Wednesday, September 22, 2010

reddit mailbag

We've come a long way since our distress call two months ago.

These days, reddit's firing on all cylinders in more ways that I care to provide citations for, and it's thanks, foremost, to all of you. Your support has come not just in the form of reddit gold subscriptions, but also some really nice care packages.

As you can see above, nobody on team reddit is going to need to buy mac-and-cheese for approximately the next eight and a half years. And in the event of a power failure, the lids can serve as an emergency source of light.

Next, we knew that redditors were creative and talented, but we were still totally impressed by some of the stuff you made.

Look at these rad keychains we got. They're laser-etched and can be worn as dogtags during times of war.

We also received a beautiful belt buckle, which is currently decorating our office next to a pair of handcrafted aliens: one wireframe, and another with a customizable sign. (In the background, you can see what's left of a box of international candy — can you identify the products from their packaging?)

There's one last category of "stuff people send us", and it's a big one. We don't want cash-strapped or PayPal-impaired redditors to be shut out of reddit gold, so we give a free month to anyone who sends us a postcard. This policy leads to a very fun result: we get dozens and dozens and dozens of them, and we love them all. The best feature drawings, needlecraft, perfumed smooches, origami, wax seals, stickers, and secret codes. Some resourceful (i.e., lazy) redditors even made "postcards" out of index cards, cardboard scraps, and covers torn off books.


We read every one of them, and during our tough times they've been an important morale booster. We decided to hang them over the door of the reddit office as a reminder of the size and diversity of our community. Your breadth is inspiring: postcards arrived from Australia, Austria, Canada, Chile, Dominica, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, the Republic of China (a.k.a. Taiwan), Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and of course, the United States. (Here's what it looks like on a map.)

If your country's not represented, please remedy the situation! You'll get a month of reddit gold and a premium location on our wall. The address is at the bottom of the reddit gold page.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

New award for logo contributors

Back in the early days of reddit, we had custom logos on the front page nearly every day, to celebrate holidays or reference something topical, or just for fun.

We've recently revived this tradition with themes like OS week or the current "reddit steals" series.

We're proud and happy that a large number of these logos have been user-submitted. Since you guys have great talent, and we love it when you do our jobs for us, we decided to create a new award for anyone who gets a logo on the front page.

The initial class of winners includes:
If you'd like to join this illustrious group, you can submit your artwork to /r/logos. That's also the place to suggest ideas for future logo-series themes.

Oh, one last thing! We also need a name for this trophy. Logician? Turtle? Lo-gog-ra-pher? Help us come up with one in the comments.

Thursday, September 02, 2010

reddit helps break down a border! (also, some admins were on a podcast)

Earlier this summer, the guys who draw Cyanide & Happiness came to the Internet with a problem: they were all trying to move to the same place to facilitate the further development of their comic, but one of them, Dave, lived in Ireland and was having problems with American immigration. See, it's difficult to come to this country if you're planning on getting a job when you arrive. There happens to be an exception for successful artists, but it seems the U.S. government didn't consider Internet fame to be "real" fame. So the Cy&H guys put up a blog post and submitted it to reddit, asking for fans to sign a petition stating that Dave should qualify as renowned.

There were some skeptics (just read through the comment thread), but believe it or not, it worked! With the help of their own readers, the /r/comics crew, and the rest of the Internet, here's what happened:

Hey guys!

Just wanted to say Dave got his O1 visa, and the bulk of our "supplemental evidence" was a bigass stack of names on an Internet petition. This may very well mark the first time in history that an online petition has changed something, even if it was just getting a guy into the United States to make silly stick figure animations.

I know a lot of you Redditors signed it, so I just wanted to let you know that it worked. And to say thanks.

Thanks.



The Drill Down

In other news, Chris and I were on a live podcast last night. It's called The Drill Down. We had fun and talked about a lot of stuff.

You can download a recording here, or just search for "the drill down" on your podcast-listening device and look for episode #151.