Metrics
Primary Goals:
Faster first meaningful connection: Decrease median time to first subreddit subscription.
Metrics:
Median time to first subscribe
% of new users subscribing within 24 hours.
Higher short-term retention: Get more new users to return in the first week.
Metrics:
Day-7 retention for cohorts of new signups.
Increase early engagement: Encourage actions that show users are participating, not just consuming.
Metrics:
% of new users who create a post/comment in their first 30 days;
Average session time for new users.
Target users
Core Personas:
Explorer: Casual browser who wants quick entertainment or trending topics.
Behavior: Low intent, short sessions, responds to topical/curated content.
What they need: Fast, low-friction previews and a small set of high-signal communities to follow.
Hobbyist: Someone with a clear interest (gardening, gaming, running).
Behavior: Willing to spend time finding high-quality niche communities.
What they need: Curated starter packs, clear community descriptions, examples of typical posts.
Specialist / Professional: Deep expert looking for high-signal, high-quality discussion (e.g., data scientists).
Behavior: Trusts reputation signals, values moderation quality and technical depth.
What they need: Quality badges, moderator responsiveness info, links to canonical resources.
