Reddit was founded in 2005 by two university students, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, as a news aggregation website. Initially called "Snew," the name was later changed to Reddit, a portmanteau of "read it." The site gained popularity after its competitor, Digg, released a highly criticized redesign in 2010, leading to a mass migration of users to Reddit. Over the years, Reddit has become known for its community-driven content, memes, and quirky culture.
Some notable examples of Reddit's community-driven efforts include:
* A user helping another user identify the cause of their memory loss, which turned out to be carbon monoxide poisoning.
* A community coming together to recover a lost film, Cry Baby Lane, which had been thought to be extinct.
* The Dogecoin community sponsoring the Jamaican bobsled team and a NASCAR car.
The summary also touches on the site's algorithms and how they affect user engagement, including the fact that the timing of a comment is more important than its content, and that early comments have a higher chance of reaching the top. Additionally, the summary mentions the existence of mysterious subreddits, such as A858 and F04C, which were used to post cryptic messages and puzzles for users to solve.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. In April 2005, two American university students, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman, had an idea for a mobile food ordering service called My Mobile Menu.
2. The service would allow users to order food on their phones and bypass the need for queues.
3. However, the idea was too far ahead of its time, and the duo eventually abandoned the mobile market in favor of a news aggregation website.
4. The website was initially called Snew, a portmanteau of "what's new", but the domain name had already been taken.
5. Other potential names included Oobaloo, 360Scope, HotSnoo, RipeFresh, DoseDose, and numerous others.
6. Reddit was suggested by Ohanian, and the name is a portmanteau of "read it".
7. The term Snew was later repurposed as the name for the mascot of the company, except with an alternate spelling.
8. Reddit made its debut on June 23, 2005, with a misuse of whitespace.
9. The first post, submitted by Ohanian, was titled "The Downing Street Memo" and remains online to this day.
10. Over the following months, Ohanian and Huffman created numerous fake accounts to populate the website with interesting links.
11. A commenting system was not implemented until December 2005.
12. Reddit was in fierce competition with another website called Digg, which was launched a few months before Reddit.
13. Digg was far more popular than Reddit until August 2010, when Digg launched a highly controversial redesign.
14. The redesign removed or stifled many popular features, disproportionately favored advertisers, and alienated its core user base.
15. Users protested the redesign by flooding the front page with links to Reddit, triggering a mass migration.
16. Thousands of Digg users became Reddit users overnight, and they never looked back.
17. Daily visitors to Digg fell by 26% in less than a month, and searches for Reddit quickly surpassed those for Digg.
18. Reddit's user base skyrocketed, and the website became a dominant force in the space.
19. In 2013, a study found that 52% of submissions that reached the front page were reposts within a 17-day period.
20. The study also found that reposts were more likely to reach the front page than original submissions.
21. Reddit users can create their own subreddits, which were introduced in March 2008.
22. The website has undergone significant changes over the years, including the addition of a commenting system and the ability to create subreddits.
23. Reddit was initially thought to be a made-up word, but it is actually a Latin word that means "to return" or "to restore".
24. The website has been the subject of numerous memes and jokes, including the "Reddit switch-a-roo".
25. Reddit users have been involved in various charity efforts, including raising money for the Jamaican bobsled team to compete in the 2014 Winter Olympics.
26. The website has also been used to locate lost or obscure media, such as the 2000 made-for-TV horror film Cry Baby Lane.
27. Reddit users have decoded mysterious codes and ciphers, including those posted by users A858 and F04C.
28. The website has been the subject of academic studies, including one that found that 77% of top-voted comments are among the first 10 top-level comments to be posted on a submission.
29. The study also found that what you say is not nearly as important as when you say it, and that early-birds have an advantage in reaching the top of the comments section.
30. Over 70% of submissions with more than 1,000 comments include at least one comment about Hitler or Nazis.