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| launch date = {{Start date|2005}}
| launch date = {{Start date|2005}}
| alexa = {{increase}} 143 ({{As of|2011|03|alt=March 21 2011}})<ref name=alexa2011>{{cite web|url=http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com|title=reddit.com Site Info |publisher=[[Alexa Internet]], Inc |accessdate=23 January 2011}}</ref>
| alexa = {{increase}} 143 ({{As of|2011|03|alt=March 21 2011}})<ref name=alexa2011>{{cite web|url=http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com|title=reddit.com Site Info |publisher=[[Alexa Internet]], Inc |accessdate=23 January 2011}}</ref>
|current status = Active
|current status = Disabled
}}
}}


Revision as of 07:28, 22 April 2011

reddit
Reddit logo
Screenshot
Reddit front page on February 08, 2011
Reddit front page on February 08, 2011
Type of site
News aggregation, General discussion & advice forum
Available inEnglish, Esperanto, Japanese, French, Italian, German, Spanish[1]
OwnerAdvance Publications via Condé Nast Publications
Created bySteve Huffman
Alexis Ohanian
URLreddit.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationOptional

Reddit (stylized as reddit, pronounced /ˈɹɛdɪt/ "red it")[5] was a social news website, owned by Condé Nast Digital, a subsidiary of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. Users (also referred to as redditors) had the option to submit links to content on the Internet or submit "self" posts that contain original, user-submitted text. Other users could then vote the posted links "up" or "down" with the most successful links gaining prominence by reaching the front page. In addition, users could comment on the posted links and reply to other commentators consequently forming an online community. Reddit users could create their own topical sections, known informally as subreddits and officially as communities, for which to submit their links and to comment, while appealing to a specific niche.[6][7][8]

Overview

Mister Splashy Pants logo used on November 27, 2007

The site has discussion areas in which users may discuss submissions and vote for or against other people's comments (commonly known as up voting and down voting). When there are enough votes against a given comment, it will not be displayed by default, although a reader can display it by clicking an additional link or by changing the preferences. The default preferences cut off comments whose value is -4 or less, meaning they had received at least five more negative votes than they did positive votes. The default comment sorting is set in such a way that so-called 'best' comments are displayed on top (defined by reddit's algorithm as having a better positive to negative ratio but still influenced by the total number of votes). The user is given the option to change that in their preferences, as well as on each individual comment page. The appearance of submissions on the front page is determined by the age of the submission, positive to negative feedback ratio and the total vote count.[9]

Reddits

Reddit allows users to create communities called "subreddits", which focus on specific interests or organizations such as programming, gadgets, science, sports, politics, gaming, business, drugs and entertainment.

Reddit Meetups

The Reddit community has been known to socialize at local parks and bars around the world.[10]

History

Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, both 22-year-old graduates of the University of Virginia.[7] It received its initial funding from Y Combinator. The team expanded to include Christopher Slowe and Aaron Swartz in 2005. Aaron Swartz joined in late January 2006 as part of the company's merger with Swartz's Infogami.[11] Condé Nast Publications, owner of Wired, acquired Reddit on October 31, 2006.[12] Shortly thereafter, Swartz was fired.[13]

Problems

Reddit seems to be having permanent server issues, causing users to see a 'reddit is under heavy load' and 'reddit is down' screens more often than they would like to. This has become a running joke on the site.

On April 21st, 2011 Several of Amazon's Web Services, which Reddit uses went down. Because of this failure the site went into "emergency read-only mode" where the site became completely static nearly all day. The failure brings criticism to the use of vendor supported virtual resources (which reddit uses) instead of an internal dedicated system.

Open source

On June 18, 2008, Reddit became an open source project.[14] With the exception of the anti-spam/cheating portions, all of the code and libraries written for Reddit became freely available on code.reddit.com.[15]

Growth

By the end of 2008, the team had grown to include Erik Martin, Jeremy Edberg,[16] David King,[17] and Mike Schiraldi.[18] In 2009, Huffman and Ohanian moved on to form Hipmunk, recruiting Slowe shortly thereafter.[19]

Reddit gold

In July 2010, facing severe underfunding despite explosive traffic growth, Reddit introduced Reddit Gold, offering new features for a price of US$3.99/month or US$29.99/year.[20] The revenue and attention got them approval to buy more servers and hire more people.

Demographics

The median Reddit user, according to Google DoubleClick Ad Planner's estimate, is in their 30's, has some college education, and is making a middle-range income.[21]

The 'Restoring Truthiness' Campaign

In September 2010, Reddit users started a movement to persuade Stephen Colbert to have a rally in Washington DC.[22] The movement was started by user mrsammercer, in a post where he describes waking up from a dream in which Stephen Colbert holds a satirical rally in D.C.[23]

He writes, "This would be the high water mark of American satire. Half a million people pretending to suspend all rational thought in unison. Perfect harmony. It'll feel like San Francisco in the late 60s, only we won't be able to get any acid."

The idea resonated with the Reddit community, which launched a campaign to bring the event to life. Over $500,000 was raised for charity to gain the attention of Colbert. The campaign was mentioned on-air several times and when the rallies were held in Washington, D.C. on October 30th, thousands of redditors made the journey.[24]

During a post-rally press conference, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian asked, "What role did the Internet campaign play in convincing you to hold this rally?" Jon Stewart responded by saying that, though it was a very nice gesture, the two had already thought of the idea prior and the deposit on using the National Mall was already paid during the summer, so it acted mostly as a "validation of what we were thinking about attempting."[25] In a message to the reddit community, Colbert later added, "I have no doubt that your efforts to organize and the joy you clearly brought to your part of the story contributed greatly to the turnout and success."[26]

Awards

In May 2010, Reddit is named in Lead411's "2010 Hottest San Francisco Companies” list.[27]

Technology

Reddit was originally written in Common Lisp but was rewritten in Python in 2005.[28] The reasons given for the switch were faster performance, wider access to code libraries, and greater development flexibility. The Python web framework that former Reddit employee Aaron Swartz developed to run the site, web.py, is now available as an open-source project.[29]

Reddit currently uses Pylons as its web framework.[30] As of November 2009, Reddit has decommissioned their physical servers and migrated to Amazon Web Services.[31] In early 2009, Reddit started using jQuery.[32]

Mobile web

On June 7, 2010 Reddit staff launched a revamped mobile interface featuring rewritten CSS, a new color scheme, and a multitude of improvements.[33]

Client interface applications

There are several unofficial applications that use the Reddit API, including reddit is fun[34], Andreddit[35] and BaconReader[36]

Search

On July 21, 2010, Reddit out-sourced the reddit search engine to Flaptor, who used their search product IndexTank.[37]

Notable community contributions

  • In early December of 2010, the members of the Christianity subreddit and the Atheism subreddit came together to cross-promote[38] fundraising drives for World Vision's Clean Water Fund and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), respectively. Later, the Islam subreddit joined in, raising money for Islamic Relief. In less than a week, the three communities (as well as the reddit community at-large) raised over $45,000 for charity.[39]
  • In early October 2010, a story was posted on Reddit about a seven-year-old girl, Kathleen Edwards, who was in the advanced stages of Huntington’s disease. The girl's neighbors were taunting her and her family. Redditors banded together and gave the girl a shopping spree.[40][41]
  • Reddit started a suicide prevention community.[42]
  • Reddit started the largest Secret Santa program in the world, which is still in operation to date. [43][44]
  • Members from reddit donated nearly $575,000 to DonorsChoose in support of Stephen Colbert's March to Keep Fear Alive. The donation spree broke previous records for the most money donated to a single cause by the reddit community and resulted in an interview with Colbert on reddit.[45]
  • For the 2010 Holiday season, 92 countries were involved in the Secret Santa program. There were 17,543 participants, and $662,907.60 was collectively spent on gift purchases and shipping costs. [46]
  • Reddit users donated $185,356.70 to Direct Relief International for Haiti after the earthquake devastated the island in January, 2010.[47]

See also

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References

  1. ^ Netcraft list of subdomains
  2. ^ "reddit.com". Retrieved January 23, 2011.
  3. ^ "reddit.com: help". Retrieved January 23, 2011.
  4. ^ "reddit.com Site Info". Alexa Internet, Inc. Retrieved 23 January 2011.
  5. ^ reddit.com: help
  6. ^ Nations, Daniel. "A Review of Reddit". About.com: Web Trends. Retrieved 3 September 2010.
  7. ^ a b Adams, Richard (2005-12-08). "reddit.com". The Guardian. Retrieved 2006-12-23.
  8. ^ "Reddit FAQ". Retrieved 2010-12-19.
  9. ^ "reddit algorithm".
  10. ^ "Reddit Worldwide Meetups"
  11. ^ Swartz, Aaron (February 27, 2006). "Introducing Infogami". Infogami. Retrieved 2007-01-06.
  12. ^ Arrington, Michael (October 31, 2006). "Breaking news: Condé Nast/Wired Acquires reddit". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2007-01-06.
  13. ^ A Chat with Aaron Swartz
  14. ^ Open source announcement on the Reddit blog
  15. ^ "reddit – Trac". Code.reddit.com. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
  16. ^ blog.reddit - what's new on reddit: welcome, jedberg
  17. ^ blog.reddit - what's new on reddit: welcome, david
  18. ^ blog.reddit - what's new on reddit: Welcome, Mike Schiraldi (a.k.a. raldi)
  19. ^ Reddit Chief Takes Flight To Hipmunk, Explains Why He’s Leaving Now
  20. ^ Posted by mike [raldi] (2010-07-19). "what's new on reddit: Three new features for reddit gold: Choose-your-own ads, Userpage sorting, and Friends with Benefits". blog.reddit. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
  21. ^ "DoubleClick Ad Planner by Google". Retrieved 2010-04-03.
  22. ^ Colbert Rally in Time Magazine
  23. ^ Reddit post suggesting the Colbert Rally idea
  24. ^ blog.reddit - what's new on reddit: Buy Shirts, Remember the Rally, Question Colbert, and Smile
  25. ^ Rally to Restore Sanity - Press Conference - Video Mediaite. October 30, 2010.
  26. ^ Stephen Colbert has answered your questions : IAmA
  27. ^ Lead411 launches "Hottest Companies in San Francisco" awards
  28. ^ "On lisp" blog post by Reddit founder "spez," detailing the reasons for switching to python from lisp
  29. ^ Official web.py site
  30. ^ Sites Using Pylons - Pylons Community — PythonWeb
  31. ^ Moving to the cloud on blog.reddit.com
  32. ^ what's new on reddit: reddit now powered by jQuery - Posted by Chris Slowe (keysersosa) (Friday, January 30, 2009) - blog.reddit
  33. ^ "A better mobile reddit for all". reddit.com. 2010-06-09. Retrieved 2010-07-29.
  34. ^ reddit is fun - Android Application on the Android market
  35. ^ Download andreddit for your Android phone on AppBrain
  36. ^ [1]
  37. ^ "Reddit Blog post announcing the use of IndexTank search engine".
  38. ^ Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! r/Atheism and r/Christianity have a friendly competition up for a holiday charity drive that is spilling over into other subreddi...
  39. ^ Christians and Atheists Square Off In Online Battle To Raise Money For Charity
  40. ^ Toy Store Shopping Spree for Kathleen Edward
  41. ^ Stryker, Cole (2010-12-10). Kathleen Edward, Harassed Girl with Huntington's Diseas, Thanks Reddit. Urlesque. Retrieved April 20, 2011.
  42. ^ SW
  43. ^ Boitnott, John (December 23, 2010). "Secret Santa success caps banner year for Reddit". VentureBeat Interpreting Innovation. VentureBeat. Retrieved January 3, 2011.
  44. ^ "The Biggest Secret Santa Gift Exchange in the World". Retrieved 2011-02-12.
  45. ^ Restoring Truthiness Giving Page
  46. ^ "Statistics for Secret Santa 2010". Retrieved 2011-02-12.
  47. ^ Direct Relief International: Support Us - Tributes:

External links

Wikinews has related news:


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