Thursday, December 20, 2007

let the donations begin


Voting has ended and the EFF won -- now the donating has begun. Click here to donate. We've already gotten a great response; don't stop impressing us, reddit :-)

Donations will run until December 31st.

I've gotten in touch with someone at EFF and they're quite excited about this. More to come...

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

final hours before a non-profit is determined for the reddit & xkcd fundraiser

Click to donate

If you haven't voted yet, now is the time. The poll will end at 10pm Eastern (GMT-5) today; top scoring non-profit will be the recipient of 100% of your donations (and maybe even a bit of the "Splashy Pants effect"). At the time of this writing, the #1 non-profit is the EFF, but the Esperantic Studies Foundation, ACLU, and the Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science aren't far behind. Update: Voting has ended. The EFF has won.

It was a good thing this made it up on the front page, because we got some great suggestions for awarding our prizes. In light of this, we've modified things a bit:
  • First 50 donors will each receive a signed XKCD comic and a signed reddit postcard.
  • Top 10 biggest donors will also each receive a signed XKCD comic and a signed reddit postcard and a reddit shirt.
  • #1 biggest donor will also be getting a reddit alien bobblehead (not this one, yours will be less broken -- we'll sign its belly too, if you'd like)

  • 40 random donors (not in the above) will also each receive a signed XKCD comic and a signed reddit postcard. We have a PhD working on that complex randomization algorithm.
  • Another 150 random donors will get a signed reddit postcard. One of us may even try to doodle a stick figure on it as a consolation for not getting an XKCD comic.
Thanks again to all of you who've gotten the word out on this fundraiser. And of course a big thanks to xkcd for continuing its trend of awesomeness.

Donations will start at noon Eastern (GMT-5) on Thursday @ http://reddit.com/help/donate

Monday, December 17, 2007

a collaboration of geeks, stick figure comics, and an alien -- for charity?

Click to donate

Two weeks ago, a headline made it up to the front page that gave me an idea: "Ok Reddit, we've proven our power with Mister Splashey [sic] Pants and that lady who wanted to go to Alaska. At what point, though, do we take this to a more meaningful level?"

Typo aside (I don't think Mr. Splashy Pants would mind anyway), powerhead brought up a good point, and a lot of you agreed. So the 4 of us here at reddit wanted to do something to help you all make it happen.

First we'd need a non-profit cause for reddit to champion, Splashy-style, but we knew we couldn't just pick one -- you should. Once one was selected, we'd need to give you an incentive to donate. I've printed 250 reddit alien evolution postcards that we'll all sign and mail to the first 250 donors we get.

But we knew that wouldn't motivate anyone, so we called upon a higher power: xkcd. After explaining it to Randall and Davean, they were all for contributing 100 signed xkcd comics, each with unique stick figure (Confession: I got the idea for the postcards from them in the first place). So once we could guarantee the first 100 donors would get signed reddit AND xkcd cards, we knew we were on to something (pity those 150 who get stuck with only reddit cards -- better comfort yourself with some xkcd shirts).

Hopefully you've still got some money left from all those Ron Paul donations, we're asking for a minimum donation of US $10. Absolutely 100% of your donation will go directly to the non-profit you all have voted for.

Donations will begin on Thursday, the 20th at noon Eastern (GMT-5) (I'll post the link here on this blog) and we'll accept them until December 31st, but I'm fairly certain we'll be well out of cards by then. We'll also provide a grand total on New Year's day after the campaign as ended.

Below is a reddit poll to vote on, submit whatever non-profits you feel are worthy. The format should look pretty familiar. Whatever project has the top score by 10pm Eastern (GMT-5) on Wednesday (the 19th) will be the championed cause and the recipient of the fundraising.

Tell your friends; the Internet loves non-profits like DonorsChoose and OLPC, maybe there's another equally great idea out there that could use the attention, but as always, we'll leave that up to you all...

Update: Voting has ended. The EFF has won.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

striking Hollywood writer? (or just in L.A.) reddit would like to buy you a drink

Sure, we know what the effect of these drankkit meetups has been on traffic, but it's also been a great chance to meet redditors (and give them free beer!)

Now that we're going to be in L.A., we know there are a bunch of striking Hollywood writers wandering around in need of a drink. Our alien would be picketing with you, but its contract bars it from any union-related activity. That said, we'd like to give you some beer.

So if you're a striking writer, or a redditor in L.A. (or both!) bring some friends and come out to Hollywood this Thursday. Maybe if the night goes really well, we can create a follow-up movie to the DailyShow's and ColbertReport's analyses.

Thursday, Nov. 29th
open bar from 7-9pm @ The Well
6255 W Sunset Blvd, Ste 115, Los Angeles, CA (map)

feeling facebook-y?

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

giuliani's google ads

Already a #1 story and falling off the hot page, the damage has already been done -- so this did seem rather moot -- but Google demanded that we remove the link to the Giuliani search results as it was encouraging people to engage in clickfraud (pointing out the violation of both our User Agreement and their ToS).

You can still find the permalink, we've just "cooled it off." It was a clever submission, but unethical nonetheless.

Granted, since it already was off the top 25, this may have gone unnoticed -- I just wanted you to hear this explanation from me first.

*updated

Monday, November 05, 2007

help me, redditors; you're my only hope

That's probably what our alien mascot would be telling you right now, if it had stored a message inside a droid onboard Tantive IV.

We had a fantastic time out in New York for our NY reddit meetup, but something was terribly wrong by the end of the night. For the last few days, we'd been taking around a reddit alien bobblehead and photographing it "traveling garden gnome" style. Only this alien could obviously thrash any gnome -- even a gnomish wizard.

Anyway, I had left it sitting on top of the beer taps and noticed it every now and then throughout the night. But with so many people moving in and out (it really was packed tight -- sorry about that) we all lost track of it. And at around 1am, as I prepared to leave, the alien was gone.

I've already done the obvious thing and placed a Craigslist ad, but I'm counting on the community to track this alien down (I've even created a "lost alien" poster to help you canvas your neighborhoods).There really is only one in existence. We were planning on blowing it up at the end of the tour anyway, but now we'll have to photoshop all the rest of those travel photos.

...unless it turns up somewhere. If you know the whereabouts of this bobblehead, you don't even need to send it back to us, just keep taking photos of it in random places (and put them online). I think that's what the alien would have wanted.

We're also heading to Toronto, Detroit, and Chicago this week (drankkit updated!) if you'd like to have a few free drinks and mourn the loss of our mascot along with us.

TORONTO - mon. november 5th

(no rsvp) open bar from 7-9pm @ Madison Avenue Pub

14 Madison Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5R, Canada! (map)


DETROIT - tue. november 6th

(no rsvp) open bar from 7-9pm @ The Town Pump

100 W Montcalm St, Detroit, MI 48201 (map)


CHICAGO - thu. november 8th

(no rsvp) open bar from 7-9pm @ English

444 N. La Salle St, Chicago, IL 60610 (map)

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

reddit would like to buy you a drink, new york

San Francisco was a success. We hope our homecoming in Boston tomorrow will go smoothly (Steve doesn't have a costume yet - so messages him with suggestions or he'll end up as "man in a hat"). I really ought to announce our upcoming visit to New York.

It's happening this Saturday, November 3rd from 7pm to... umm... well... last call.

The place is Hanger Bar and it's on East 3rd between Ave B and C.

RSVP if you want via MyPunchbowl, facebook, or yelp.

Bonus! We'll have a karaoke system -- not for singing, thankfully -- to do a little Q&A with team reddit. It will happen a couple hours into the drinking for maximum hilarity. If you can't make it to NY, I'm sure you'll find the highlights on YouTube.

Bonus bonus!! We did such a good job with the Valleywag-bait last time, I'm trying for some Gawker-bait. The lovely Julia Allison is not only a reddit fan, she's also been invited.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

reddit would like to buy you a drink, boston

We're coming home for Halloween (keep tabs on the tour via drankkit.com).

Steve and I started reddit in a summer sublet in Medford. Sixteen months later, we weren't living much further away, but right in the center of the incomparable Davis Square. Now we shall return (really, the bar is just a short stagger from our old apartment) and we'd like you all to join us.

We still haven't gotten those ponies, so it looks like Wired is giving us another open bar on exactly the 1 year anniversary of our acquisition.

If you've finished carving your pumpkin and got some time on October 31, the open bar will run from 7pm to 9pm at The Burren. (Need a costume?) Just leave the bowl of candy outside your door with a guilt-tripping note and step out for a few drinks. I know we've given away drinks in Boston before, but this time it's beer!

Grab a nametag when you show up; you'll need one so bartenders know you're there for the reddit event and thus get free booze. It will also allow us to address one another as our usernames and avoid other formalities of normal human interaction.

You don't need to RSVP, but if you're hankering to add your name to the guest list, please use MyPunchbowl (because evite still sucks). We're also on facebook, yelp, and going -- we're that damn Web 2.0.

Think of it as another chance to interact with your fellow redditors in an ultra realistic environment known as real life. Besides, we'd like to meet you (and reunite with the rest of you) and send you all off trick-or-treating with a nice buzz.

Plus, I think I'll have completed my paper mâché reddit alien costume by then...

i didn't put this here, honest

Saturday, October 20, 2007

draw the alien, get 24hrs of quasi-fame



Inspired by a 4-year-old's drawing of the reddit alien, I'd like to let you draw this coming week's reddit logos.

I'd initially said we'd publish the first 5 we got, but then realized it'd only encourage haste and not cool design. So keep the submissions coming, the four of us on team reddit will be choosing the logos for the 22nd to the 26th. We've already gotten some pretty wild submissions.

Oh, and don't hesitate to doodle if you don't think you have the "skillz," the alien is just a bunch of ellipses anyway. Besides, a 4-year-old can do it.

Once you've got these basic requests met, send me your logo:
  • 120x40px .png file
  • the word "reddit" should be visible
  • creature vaguely resembling the reddit alien
  • brief description for me to post along with your personal shout-outs and/or self-promotion (this could be a good way to pimp your startup)
Happy doodling!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

reddit status update, part II

With the rewrite, we were hoping to include an upgraded search, which, unlike the last version, was actually useful and helped you find what you were looking for. Unfortunately, the version we settled on didn't quite load test as nicely as we would have liked (<cough>memory leak</cough>), and has been down for most of the week. A new version should be ready in a few days.

Also, for those of you who are "load comments" anti-fans, we promise we aren't ignoring you. We're working on some upgrades and new layouts for comments that, no doubt, will make some other group of our users completely and unabashedly unhappy.

Thanks for bearing with us for the last week, and, as always, keep the bug reports and constructive criticism coming.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

reddit status update

On Sunday we relaunched with our new code. As we had mentioned previously, there isn't a whole lot that is new to you. We want to get this new code nice and stable before we start adding new features to it.

The transition took much longer than expected, causing reddit.com to be frozen all day Sunday. We apologize for the downtime. We know how to avoid it in the future should something like this ever be necessary again, but hopefully that won't ever be the case.

There are still a ton of outstanding bugs that we're fixing as fast as we can. Stats and search are temporarily disabled, but will be coming back as soon as we can get them repaired.

One area that did receive new attention is the comment system. Many users dislike the "load more comments" links, and would like us to put things back to "they way they were." Let me explain the way it was, and why we changed it:

In the old system, we displayed the first 100 comments regardless of quality (not counting the "collapsed" comments). The comments beyond the first 100 could be view by clicking "next" at the bottom. The issue with this is that often the top thread of conversation pushed most of the other comments beyond the "next" link, where they would often remain unread.

The way the new system works is we show the top 100 comments from the entire thread. This means good comments that used to be displayed behind the "next" link are now in the main listing. The "load more comments" links are effectively mini "next" links. The comments behind them have a lower score than the other 100 comments currently being displayed.

The reason we didn't display more than 100 comments in the past and still don't display more than 100 now is because of bandwidth and rendering time (both ours and yours).

We haven't had much of a chance to really play with the new comment system as users ourselves. Give us some time to fix the outstanding bugs, and we'll keep evaluating the new stuff. Keep in mind, we are reddit users ourselves and want the site to work as well as possible just as you all do.

Friday, October 12, 2007

There are always two, a master and an apprentice.

Last week, Steve and Alexis were in Germany for their long-planned trip to Oktoberfest. That left Chris and I the keys to the castle, and the responsibility of updating the logo. We decided to use this chance to take Steve down a notch.

Here is Steve enjoying some of the fine Bavarian beverages. The reason he is not holding a pint glass is because I can't draw one, and because they use the metric system in Germany:

Chris and I show up to say hi:

At first, we were just going to push Steve out of the way. Then we realized that Chris had a lightsaber in his hand, so he used it. Note the detail of the chunk of reddit logo flying off:

Of course, given that Chris had just beheaded someone, that would make him a Sith. And every good Sith needs an apprentice:

Of course, Alexis could not let this injustice stand:

At this point, my Photoshop skills had been exhausted, and I can't draw, so I sent the files over to Alexis to complete the story. So far, the prospects don't look good for our hero:

How will the story end? I don't know, it's up to Alexis to finish drawing it...

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Don't Tase Me Bro: the deal with new reddit

We didn't launch the new stuff last night owing to some database issues. We'll be working on the problems today, and try to get things switched over ASAP.

PS - There are a handful of people hanging out in #reddit on freenode, if you're into that sort of socializing.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

reddit would like to buy you a drink, san francisco

With the one year anniversary of our acquisition approaching, the good folks at Wired wanted to buy us all ponies.

But we insisted on beer -- an open bar, in fact. And we also wanted all of you to come (except the spammers, Steve may not be strong, but he's pointy, and he will hurt you).

So if you're free next Tuesday, October 16th, and in the SF area, you should stop by Gallery Lounge and let us (read: Wired) buy you a drink (or 10, you've got 2 hours). Open bar will run from 7-9pm, then you can go back to programming with a nice buzz.

Because evite sucks, please RSVP on mypunchbowl (it's not mandatory though, I just like mypunchbowl and really loathe evite).

Think of it as a chance to interact with your fellow redditors in an ultra realistic environment known as real life. Besides, we'd like to meet you. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like our paper mâché reddit alien costume will be done in time.

Nametags will be available, so we can all address one another as our usernames and avoid other formalities of normal human interaction.

Oh, and if you can't make it to SF, we're also heading to the following cities:
Boston
NYC
Detroit (Toronto, too. Hopefully, eh.)
Chicago
LA

More details on these future gatherings to come...

Monday, September 24, 2007

and the survey says...

The results are still coming in from the survey we ran a little while back, but as promised (and as we were reminded yesterday) here are a few more results. In case these aren't enough, you can re-read the results we published earlier.

Please rate on a scale of 1-5 (1 being dead weight and 5 being the office genius), how much smarter are you than to your coworkers/bosses?

 3% - 1 (dead weight)
 3% - 2
30% - 3
41% - 4
24% - 5 (office genius)

This was really exciting for us to learn, as we can now tell advertisers they're marketing to the smartest people on the Internet, since almost a quarter of you are the office genius. Sweet.

And here are a few more...

Male/Female: 86% / 14%
Average age: 29.7
Average household income: $75,700

The rest will be dished out as we get them. Thanks again to all of you who participated. We know how much fun surveys are :-/

Monday, September 17, 2007

now, with rounded corners!

You may have noticed we haven't released anything substantive in a while. Well, so has Conde Nast. In light of this, we made some quick changes that are part of a bigger redesign coming soon.

We rearranged the login area to accommodate a new ad size. We also added a handful of new subreddits that should both target under-represented communities  on reddit, and can be sold by the lovely ad-sales team.

Raldi, I'm going to go ahead and downvote this on your behalf since it isn't an announcement that tags are finally here.

Speaking of which, we're planning on switching to the new reddit this week. We have a handful of small glitches yet, and it could be a touch faster, but we're basically there. I'm sure the transition is going to be messy, but we can't wait to get it behind us... and in front of you.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Vote up if you'd like to work for reddit.

Reddit is hiring again!

We are looking for a new programmer to supplement our team. Most of our work is done in Python, and Unix/Linux skills are a must. Really, we just need a fourth for our post-lunch video games.

An engineering degree is preferred, and experience with databases, web development, and scaling issues are all desirable.

The job is in San Francisco, CA.

Please send your resume to jobs reddit com (this is what we'll be looking at).

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

pics or it didn't happen

As most of you know, Chris (KeyserSosa) Slowe got married this past weekend.

A few of you remain skeptical. To prove that not only did Chris say "I mod up," but that all 4 of us were in fact there, I've been asked to provide a photo.

OK, a photo can't really prove he said "I mod up" (it was a Greek Orthodox ceremony after all, so he could have said anything) but he is on a honeymoon right now with Kristen, so it's safe to say he answered in the affirmative. Anyway, here's the pic.

photo credit: Liz

You'll notice we're even standing in the proper left-to-right order of our alien manifestations in the above logo.

Oh, and before the bride and groom's first dance we did in fact hear the opening of the Star Wars theme. It was pretty fantastic.

As a service to you all who couldn't make it, here's the MIDI to help you experience the wonderful event like we did.

Now just click play, close your eyes, and imagine you're stuffing your face with beer and cake.

reddit downtime

Much to the dismay of my sleep schedule, reddit suffered some downtime this morning.

There were some heat/power issues at the datacenter that caused a number of our machines to die. We'll continue following up with our datacenter to mitigate this type of problem in the future.

Among the servers that we lost was the recommendation server, so we will be without recommendations for a couple of hours while they recompute.

We apologize for the downtime, and hope you all had a productive morning without reddit.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

just married

Congratulations Chris and Kristen!

It seems like just yesterday that we were congratulating Chris on his PhD. Today he's getting married.

(We're just sorry it's not a Star Wars themed wedding.)


All of team reddit is in attendance, so please don't break the site. We wouldn't want to make a big scene ducking out to fetch our laptops.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

it's slow... it's unstable... it's... beta!

We've exposed what's going to be the new version of reddit this morning for you all to play with. We converted about a week's worth of data, and all your accounts.

For the most part, it should appear as though nothing has changed. Don't fret! Since this is built on an entirely new system (front-end and back-end), we wanted to test what we have and are familiar with for a little before tossing in a bunch of new things.

Mostly what we're looking for are performance issues and major bugs ('reddit broke' messages, XSS issues, etc.). We've created a subreddit for bugs where you can submit bugs that you find.

Once things are tested, we'll begin transitioning to the new system and start adding on the new features.

Some things you should know:
  • Search is better, but not quite where we'd like it.
  • Some old features don't exist at the moment: friends, stats, recommendations, sharing, comment pagination. They're not gone for good, we just haven't put them back together yet.
  • Tagging is built-in, though we haven't exposed it through the UI yet.
  • Comments are improved, try them out.


UPDATE: Thank you, raldi, you're a bug-finding machine.

Monday, August 20, 2007

the things you learn...

We've gotten back some of the early results from our survey (that's right, you too can tell us about yourself!)

We thought you'd be interested in seeing these...

Q3. When do you believe Reddit jumped the shark?
  • nyeh, i dont much worry about that.
  • not sure
  • Some time this year.
  • The day Digg started censoring users over the HD DVD key
  • stupid question. Why can't reddit just be evolving into a new paradigm?
  • Has it?
  • Jun-07
  • February 14th, 2007 at 11:14am
  • Uh, leading question? Not sure it has, just yet. I guess the overall quality of posts had declined since early '07.
  • the shark had it coming
  • ?
  • sharks? where? SHARKS??? SHAAAARRRKKKKSSS!!!! (chomp)
  • Lipstick
  • During the Digg AACS key riot, the tenor of the site changed noticably.
  • When it adds a reddit.reddit.com section. Then it will have jumped the shark.
  • wtf does that mean?
  • No real specific time. It's slowly been getting more like digg (with spikes here and there) as the userbase grows without having the ability to section reddit off into groups of similarly interested people. We need the new version!
  • When Digg got caught censoring stories... well, probably a few months prior but that was when it became apparent.
  • When it was purchased by Wired
  • When it became an almost-entirely U.S.-politics-driven site. I'm very interested in politics, but very not-interested in re-re-re-re-re-posted variations of the same uni-dimensional political shrieking...
  • When Digg deleted all those HD-DVD keys
  • When the digg kids surged in.
  • Yesterday.
  • I don't know
  • it hasn't yet
  • When politics, America-sucks, and cops-suck took over the front page
  • I don't understand the question. Now?
  • It hasn't yet.... has it?
  • Never!!
  • when the digg users flooded in
  • what?
  • never
  • don't know what you mean
  • Paul Graham's breakfast.
  • Probably a while ago; i would have to say, unfortunately, as soon as it became popular. Funny how that works...
  • I'm not sure it has. But if I had to pick a time when it was closest, it was when I started getting 20 political articles out of 25 instead of the nice mix of several genres I used to get.
  • Never. Reddit is a great resource.
  • May 2007 -- When Digg users migrated en masse and the front page became extremely politics-centric.
  • It was gradual. For once, I think it's fair to blame Bush: the Impeachment Day (in February, I think) was awful, and reddit never got better.
  • Within the past six months.
  • When they went to the West Coast
  • If the "new" version never comes out, yes otherwise no.
  • the time i sat next to alexis at a dinner and he was a totally self-centered, sarcastic, holier-than-thou, oh-i-am-so-cool asshole.
  • Shark, what shark?
  • I don't think it has jumped the shark, maybe it happened before I joined. I mostly stick to programming.reddit, which for the most part seems to be great.
  • Ron Paul
  • I don't think Reddit has jumped the shark yet. Asking this question is proof of that. I still have faith.
  • There has been no shark jump yet.
  • I don't think it has yet.
  • Almost when there was the Digg fiasco over the magic DRM number, but seems to have recovered.
  • I'm new here. I like post-shark reddit :)
  • i think it never even reached the shark.
  • It never really got up on to its waterskis for me. Just... it never settled in to my routine of reading; I suppose that the crowded design and not-quite-close-enough-to-useful bubble-up meant it wasn't for me.
  • After all the political crap and pictures showed up.
  • Well, you guys are still doing alright, but the quality of the front page really took a dive starting somewhere around November last year I think. Probably can't be helped though. The masses like their lolcats.
  • I don't think it has, really.
  • While I don't know real numbers, would say after it was bought by CondeNasty. Just hold up a Wired from 2000 to one from today an you'll see what I mean. But I still tell people about Reddit everyday.
  • It didnt
  • Did it?
  • Reddit jumped the shark when subreddits moved everything except politics off the front page.
  • What a pointed question! Hard to quantify with a specific time frame, but the main page started sucking since at least a few months ago. Well, noticeably at least. There were always the lingering, repetitious LOLcats and their ilk, but eventually that's ALL that the main page was. So I jumped ship to programming.reddit.com. The whole site hasn't "jumped the shark", just that the main page is rather uninteresting these days (blame it on the Digg users! Haha).
  • Hah. Funny that you just assume that your users are dissatisfied. It was a gradual thing, of course. I remember all these great articles that used to be on the top all-time. Stuff about the Socratic Method, why so many numbers begin with 1, extreme learning, etc. And Paul Graham's essays, although I guess that's mainly because he was writing a lot then. Now it's mainly political stuff, and since I've personally decided that reading about politics is a waste of time, I try to stay off the site. But I get bored a lot.
  • When Ron Paul became the ad hoc candidate of interest
  • What?
  • When DIDN'T it jump the shark? Reddit jumps the shark almost hourly.
  • I believe that reddit started taking a dive a month or two before the buyout announcement. I don't think this was the fault of Reddit, but instead, the influx of new users. The programming subreddit (the only one I read daily), is still fairly decent.
  • when you sold out
  • September 2006, give or take a few months. I still hope it will recover.
  • Last summer.
  • I don't have enough information to say.
  • 4-6 months ago, give or take.
  • Needed the money.
  • I don't think it did.
  • After Digg's HDDVD rebellion
  • When the digg users came.
  • 2005
  • Not yet

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

surveying and hiring

About a year ago, we ran a survey of our users on behalf of Federated Media. They wanted demographic data and we were kinda curious to learn about our users. Our new employers need an updated look at who users are and we're still kinda curious. And we think you might be, too.

We worked with them to keep the survey short and we're going to share the more interesting results with you. If you're interested, here's the survey.

If not, maybe you need a new job.

A little while back, we took applications for a programmer position and got a number of great resumes. Trouble was, we had a clog in the HR process and weren't able to hire anyone. The clog is gone, but we're still looking for a well-rounded Python hacker -- preferably someone proficient in BZFlag.

If you're interested in getting paid to read reddit (and work on it, too) email us
redditjobs gmail.com

Sunday, August 05, 2007

politics reddit

We turned on a reddit for politics today. Since I'm the one typically arguing against a reddit for politics, I feel as though I owe an explanation. But, since I'm the one writing the blog post, you aren't going to get one.

Ha. I'm just kidding.

The demand for a politics reddit has been great, and the political news has been bountiful, so here you go. We hope that a politics reddit will allow our politically inclined users to focus their submissions on a more targeted audience.

In other news...

The new version of reddit is inches away from getting online. We had hoped to get it online last week for you all to test and to play with, but things always seem to be more complicated in practice. We'll keep crunching and get things cruising as soon as we can.

Take it easy, redditors.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

new reddit on the horizon

Hello Users,

We're nearing completion of the next version of reddit. We still have a short list of items to resolve, but it should be pretty much complete this week. Early next week we will begin exposing the new system. Since we basically rewrote all of reddit, we are going to go through a period of testing and allow you all to bang on the new system before we flip the switch.

We're all very excited to get this code pushed out the door. Search works much better, tagging and user-controlled subreddits are right around the corner, and all sorts of other goodies will be coming as well.

Hang in there, and keep doing what you do best.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

who "discovered" xkcd?

Riding the subway with a friend of mine, he asked what the first xkcd post on reddit was. We at reddit like to think our community helped boost those splendid stick figures into geek fame. But I had no idea who submitted the first xkcd comic to reddit. I know, it's discovery in the same way Columbus "discovered" America -- just work with us, please.

When these sorts of questions come up, we can always rely on Chris "Statman" Slowe to divine the answer from our logs. So I emailed him; here's what he found:

http://xkcd.com/10/
Submitted on October 1st, 2005 at 23:56:08.556837 (yep, that's microseconds) EST by spez.

I'm not making this up. Frankly, I'm kinda disappointed.

Monday, July 02, 2007

popup ads

We apologize for the popup ad that has been running on reddit that has been resizing some of your browser windows.

We wouldn't ever run something like that intentionally. Although we've been hearing complaints for about a week now, it wasn't until this morning that I was able to actually see the issue and confirm that it was coming from our ads.

Thank you to all the users who sent me messages and helped track down the issue.

Until we resolve things on our end, I've turned off ads.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

more slices of pie

Since a lot of people asked for a more detailed breakdown of not just who reads reddit, but who makes reddit, I've generated a similar summary by country based around who reads comments and (more importantly) who writes them. Interestingly enough, and as some of you suspected, we do indeed have some crowds more vocal than others.

Shout out to the users from Romania. Keep the posts coming.




























reads
comments
writes
comments
W/R
US 68.68% 66.64% 0.97
Canada 5.86% 8.53% 1.46
UK 3.97% 4.17% 1.05
Germany 3.69% 2.24% 0.61
(none) 1.60% 1.96% 1.23
India 1.53% 0.81% 0.53
Australia 1.31% 1.90% 1.45
Spain 1.29% 0.31% 0.24
Sweden1.07% 0.83% 0.78
Netherlands 0.87% 0.56% 0.65
France0.62% 1.06% 1.70
Japan 0.54% 0.66% 1.21
Norway 0.53% 0.55% 1.04
Finland 0.45% 0.51% 1.12
China 0.41% 0.15% 0.36
Denmark 0.37% 0.26% 0.72
Ireland 0.35% 0.51% 1.43
Korea 0.35% 0.05% 0.15
Brazil 0.33% 0.58% 1.79
Romania0.32% 0.89% 2.82
Belgium 0.31% 0.56% 1.82
Italy 0.29% 0.32% 1.13
Russia 0.26% 0.31% 1.18
Mexico 0.21% 0.26% 1.23
Other 4.45% 4.79% 1.08

tasty international pie

Here's how our traffic breaks down around the world:


United States 57.22%
Canada 6.29%
Great Britain 5.80%
Germany 2.51%
Australia 2.34%
India 2.26%
None (must be pirates, who are known for having no allegiances) 1.56%
France 1.38%
Japan 1.33%
Brazil 0.94%
China 0.91%
Netherlands 0.88%
Turkey 0.81%
Spain 0.80%
Sweden 0.76%
Italy 0.68%
Mexico 0.64%
New Zealand 0.63%
Poland 0.51%
Ireland 0.49%
Norway 0.48%
Switzerland 0.47%
Belgium 0.47%
Russian Fed. 0.41%
Malaysia 0.40%
Finland 0.40%
Romania 0.39%
Indonesia 0.38%
Denmark 0.38%
Israel 0.36%
The Rest 7.12%

Friday, June 08, 2007

a note on search, and what we're working on

I made a quick fix to search that I hope helps until we get a chance to really fix it. The problem is basically that sorting by anything other than query relevance does not work properly. For the time being, I disabled the other sorts, and made the relevance sort work as expected.

As has been the case for much longer than we would have liked, we're working on some pretty fundamental changes to the reddit internals. I don't usually like discussing the specifics of what we're working on, but it's been a while, so here it goes... The major improvements will be: tagging links, user-created subreddits, and user-created types and templates (maybe). As we get closer to deploying the new stuff, we'll have some sort of public beta-testing period to work out glitches.

As always, thanks for making the site what it is, and happy redditing!

Friday, May 11, 2007

from sea to shining sea

If we did our job right, you shouldn't have noticed that we just moved reddit across the country! For the last few weeks, we've been preparing to cut over to our new datacenter in San Francisco, which we just completed this morning. Please let us know if you notice anything weird (as if we'd have to ask...)

We still have a few services to move along (e.g. recommendations), but everything will be back cruising soon.

While in Boston, we rented space from ServerCity. If you're in the area and looking for space, give these guys a holler. Off the top of my head I can think of twenty or so people who should consider it. We were there for over a year, and things would have been much more difficult without their help.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

that's Dr. Slowe to you

Last week our very own Chris Slowe went back to Cambridge to collect his PhD, and returned home Dr. Chris Slowe. Congratulations, Chris!

Thursday, May 03, 2007

hotter hot page

We tweaked the hottness algorithm a little last night to try and churn things up a bit, and it looks as though it's working as intended.

Speaking of churning things up, lots of drama the last couple of days, eh? For the first time in the last almost-two-years, something dramatic happened and reddit users DIDN'T freak out :) Way to keep it classy, you all. It would appear HD-DVD's may be the safe buy now considering even my mother can play them now.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

updates

Here's what's been taking up our time:

  • Jeremy is working on search! It's not a complicated fix (basically, the sorting is whacky).
  • The new backend is basically complete, as well as the new frontend. Nothing serious is changing stylistically, but we're aiming for more freedom do things like the API-like features you all have requested, tagging, and subreddits. It seems like this has taken forever, but some cool new things are on the way.
  • We're moving much of our infrastructure into a new datacenter soon. It's going to be complicated. It shouldn't affect you all much, if at all.
  • We've added numerous anti-cheating/anti-spam fixes.
  • A collaborative-project with wired.com is nearing completion. I'm not sure if I can mention it here yet or not, but it will be public soon enough.


As usual, thanks for being such great users. It's you all that keep us motivated to continue working on this project.

Oh! I believe we get to hire interns this summer. If you're interested in helping out with some quick projects over the summer, shoot an email to redditjobs gmail.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

new arrows

Really. Look closely. They're a bit darker now. Enjoy!

Sunday, April 01, 2007

reddit now doubleplusgood

We got tired of having links appear on the front page that we didn't agree with. Then we got fed up seeing comments about things we didn't want discussed. Fortunately, Wired recently installed these fantastic new "memory holes" for us to use.

Remember, reddit has always been this way. These reductions are just the best way to help you better find the truth.

Friday, March 30, 2007

New reddit buttons.

Howdy everyone. Today is the end of my second week at reddit, and as a gift to the community, I present new and improved reddit buttons! You can use these on your blog, or any other page you want people to submit to reddit and vote on. Of course, your feedback is always welcome.

Enjoy!

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

brace yourself, ads are coming

Part of the reason reddit was acquired was so that eventually it could be used to sell advertising. We wanted to delay ads until we could debut all the new stuff we're working on, but it's taking longer than expected, and the powers-that-be are getting antsy. So, sometime later this week we'll be flipping the switch to turn a few ads on.

We've always held that content is our #1 priority, and that isn't changing. Towards that end, we've specifically asked for ads with no moving parts, and we're not rearranging any content to make room for them.

Plus, I think we found a way to track the ads so we can let you vote/comment on them.

Friday, March 23, 2007

justin.tv visits reddit

Justin.tv is going to stop by and pay us a visit here at reddit HQ at 12pm PST today.

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

welcome, jedberg

The newest addition to the reddit team, he's not only a great guy and quite handy with a puter, but he even let us crash at his place on a number of occasions when we were out west and still startup-cheap. (Letting us sleep in your living room is really good for your karma)

Despite what his corporate title may be, he's reddit's "Information Cowboy". Yee-haw.

Friday, March 16, 2007

reddit dev blog resurrected

There's always something that we're working on, but we haven't -- until recently -- been doing the best job updating you with our development blog. Instead, many of you have had to settle for random entries on my personal blog.

Hopefully this will change that. Steve and Chris are knee-deep in reddit code at the moment, but as updates and bugfixes roll out, you'll start noticing their aliens popping up here with commentary.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

front page broken

We decided to take reddit in a new direction this morning and start censoring stories we don't agree with. Hope you like it.

Back in reality... There was a bug that was breaking stories once they reached #1. It's fixed now just in time to get this link to #1.

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

updates

A few updates:
  • We added report buttons on comments. We're also keep statistics on who reports actual spam items as spam. In the future we'd like to open the whole system up so you all can self-regulate the spam.

  • We're sorry about all the intermittent 500s lately. We had a number of little bugs that all decided to show their heads recently. We also switched from FastCGI to SCGI yesterday, if anyone's curious.

  • Our backend changes are coming along nicely and there should be some cool new features on the way.

  • We fixed a particularly annoying bug that has been affecting comment ordering for quite a while now, unbeknownst to us. Ordering by hottness (the default) should update in realtime again.

  • Reddit and Wired are looking for a designer. Interested applicants should be a CSS/HTML ninja and can send resumes/portfolios to redditjobs at gmail.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

reddit jobs

Has your current job got you crying in the bathroom? No worries, because reddit is hiring!

We're looking for two whiz-bang, jack-of-all-trades programmers.

Here is the official job description:

PROGRAMMER The Programmer assists in developing and maintaining reddit.com and related projects. He/she is instrumental in helping a small, sharp, focused team stay on schedule with ambitious product development and introduction plans. The Programmer writes software code in high-level languages like Python, Perl, Ruby and/or Lisp. Additionally, this person performs system administration and database work from time to time.

The ideal candidate has an engineering degree, 3 or more years experience, and can demonstrate mastery of these skills:

Python - or experience with other high-level languages like Perl, Ruby, or Lisp Unix/Linux (installing/maintaining web, dns, mail services, general system administration) HTML and other web development experience SQL, PostgreSQL or MySQL experience

To apply, please go to www.condenastcareers.com and apply to the Programmer position based in San Francisco.

Please also send your resume to redditjobs gmail com (this is what we'll be looking at).

Monday, January 15, 2007

envelope

I fixed that damn envelope.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

legalese and other

I uploaded a number of bug fixes today. The obvious changes are the links to the science and programming subreddits we added to right-hand side. Those subreddits should also load a bit faster now that they're cached properly.

We have a lot of work ahead of us as we continue to grow. The major milestones include a major overhaul of subreddits and categorization (some sort of tagging, probably). If you would be interested in helping with such work, let us know, we'll be hiring soon. I don't know the actual mechanics of the process yet, but once the lovely HR folks fill me in, we'll put up a post with details.

Also, along with our nifty new servers, the folks at Wired have provided us with some new legal documents -- OK, so maybe it doesn't have the same effect as a snappy load time, but it's an announcement we think is just as important to make.

The lawyers have crafted a privacy policy to meet with our previous -- albeit brief -- one. The general idea is (this is the old policy):

We will only use email addresses for password retrieval and will never give out your email address or the email addresses of your contacts without your prior approval.

Any data we collect will never be used to identify you.

Since we only ask for a username and password (which are hashed now, much to spammers' delight), the only other piece of information you may input is an email address, which has always been and will continue to be only for password retrieval.

There's also a user agreement with pretty standard language. Please take a look at both of these and stay tuned for some new site improvements that aren't in legalese.

edit: Oh, and if you've got a WordPress blog and have been looking to add your own reddit button, Christian Inzinger has built a plugin for Wordpress.