For a long time, news was a resource
available only from papers. Later, additional media developed to provide
information for the masses: TV and the
internet. With news programs on cable and websites like CNN or BBC, people have
had more and more immediate access to what’s happening. However, there is one
significant downside to all these sources: you only see what the publishers
want you to see. Fox News will only post stories written by Fox News, about
whatever they think is important. There is no sorting of information, and no
individual contribution. What if you only want to read about news in the Middle
East? What if you’re interested in cooking and just want to read what other
people have created? Maybe you’ve even created something yourself to share with
the world, but how?
Reddit stands out as a content
aggregator and community unlike any other. Every day, thousands of people share
information ranging from international politics to cat pictures. It is the
perfect place to find and share information.
What is it?
Reddit is a social news website
where users can submit content, from personal stories and pictures to jokes,
news, and more. Other users then vote on the content, rating it positive
(upvote) or negative (downvote). The most popular articles are shown on the
front page. Users can comment on these posts and reply to others’ comments. Thus,
not only are you able to see popular posts, you can also discuss your opinions
about them.
Now, at first, this might not
seem that exciting. Other sites have done similar aggregation. For example, Digg
came before Reddit, and functioned similarly. Google news provides an excellent
way to search for articles from just about anywhere. So what sets Reddit apart?
Probably the most important feature is the ability users have to create
separate pages, or “subreddits” for specific content. They are specified by
appending “/r/<subredditname>” to the end of the reddit url (example:
reddit.com/r/worldnews) When an article is posted, it can be posted to a
specific subreddit. Users can subscribe to subreddits they are interested in,
meaning they will only see content relevant to themselves. When a user logs in,
the front page they are greeted with is filled with content from their
subreddits (and nothing else), providing a unique experience for each user.
Visitors to the site who are not logged in see posts from popular subreddits
(such as /r/funny and /r/politics). 
What this allows is a huge amount
of diversity within a single website. Communities form around subreddits, with
unique, user-created guidelines and policies intended to make it as enjoyable
as possible to browse the content you want to browse. It is almost impossible
to think of a topic for which there isn’t a subreddit. Cute pet pictures? Try
/r/aww. Religious subreddits? Popular ones include /r/Christianity and
/r/atheism, but you can find just about any religion you want (/r/Sikhism,
anyone?). There are Reddit-community based subreddits as well. Go to /r/askreddit
if you want advice, /r/todayilearned if you want fun facts, or /r/lifeprotips
if you want to know how to make your life a bit better. Most colleges have
subreddits devoted to them, as do most sports teams, states, cities, and more.
Basically, if you’re interested in something, chances are there is a subreddit
for that something.History
Reddit was founded in 2005 by
Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman. They received initial funding from Y
Combinator (a startup funding venture capitalist firm). Much of the site was
coded by the two In October 2006, they sold the site to Conde Nast. In 2011,
they were split from Conde Nast to become a separate subsidiary under Advance
Publications, Conde Nast’s parent company.
Reddit went through a large
growing phase, but was always built on the premise that it was to be mainly
user-driven. The content posted on the site was to be completely unrestricted
and left up to the users (known as Redditors) discretions. It picked up where
others failed by being more expansive and flexible than anything before. Digg,
which was popular before Reddit was created, fell in popularity when it became
apparent that it was very difficult to get your content to be seen on the front
page – the only people who seemed to be able to accomplish this task were a
selective few “power users”, and this felt too much like a normal news website.
Additionally, Digg only had a set number of different sections to post
information, which limited diversity.
Why does it matter?
-Arjuna Hayes
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