Today reddit, a division of Condé Nast, becomes reddit Inc.
This change is all about setting up reddit so that it can better handle future growth and opportunities. When reddit was acquired in October 2006 by Condé Nast, it was receiving about 700k page views per day. Now, reddit routinely gets that much traffic in 15 minutes. This explosion in traffic created technical, cultural, and organizational growing pains. reddit now has the kind of resources it needs to continue improving and supporting the community's experience far into the future.
reddit Inc. is now owned by Advance Publications (which also owns Condé Nast), so even though the organizational shift is important, reddit is not really going anywhere. reddit Inc. will report to a Board and therefore have much more operational freedom than when we were a division of Condé Nast. Details are still being finalized, but reddit co-founder Alexis (kn0thing) Ohanian (read his thoughts here) will serve on that board, along with Bob Sauerberg (President) and Joe Simon (Chief Technology Officer) from Condé Nast, and Andrew Siegel (Senior Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development) from Advance. Other internal or external directors may be added in the future.
As part of the new structure, reddit Inc. has also started the search for a CEO who can help us reach our full, unbridled potential. Make no mistake, reddit owes its past, present, and future success to the community. We wouldn't seriously consider any individuals for the CEO position unless they understood the community and were passionate about serving its needs.
We also now have the latitude to address some global issues. The reddit team, our Board, our informal advisors, and many in the reddit community sincerely believe that reddit has the potential, over the next generation, to positively impact journalism, civic engagement, fundraising, product development, and learning. We have to solve countless pragmatic issues en route, but we are devoting our time and energy to this community, because we believe that reddit has a shot to make a big, orangered mark on the future.
We love reddit, and any change to something you love can be scary, but we believe this is a sound and exciting change. reddit is on solid footing to help explore the unknown world in front of us. As always, ask us anything.
