2. WHAT IS REDDIT?
A social news and entertainment website, where registered users submit content in the form of a link or
a text post
A source for what’s new and popular on the web
In English: An online community where people can go and submit links or photos, get votes on said links
or photos, and even have discussions.
The more upvotes you get, the more “karma” one receives. Basically the amount of points you get.
There are subreddits for what you particularly may be interested in such as: reddit.com/r/aww or
reddit.com/r/wtf, etc…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlI022aUWQQ
3. SOME HISTORY ABOUT REDDIT
Reddit started in June 2005 in Massachusetts by:
Steve Hoffman and Alexis Ohanian
Alexis was studying as a law student when at a Waffle
House, he first thought up the idea and decided he’d rather
do independent projects than become a lawyer
Y Combinator was the first initial funder for Reddit
4. THE ORIGINAL SKETCHES
Alexis, bored in his marketing class of senior year, starting sketching what
Their new website would be called, and what the logo would be.
Alexis decided he wanted a mascot, and these are the first original drawings.
5. “THE FRONT PAGE OF THE INTERNET” – REDDIT’S SLOGAN
In January 2006, Reddit merged with a company called Infogami
Reddit was later on bought by a publications company called Conde Nast Publications on October 31,
2006.
By September 6, 2011, Reddit split from Conde Nast Publications and was a subsidiary of its parents
company, Advance Publications.
By 2012, Reddit re-incorporated and is now a complete independent entity.
Reddit’s headquarters is in San Francisco, California.
The current CEO of Reddit is Yishan Wong.
6. PLATFORM
Reddit is written in Python, however was previously written in Common Lisp
The change was so that there could be a wider access to code libraries and greater development flexibility
It uses Pylon framework and also uses Amazon Web Services, Amazon CloudSearch, and jQuery
PostgreSQL: Primary datastore and slowly moving to Apache Cassandra
RrabbitMQ: Offline processing
HAProxy: Load balancing
Memcached: Caching
Flaptor: Reddit’s search engine
Reddit created an API for mobile interfaces using re-written CSS
In addition, there are also several Windows 8 apps, and an unofficial desktop app called Reditr exists that is
compatible with Windows, OS X, Linux and ChromeOS
7. FUNDING AND PROFITS
Reddit is NON-PROFIT
Actually, Reddit actually loses more money than they make
However, Reddit can make money from the following:
Advertisements
Reddit Gold (Just an upgrade for your account by removing ads and other small things, but is really just a way of
supporting the website)
Reddit Gifts
Reddit makes money for other purposes, not Reddit itself
8. HOW REDDIT GREW
Reddit grew, fast, within the last couple of years. More and more people have joined Reddit for various
reasons:
It’s entertaining and a good way to keep informed on the latest
It allows others to share
It has a variety of categories for people’s personal interests, so they can keep updated and share what
they find intriuging
It involves more than just ordinary people, but also celebrities when they do an Ask Me Anything (AMA)
Examples of those who have done AMA’s are: President Obama, Snoop Dogg, and Alexis Ohanian
himself!
It’s informative, entertaining, and social all at the same time
9. KEY MOMENTS
Alexis Ohanian’s first fundraiser that raised over $3K.
This began the spread of people getting together for even more fundraisers and charities
This gained a lot of publicity and more people were interested to see what Reddit was about and how
they could help or join
The rise of Memes pop culture brought a lot of people in because of its huge gain in popularity
Having the largest Secret Santa in the world
Recently Reddit was running out of money, so Redditors started buying Reddit gold, exchanging and
buying Reddit gold karma, along with more gift exchanges to keep Reddit running.
10. CHARITY EXAMPLES
Redditors raised over $70,000 to the Faraja orphanage in Africa in order to make it more secure and
build improvements
A 7 year old girl Kathleen Edward, posted on Reddit about her advanced stages of Huntington’s
disease. Redditors got together and gave her a shopping spree at Tree Town Toys, a local store owned
by one of the redditors.
Over $185,356 was donated to Direct Relief International for Haiti
In addition, over $600,000 was donated to DonorsChoose in support of Stephen Colbert’s March to
Keep Fear Alive
11. REDDIT SITE
Color scheme: Blue, dark grey, black, and white
Logo: Alien man (also called a Snew)
Banner: The usual Reddit
However with each subreddit, the logo and banner usually changes, banner is optional:
14. CHANGES TO REDDIT
Since Reddit started, there have been multiple changes, for instance:
The written code as discussed was changed from Common Lisp to Python
Reddit Gold and Reddit gifts came about
Bitcoin started becoming accepted, you can donate in bitcoins
It became more user-friendly
Subreddits started to become more personalized and relatable to that specific category
15. CHANGES TO REDDIT
Instead of upvotes or downvotes, there used to be just “interesting” or “uninteresting”
Design has changed, but has always remained primitive
People mainly changed the site with new subreddits and add-ons
Their general goal and business plan has always remained the same
16. FUNCTIONS: WHAT IT’S FOR/WHY
It’s a discussion board where people post either educational, entertainment or news posts.
People from all over the world join this community in order to know, learn and update themselves.
Users post personal opinions of specific interests no matter what it is. It is very open speech.
Other than the obvious, people join the community so that they can feel involved and feel as though
they are a part of something bigger
17. STRUCTURE
Categories on the upper page on specific interests available
Topics divided into subreddits where they are then put through an algorithm to sort them through
popularity
Suggested topics available on what’s hot, new, rising, controversial etc.
Search engine and Log in information on the top right
18. FEATURES
Nothing significantly jumps out when you approach Reddit, it’s presented as a wall of text
Accessibility of the website does not need a Reddit account
You can not log in through any other social network except for Reddit
New users are often deterred by its’ simplistic and primal design, but it can be quite apparent with a bit
of exploring and reading
It is extremely easy to share content but for the content to gain in popularity is something entirely
different. You do care because you want to gain as many upvotes as possible on the content that you
post.
19. IN COMPARISON…
Its easy to post and share content as long as you’re a Reddit user, but you must be registered
Reddit is unique, because people enjoyed its minimalist layout with non-intrusive targeted advertising
Unlike other websites, Reddit has unlimited user-created content and numerous categories
The list of Reddit’s guidelines and rules are very short and rarely enforced, censorship is at a minimum
Where other websites require various personal details, Reddit only requests that you give a username and
password. At most, an e-mail. .But you can remain anonymous, for things such as confessions, embarrassing
revelations, etc.
20. AMA…
AMA (I Am A): In an IAMA post, a person posts who they are, what they did or what they currently do.
Other users can than ask the person questions that come to mind.
AMA (Ask Me Anything): In an AMA post, a person will answer questions about literally anything from
Reddit users.
21. CELEBRITIES ON REDDIT
Not surprisingly, the biggest ever AMA to take place on the site was the one posted by Barack
Obama, President of the United States on August 29, 2012. The AMA garnered almost 3 million page
views on that day, with many more millions of page views following for the days after the AMA took
place.
Rapper Snoop Dogg did an AMA on Reddit in December of 2012, which attracted over 1.6 million page
views to the social news site just for that day. Reddit announced that it was the second biggest AMA to
ever take place on the site.
Top celebrity on Reddit – Zach Braff
22. PERSONAL ASSESSMENT
Reddit as a website should work more on visuals and how the website is designed
It should be more organized in terms of setup
It should be broadcasted more and spoken about more
You should be able to post pictures without having to upload them online first by giving a link.
