Tuesday, October 22, 2013

We continue to be astounded. Plus some answers to common questions.

reddit, we continue to be astounded! This weekend, when we first put up the progress bar, we never expected to blast through the daily target and exceed 500% before the day ended. It's been an amazing few days and we are absolutely floored by everyone’s dedication to this site and to each other — there’s so much “paying it forward” and helping each other out. Hitting our daily gold revenue targets means that gold can be a key part of reddit becoming a self-sustaining, community-supported platform.

We thought we’d also take this chance to answer some question we saw in the gold threads over the weekend, especially from users who are new to gold. Without further ado, here are some Common Gold Questions:

Q: What is reddit gold?

A: reddit gold is our premium subscription service. It gives you access to exclusive features and discounts with our partners. You can read more about it at reddit.com/gold/about.

Q: Can I buy gold for myself?
Click here to buy reddit gold

A: Yes! You can buy gold by going to reddit.com/gold.

Sometimes people think that you can only receive gold via the little “give gold” links underneath comments, by having someone give it to you (called "gilding" or having your comment "gilded") Au contraire — you can most certainly purchase it for yourself, and most people who have reddit gold do just that! Go ahead, you deserve it.

Q: Can I buy gold in bulk? I want to give gold away to comments and would rather buy in bulk instead of entering my payment info each time. Plus can I get a discount for buying in bulk?

A: Yes! You have multiple ways to do this, and you get a discount if you buy in bulk.

Buying gold for yourself: If you buy a year’s subscription, each month of gold is only $2.50, a 37.5% discount off the normal rate of $3.99 per month!

Buying gold creddits to gild: You can buy a bunch of “creddits” which allow you to gild lots of comments without having to enter your payment information each time. Buying any of the special bulk tiers of creddits will also net you the same 37.5% discount off the normal rate!

Q: What does server time mean? How does that work?

A: This question refers to this box shown in the screenshot shown on the right:

We launched it couple weeks ago, and you may have noticed it on your user profile. You can also see it on other user profiles if the user has elected to make it public.

What we wanted to do was convert the funds that users pay us into something that reflects how much of reddit you’re helping to support. reddit runs on hundreds of servers, and each of those servers costs a certain amount to run, so we averaged it all together to get a rough unit cost per server.

The "server time" number on your profile includes money you’ve contributed via buying reddit gold, buying reddit gold for someone else (which includes gilding), or buying ads through our self-serve system. “Gifts on your behalf” represent gold that someone has bought for you, either by gilding your comments or by buying gold for you from reddit.com/gold.

For a somewhat more involved technical explanation on how the number is generated, please refer to this post in /r/howredditworks.

Q: Other than buying ads or gold, how can I help support reddit?

A: One easy way to help the site is to disable AdBlock on reddit. We do have ads, and the more impressions they get, the more our clients like us. We work hard to ensure the ads we display are reddit-friendly. We don’t allow full-page ads or any type of flash. We also include a lot of internal-community ads which point to things like new subreddits. Disabling is simple: when viewing reddit, simply right click on your AdBlock icon and uncheck ‘Enabled for this site’.

Perhaps the best non-monetary way to support the site is to help make reddit a community which you’re proud to be a part of. Go check out your local subreddits (or consider starting your own), consider the reddiquette and help keep it alive, and be thoughtful when engaging with others. reddit is not special or unique because of the design of the site, it is special because of the community that contributes to the site. Every person reading this can help ensure that reddit continues to be worthy of your time and support.


Lastly a tidbit - we’re planning a fun bonus for everyone who helps contribute to hitting the 100% goal each day. Stay tuned!

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