Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Announcing Upvoted Weekly, a new (opt-in) way to enjoy the best reddit content you may have missed during the week

It's been three months since the launch of our official podcast, Upvoted, and we couldn't be happier with the results. So, after much work I'm excited to announce the launch of our first ever, opt-in weekly email newsletter called Upvoted Weekly (we're not very creative).

Upvoted Weekly will be a human-curated (edited by yours truly) collection of the best of reddit from the last week that you may not have seen on the frontpage, sent on Sunday mornings so you can enjoy it with a nice cup of coffee, tea, or bacon. Anyone is welcome to sign up; you don't need a reddit account to subscribe, and if you have one you'll still need to opt-in here (and then accept the confirmation email). The first issue goes out Sunday, April 19th.

We've never had any official reddit emails, so we wanted to make sure we're doing it right from the start. To us, that means producing something you'll actually appreciate receiving and making sure that it meets our privacy standards. Upvoted Weekly is 100% opt-in and we include a 1-click unsubscribe link in the footer of every issue. Edit: And to be crystal clear -- if you didn't click that link to our privacy policy -- we've updated it to show that we're using a third-party service to store these email addresses in order to focus on building reddit.

Upvoted is about spreading your amazing stories and content to an even wider audience, beyond the bounds of reddit itself. Given how much you've enjoyed our podcast, we felt an email newsletter was a natural next step.  

If you’re already convinced, please sign up here. And then check your email to confirm your subscription!

GIF credit: u/EditingAndLayout
If you’d like to get a better sense of what you’re in for, here’s a look back at the last three months of the podcast, as well as our twitter & facebook accounts. We’ve already surpassed 600,000 downloads since we launched just a few months ago and we haven’t even done a story on r/TheButton (yet). The thriving community at r/upvoted reminds me of the early days of reddit -- lots of constructive discussion and helpful real-time feedback.

We’ve covered a range of stories: caught up with James Erwin about his life since “Rome, Sweet Rome”; discussed women in STEM and robot overlords with the three MIT computer scientist PhDs; had an emotional interview with Double Dick Dude; heard from a redditor who turned to r/swoleacceptance when coming out as transgender; and just two weeks ago we heard the life story of the vacuum repair man behind u/touchmyfuckingcoffee.

 
Maybe you’re hard of hearing, you're at work, or you just hate the sound of my voice -- we’ve got you covered with transcripts of every episode. (thanks, Unbabel!)

Also -- and this is super exciting -- if you have reddit gold you can come over to the lounge, and listen to new ad-free versions of our episodes a day early on Wednesdays starting at 7p ET / 4p PT. Instead of ads, I thank the users who've made this content possible by buying reddit gold.

Finally, we have a survey for the Upvoted podcast, so if you're a listener, please fill it out here. If you haven’t done so already, please help us out by answering these 15 questions. Thank you!

My cat would also like to thank you. If you didn’t fill out the survey, this kitty is not for you.
 
As always, please let us know how we’re doing with the Upvoted podcast and weekly newsletter. Don’t forget to sign up for Upvoted Weekly and subscribe to r/upvoted to let us know your thoughts.

Full-disclosure: this newsletter will not tell you what happens when The Button's timer runs out.
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