Happy Friday! This week, we explore Reddit’s long-anticipated IPO. But first...

📡ON OUR RADAR

• LinkedIn has become a content powerhouse. This week, the platform announced it will begin gamifying its platform, mirroring the recent surge of interest in puzzle-themed games online. While skepticism in LinkedIn’s social value remains ,it’s clear they’re embracing a strategy to diversify offerings and deepen user engagement across what was once a simple networking tool.
• “Hard-hitting news”, no more? In a blistering piece on the state of journalism, Semafor’s Max Tani argued that as reporters and publications navigate a tenuous legal and economic climate, fears of upsetting the wrong people are diluting the quality and volume of accountability journalism. According to Tani,, the “last word often goes to the highest bidder in the new way of journalism, the most powerful person, or the biggest celebrity.”
• Are you ok, America? The annual World Happiness Report made headlines this week when the US dropped out of the top 20 happiest country rankings for the first time in history. Why? Because young people are especially bummed—youth happiness has been declining all around the world since 2010. Meanwhile, in New York, the mood is just as grim. Only 30% of New Yorkers feel positive about their quality of life—that’s down an astounding 51% drop from six years ago.

💡ON OUR MINDS: Reddit Hits the Stock Market

• Reddit finally went public this week, with shares surging 48% above the initial offer price. The social platform and search engine’s big IPO day marked an unequivocal win at the end of a long, winding, occasionally bumpy road to the stock market.

• The company initially filed to go public in 2021, but delayed due to financial health concerns rooted in skepticism about the platform’s ability to generate advertising revenue – which still persists today, despite the platform’s 73 million daily users.

• Although Reddit offers ad formats from videos to free-form ads that look like organic posts, marketers remain wary of the platform’s notoriously skeptical users who are quick to voice their thoughts and change the narrative.

• Many Reddit users also disapprove of the platform’s IPO, expressing fear that shareholders might change their beloved platform to make it more profitable. There were even rumored plans to short the stock (a-la GameStop) in a show of protest.

• Especially as a newly public company, Reddit is tasked with keeping a variety of key audiences— who seem to have conflicting interests — happy. Needless to say, after a strong start, we’ll be watching closely as this case study in stakeholder management continues to unfold.

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• Teen pop star Olivia Rodrigo is making headlines for handing out Plan B pills and condoms at her sold-out tour.

• Retailer Abercrombie & Fitch has quintupled its stock value and moved past its toxic reputation by radically rethinking its brand. Notably, CMO Carey Collins Krug ditched the shirtless models and embraced a new core audience of adult women.

• The US government and multiple states are suing Apple for antitrust violations, alleging its dominance in the smartphone market restricts competition and consumer choice, presenting a major legal challenge to the tech giant.