Social News – A closer look at reddit.com

To follow my previous post, which gave an insight into how a social media platform could help produce a successful marketing campaign, I have decided to focus on the site which made the ‘save mister splashy pants’ movement possible…reddit.com.

Reddit is a social news site, in which people post up or submit content for others to vote up or down and depending on the number of votes will determine the posts positioning on the site.

Brief History

The company was founded in 2005, in Boston. Started by two University graduates, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, with Christopher Slowe and Aaron Swartz joining the team later on.

As of October 2006, the site was acquired by Conde Nast, owner of Wired as well as other online magazines. This lead to the team moving to San Francisco.

In July 2010, Reddit introduced Reddit Gold as a result of rapid traffic growth. The subscribers to Reddit Gold would pay $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year and would gain more features on the site.

As of February 2013 Reddit began to accept Bitcoin (Digital Currency) payment for its Reddit Gold subscriptions through its partnership with bitcoin payment processor Coinbase.

Facts and figures

$10 Million – $20 Million – The estimated Conde Nast bought the site for in October 2006

35 Million – Unique Visitors every month

3 Billion – Page views a month

600,000 – Unique visitors per day to busiest sub reddit.

6.5 Million – Page views per day on busiest sub reddit.

24 – 35 Years – Median age of the reddit user.

84% – The percentage of male members on reddit.

16 minutes 10 Seconds – Average time spent on site by reddit users

Canadians – Spend the most time on reddit.

France – Reddit has more users than France has people

Key moments

The key moments in Reddits history that made it the site it is today.

Mr. Splashy Pants

Featured in our previous post where a campaign to save Mr.Splashy pants went viral over Reddit. Greenpeace eventually embraced the name and it turned into a major marketing campaign. Most importantly the campaign stopped the Japanese government whale expedition and Mr.Splashy Pants is still alive and kicking somewhere in the ocean.

President Obama’s ask me anything

Probably the highest profile event in Reddits history, when founder Alexis Ohanian asked President Obama and Mitt Romney to participate in an AMA (Ask me Anything) on the site and the President excepted.

The event crashed the site’s servers as too many people tried to join in the discussion all at once.

Stopping the ‘Stop Online piracy act’

In January 2012, Reddit were among a handful of major websites using their homepage to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, which they felt threatened Internet freedom.

Reddit went black for the day, however founder Ohanian, although he was a vocal opponent of SOPA, he wasn’t behind the decision to take the site offline. Instead this was down to an escalating campaign by Redditors, the site was merely following the lead of the user base.

‘Restoring Truthiness‘

In 2010, Redditors responded to conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s plan for a “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington, D.C., by calling for comedian Stephen Colbert to host a mock “Restoring Truthiness” gathering. To get Colbert’s attention, the community started donating to a favored charity of his, Donor’s Choose, which connects people with teachers seeking funds for classroom projects.

Reddit broke previous fundraising records, raising more than $100,000 for classroom projects with so much traffic they overloaded the site’s servers. And when, not long thereafter, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart held the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.”

Boston marathon bombings

One of the darker episodes in Reddit’s history was the site’s coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing in April. Vigilante Redditors scoured images of the finish line for clues to the bombers’ identities, launching a pursuit that led to the harassment of innocent people, including the family of a Brown University student who had gone missing in March and was later found dead.


A spontaneous Pizza delivery

Friends and family of two year old cancer patient, Hazel Hammersley, posted a sign the on her hospital room window requesting pizza. The image found its way to Reddit and readers sent along so many Pizzas that the hospital had to ask for the orders to stop. Hazel and other patients were treated to a pizza party!

Here is a great video giving a bit more of an insight into what Reddit is all about!