Reddit

Infobox Website
name = reddit



caption = reddit front page on June 11, 2008
url = [http://www.reddit.com/ www.reddit.com]
commercial = Yes
type = News aggregation site
registration = Free
owner = Condé Nast Publications
author = Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian
launch date = 2005
revenue =

Reddit (also reddit) is a social news website on which users can post links to content on the web. Other users may then vote the posted links up or down, causing them to appear more or less prominently on the Reddit home page.

Overview

The site has discussion areas in which users may discuss the posted links and vote for or against others' comments. When there are enough votes against a given comment, it will not be displayed by default, although a reader can display it through a link or preference. Users who submit articles which other users like and subsequently "vote up" receive "karma" points as a reward for submitting interesting articles.

Reddit also includes several topical sections called "subreddits", which focus on specific topics, such as programming, science, "not safe for work", and politics. There are dozens of subreddits. [ [http://reddit.com/reddits reddits ] ]

The Reddit logo changes for various holidays and often for no reason, paying homage to Star Wars, classic video games, and geek culture in general. It often changes in response to major discussion subjects within the site or major news stories.

Although Reddit is not moderated by its owners, the Reddit developers have built a system to aid with curtailing spam, which works based on the "reports" of users.

History

Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005, then 22-year-old graduates of the University of Virginia. [cite news | last = Adams | first = Richard | title = reddit.com | publisher = The Guardian | date = 2005-12-08 | url = http://technology.guardian.co.uk/innovations/story/0,,1660870,00.html | accessdate = 2006-12-23 ] 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. [cite web | url= http://infogami.com/blog/introduction|title= Introducing Infogami
last=Swartz | first=Aaron | authorlink=Aaron Swartz| publisher=Infogami | date=February 27, 2006 | accessdate= 2007-01-06] The combined company was known as "not a bug". Condé Nast Publications, owner of "Wired", acquired not a bug on 31 October, 2006. [cite web | url = http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/31/breaking-news-conde-nastwired-acquires-reddit/ | title = Breaking news: Condé Nast/Wired Acquires reddit | publisher = TechCrunch|date=October 31, 2006|accessdate= 2007-01-06 | last=Arrington | first=Michael | authorlink=Michael Arrington]

On June 18, 2008, Reddit became an open source project. [ [http://blog.reddit.com/2008/06/reddit-goes-open-source.html Open source announcement on the Reddit blog] ] All of the code and libraries written for Reddit became freely available on another website dubbed "Fixxit". [http://code.reddit.com/]

Reddit was named by Ohanian while browsing the University of Virginia's Alderman Library. [ [http://www.redditall.com/2008/02/reddit-nostalgia-whence-came-name.html "reddit nostalgia: whence came the name?," on Alexis Ohanian's blog] ] It is short for "read it", and is generally pronounced in the past tense, as in "I have read it."

Technology

Reddit was originally written in Lisp, but was rewritten in Python in 2005. [ [http://blog.reddit.com/2005/12/on-lisp.html "On lisp" blog post by reddit moderator "spez," detailing the reasons for switching to python from lisp] ] 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. [ [http://webpy.org/ Official web.py site] ]

It now uses the Pylons web framework. [http://wiki.pylonshq.com/display/pylonscommunity/Sites+Using+Pylons]

Reddit is hosted on several Debian Linux servers running lighttpd, HaProxy, and paster. [ [http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.reddit.com Netcraft report on reddit.com] ]

References

External links

* [http://reddit.com/ Official site]
* [http://code.reddit.com/ Fixxit (Reddit's code repository)]
* [http://redditall.com/ think you've reddit all?] - Alexis's blog (the logo artist).
* [http://www.folksonomy.org/2006/10/interview_with_reddit.html Interview with Reddit] - Interview with Steve Huffman, co-founder of reddit.
* [http://www.folksonomy.org/2007/02/interview_with_alexis_ohanian/ Interview with Reddit II] - Interview with Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit.
* [http://mattsparkes.org/blog/?p=19 Interview - Alexis Ohanian, reddit Co-Founder] - Interview with Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit.