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For the community in Ontario, see Redditt.
Reddit (/ˈrɛdɪt/, stylized in its logo as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, and images, which are then voted up or down by other members. Posts are organized by subject into user-created boards called "subreddits", which cover a variety of topics including news, science, movies, video games, music, books, fitness, food, and image-sharing. Submissions with more up-votes appear towards the top of their subreddit and, if they receive enough up-votes, ultimately on the site's front page. Despite strict rules prohibiting harassment, Reddit's administrators spend considerable resources on moderating the site.[4]
Reddit Inc.
Homepage of Reddit in June 2018
Type of businessPrivate
Type of site
Social news
media aggregation
Available inMultilingual[notes 1]FoundedJune 23, 2005; 14 years ago[1]HeadquartersSan Francisco, California, U.S.Area servedWorldwideOwnerAdvance Publications (majority shareholder)[2]Founder(s)
Steve Huffman
Aaron Swartz
Alexis Ohanian
Key people
Steve Huffman (co-founder and CEO)
Jen Wong COO
Christopher Slowe CTO
Industry
Internet
media
Employees230[notes 2]Websitewww.reddit.comAlexa rank 18 (Global, October 2019)[3]AdvertisingBanner ads and promoted linksRegistrationOptional[notes 3]Current statusActiveWritten in
Python
React[notes 4]
As of July 2019, Reddit ranks as the No. 5 most visited website in the U.S. and No. 13 in the world, according to Alexa Internet, with 55% of its user base coming from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom at 7.4% and Canada at 5.8%.[5]
Reddit was founded by University of Virginia roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. Condé Nast Publications acquired the site in October 2006. In 2011, Reddit became an independent subsidiary of Condé Nast's parent company, Advance Publications.[6] In October 2014, Reddit raised $50 million in a funding round led by Sam Altman and including investors Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Snoop Dogg, and Jared Leto.[7] Their investment valued the company at $500 million then.[8][9] In July 2017, Reddit raised $200 million for a $1.8 billion valuation, with Advance Publications remaining the majority stakeholder.[10] In February 2019, a $300 million funding round led by Tencent brought the company's valuation to $3 billion.[11]
Site overview
Reddit is a website comprising user-generated content—including photos, videos, links, and text-based posts—and discussions of this content in what is essentially a bulletin board system.[12][13] The name "Reddit" is a play-on-words with the phrase "read it", i.e., "I read it on Reddit."[14][15] As of 2018, there are approximately 330 million Reddit users, called "redditors".[16] The site's content is divided into categories or communities known on-site as "subreddits", of which there are more than 138,000 active communities.[17]
As a network of communities, Reddit's core content consists of posts from its users.[12][13] Users can comment on others' posts to continue the conversation.[12] A key feature to Reddit is that users can cast positive or negative votes, called upvotes and downvotes respectively, for each post and comment on the site.[12] The number of upvotes or downvotes determines the posts' visibility on the site, so the most popular content is displayed to the most people.[12] Users can also earn "karma" for their posts and comments, which reflects the user's standing within the community and their contributions to Reddit.[12]
The most popular posts from the site's numerous subreddits are visible on the front page to those who browse the site without an account.[17][18] By default for those users, the front page will display the subreddit r/popular, featuring top-ranked posts across all of Reddit, excluding not-safe-for-work communities and others that are most commonly filtered out by users (even if they are safe for work).[19][20] The subreddit r/all does not filter topics.[21] Registered users who subscribe to subreddits see the top content from the subreddits to which they subscribe on their personal front pages.[17][18]
Front-page rank—for both the general front page and for individual subreddits—is determined by a combination of factors, including the age of the submission, positive ("upvoted") to negative ("downvoted") feedback ratio, and the total vote-count.[22]
Users and moderators
As of 2018, there were about 330 million Reddit users, called "redditors".[16] Registering an account with Reddit is free and does not require an email address.[23][24] In addition to commenting and voting, registered users can also create their own subreddit on a topic of their choosing.[25] In Reddit style, usernames begin with "u/". For example, noteworthy redditors include u/Poem_for_your_sprog, who responds to messages across Reddit in verse,[26] and u/Shitty_Watercolour, who posts paintings in response to posts.[27]
Subreddits are overseen by moderators, Reddit users who earn the title by creating a subreddit or being promoted by a current moderator.[17] These moderators are volunteers who manage their communities, set and enforce community-specific rules, remove posts and comments that violate these rules, and generally work to keep discussions in their subreddit on topic.[17][28][29] Admins, by contrast, are paid to work for Reddit.[28]
Subreddits
Play media
Nathan Allen speaks about the r/science community to the American Chemical Society
Discussions on Reddit are organized into user-created areas of interest called "subreddits". There are about 138,000 active subreddits among a total of 1.2 million, as of July 2018.[30][31] Subreddit names begin with "r/". For instance, r/science is a community devoted to discussing scientific topics and r/television is a community devoted to discussing TV shows. Meanwhile, r/popular features top-ranked posts across all of Reddit, excluding not-safe-for-work (NSFW) communities and others that are most commonly filtered out by users (even if they are safe for work).[19][20] The subreddit r/all does not filter topics.[21]
In a 2014 interview with Memeburn, Erik Martin, then general manager of Reddit, remarked that their "approach is to give the community moderators or curators as much control as possible so that they can shape and cultivate the type of communities they want".[32] Subreddits often use themed variants of Reddit's alien mascot, Snoo, in the visual styling of their communities.[33]
Most subscribed-to subreddits
As of September 8, 2019, the 10 most subscribed-to subreddits are:[34]
SubredditSubscribersr/announcements44,463,182r/funny26,239,736r/AskReddit24,334,027r/gaming23,512,445r/pics22,743,461r/science22,296,263r/worldnews22,061,249r/aww21,820,391r/todayilearned21,443,302r/movies21,416,932
Other features
Reddit Premium (formerly Reddit Gold) is a premium membership that allows users to view the site ad-free.[35][36] Users may also be gifted coins if another user particularly valued the comment or post, generally due to humorous or high-quality content. Reddit Premium unlocks several features not accessible to regular users, such as comment highlighting, exclusive subreddits, and a personalized Snoo (known as a "snoovatar").[37][38] Reddit Gold was renamed Reddit Premium in 2018. In addition to gold coins, users can gift silver and platinum coins to other users as rewards for quality content.[39]
On the site, redditors commemorate their "cake day" once a year, on the anniversary of the day their account was created.[40] Cake day adds an icon of a small slice of cake next to the user's name for 24 hours.[41]
In 2017, Reddit developed its own real-time chat software for the site.[42] While some established subreddits have used third-party software to chat about their communities, the company built chat functions that it hopes will become an integral part of Reddit.[42] Individual chat rooms were rolled out in 2017 and community chat rooms for members of a given subreddit were rolled out in 2018.[42][43][44]
History
Company history
Further information: Timeline of Reddit

Co-founder Alexis Ohanian speaking in 2009
The idea and initial development of Reddit originated with then college roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005. Huffman and Ohanian attended a lecture by programmer-entrepreneur Paul Graham in Boston, Massachusetts, during their spring break from University of Virginia.[45][46][47] After speaking with Huffman and Ohanian following the lecture, Graham invited the two to apply to his startup incubator Y Combinator.[45] Their initial idea, My Mobile Menu, was unsuccessful,[48][49] and was intended to allow users to order food by SMS text messaging.[45][46] During a brainstorming session to pitch another startup, the idea was created for what Graham called the "front page of the Internet".[49] For this idea, Huffman and Ohanian were accepted in Y Combinator's first class.[45][46] Supported by the funding from Y Combinator,[50] Huffman coded the site in Common Lisp[51] and together with Ohanian launched Reddit in June 2005.[52][53]
The team expanded to include Christopher Slowe in November 2005. Between November 2005 and January 2006, Reddit merged with Aaron Swartz's company Infogami, and Swartz became an equal owner of the resulting parent company, Not A Bug.[54][55] Huffman and Ohanian sold Reddit to Condé Nast Publications, owner of Wired, on October 31, 2006, for a reported $10 million to $20 million[45][56] and the team moved to San Francisco.[57] In January 2007, Swartz was fired for undisclosed reasons.[58]
Huffman and Ohanian left Reddit in 2009.[59] Huffman went on to co-found Hipmunk with Adam Goldstein, and later recruited Ohanian[60] and Slowe to his new company.[61] After Huffman and Ohanian left Reddit, Erik Martin, who joined the company as a community manager in 2008 and later became general manager is 2011, played a role in Reddit's growth.[62] VentureBeat noted that Martin was "responsible for keeping the site going" under Condé Nast's ownership.[63] Martin facilitated the purchase of Reddit Gifts and led charity initiatives.[63]
Reddit launched two different ways of advertising on the site in 2009. The company launched sponsored content[64] and a self-serve ads platform that year.[65][66] Reddit launched its Reddit Gold benefits program in July 2010, which offered new features to editors and created a new revenue stream for the business that did not rely on banner ads.[67] On September 6, 2011, Reddit became operationally independent of Condé Nast, operating as a separate subsidiary of its parent company, Advance Publications.[68] Reddit and other websites participated in a 12-hour sitewide blackout on January 18, 2012, in protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act.[69] In May 2012, Reddit joined the Internet Defense League, a group formed to organize future protests.[70]
Yishan Wong joined Reddit as CEO in 2012.[71] Wong resigned from Reddit in 2014, after more than two years at the company, citing disagreements about his proposal to move the company's offices from San Francisco to nearby Daly City, but also the "stressful and draining" nature of the position.[72][73] Ohanian credited Wong with leading the company as its user base grew from 35 million to 174 million.[73] Wong oversaw the company as it raised $50 million in funding and spun off as an independent company.[65] Also during this time, Reddit began accepting the digital currency Bitcoin for its Reddit Gold subscription service through a partnership with bitcoin payment processor Coinbase in February 2013.[74] Ellen Pao replaced Wong as interim CEO in 2014 and resigned in 2015 amid a user revolt over the firing of a popular Reddit employee.[75] During her tenure, Reddit initiated an anti-harassment policy,[76] banned involuntary sexualization, and banned several forums that focused on bigoted content or harassment of individuals.[77]
After five years away from the company, Ohanian and Huffman returned to leadership roles at Reddit: Ohanian became the full-time executive chairman in November 2014 following Wong's resignation, while Pao's departure on July 10, 2015, led to Huffman's return as the company's chief executive.[78][79] After Huffman rejoined Reddit as CEO, he launched Reddit's iOS and Android apps, fixed Reddit's mobile website, and created A/B testing infrastructure.[45] The company launched a major redesign of its website in April 2018.[16] Huffman said new users were turned off from Reddit because it had looked like a "dystopian Craigslist".[16] Reddit also instituted several technological improvements,[80] such as a new tool that allows users to hide posts, comments, and private messages from selected redditors in an attempt to curb online harassment,[81] and new content guidelines. These new content guidelines were aimed at banning content inciting violence and quarantining offensive material.[45][80] Slowe, the company's first employee, rejoined Reddit in 2017 as chief technology officer.[82] Reddit's largest round of funding came in 2017, when the company raised $200 million and was valued at $1.8 billion.[83] The funding supported Reddit's site redesign and video efforts.[83]
Technology and design
Underlying code
Reddit was originally written in Common Lisp but was rewritten in Python in December 2005[84] for wider access to code libraries and greater development flexibility. The Python web framework that Swartz developed to run the site, web.py, is available as an open source project.[85] As of November 10, 2009, Reddit used Pylons as its web framework.[86] Reddit was an open source project from June 18, 2008 until 2017.[87][88] During that time, all of the code and libraries written for Reddit were freely available on GitHub, with the exception of the anti-spam/cheating portions.[89] In a September 2017 announcement, the company stated that "we've been doing a bad job of keeping our open-source product repos up to date", partially because "open-source makes it hard for us to develop some features 'in the clear' ... without leaking our plans too far in advance", prompting the decision to archive its public GitHub repos.[88]
While Reddit has continued calling itself open source[90] it has failed to continue updating its code for years. Development forks continue slowly on Reddit-like alternative sites such as SaidIt.net, Ceddit.com, Notabug.io, and Rebbit.kr.[citation needed]
Hosting and servers
As of November 10, 2009, Reddit decommissioned its own servers and migrated to Amazon Web Services.[91] Reddit uses PostgreSQL as their primary datastore and is slowly moving to Apache Cassandra, a column-oriented datastore.[when?][citation needed] It uses RabbitMQ for offline processing, HAProxy for load balancing and memcached for caching. In early 2009, Reddit started using jQuery.[92]
Mobile apps
In 2010, Reddit released its first mobile web interface for easier reading and navigating the website on touch screen devices.[93] For several years, redditors relied on third-party apps to access Reddit on mobile devices. In October 2014, Reddit acquired one of them, Alien Blue, which became the official iOS Reddit app.[94] Reddit removed Alien Blue and released its official application, Reddit: The Official App, on Google Play and the iOS App Store in April 2016.[95] The company released an app for Reddit's question-and-answer Ask Me Anything subreddit in 2014.[96] The app allowed users to see active Ask Me Anythings, receive notifications, ask questions and vote.[96]
Product and design changes
The site has undergone several products and design changes since it originally launched in 2005. When it initially launched, there were no comments or subreddits. Comments were added in 2005[16][97] and interest-based groups (called 'subreddits') were introduced in 2008.[98] Allowing users to create subreddits has led to much of the activity that redditors would recognize that helped define Reddit. These include subreddits "WTF", "funny", and "AskReddit".[98] Reddit rolled out its multireddit feature, the site's biggest change to its front page in years, in 2013.[99] With the multireddits, users see top stories from a collection of subreddits.[99]
In 2015, Reddit enabled embedding, so users could share Reddit content on other sites.[100] In 2016, Reddit began hosting images using a new image uploading tool, a move that shifted away from the uploading service Imgur that had been the de facto service.[101] Users still can upload images to Reddit using Imgur.[101] Reddit's in-house video uploading service for desktop and mobile launched in 2017.[102] Previously, users had to use third-party video uploading services, which Reddit acknowledged was time consuming for users.[102]
Reddit released its "spoiler tags" feature in January 2017.[103] The feature warns users of potential spoilers in posts and pixelates preview images.[103] Reddit unveiled changes to its public front page, called r/popular, in 2017;[21] the change creates a front page free of potentially adult-oriented content for unregistered users.[21]
In late 2017, Reddit declared it wanted to be a mobile-first site, launching several changes to its apps for iOS and Android.[40] The new features included user-to-user chat, a theater mode for viewing visual content, and mobile tools for the site's moderators. "Mod mode" lets moderators manage content and their subreddits on mobile devices.[40]
Reddit launched its redesigned website in 2018, with its first major visual update in a decade.[16] Development for the new site took more than a year.[16] It was the result of an initiative by Huffman upon returning to Reddit, who said the site's outdated look deterred new users.[16] The new site features a hamburger menu to help users navigate the site, different views, and new fonts to better inform redditors if they are clicking on a Reddit post or an external link.[16] The goal was not only for Reddit to improve its appearance, but also to make it easier to accommodate a new generation of Reddit users.[16] Additionally, Reddit's growth had strained the site's back end;[104] Huffman and Reddit Vice President of Engineering Nick Caldwell told The Wall Street Journal's COI Journal that Reddit needed to leverage artificial intelligence and other modern digital tools.[104]
Logo
Reddit's logo consists of a time-traveling alien named Snoo and the company name stylized as "reddit". The alien has an oval head, pom-pom ears, and an antenna.[105] Its colors are black, white, and orange-red.[105] The mascot was created in 2005 while company co-founder Alexis Ohanian was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia.[106] Ohanian doodled the creature while bored in a marketing class.[107] Originally, Ohanian sought to name the mascot S'new, a play on "What's new?", to tie the mascot into Reddit's premise as the "front page of the Internet".[105][107] Eventually, the name Snoo was chosen.[105] In 2011, Ohanian outlined the logo's evolution with a graphic that showcased several early versions, including various spellings of the website name, such as "Reditt".[106]
Snoo is genderless and colorless, so the logo is moldable.[105][108] Over the years, the Reddit logo has frequently changed for holidays and other special events.[106] Many subreddits have a customized Snoo logo to represent the subreddit.[107] Redditors can also submit their own logos, which sometimes appear on the site's front page, or create their own customized versions of Snoo for their communities (or "subreddits").[106][16] When Reddit revamped its website in April 2018, the company imposed several restrictions on how Snoo can be designed: Snoo's head "should always appear blank or neutral", Snoo's eyes are orange-red, and Snoo cannot have fingers.[105] Snoo's purpose is to discover and explore humanity.[105]
Corporate affairs
Advertising
Community and culture
Controversies
Science
See also
Notes
References
External links
Last edited 1 day ago by Argentazure
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