reddit blog

15 March 2007

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.

last updated 2 years ago #

6 March 2007

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.

last updated 2 years ago #

24 January

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).

last updated 2 years ago #

I fixed that damn envelope.

last updated 2 years ago #

11 January

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.

last updated 2 years ago #

Again, we're sorry about yesterday's outage -- the DNS troubles were entirely our fault.

On a separate note, we want to make you aware that media of ours that contained a backup of a portion of the reddit database was stolen recently. Although the media did not contain any personally identifiable information about our users and we have no reason to believe that reddit data was the target of the theft, we wanted to alert you to the possibility that your username, password, and -- in some cases -- e-mail address may have been compromised. If you use the user name and/or password for other purposes, we suggest that you change them in those other uses as soon as possible -- just in case.

We take your privacy very seriously, and deeply regret any inconvenience this unfortunate incident may cause. We do feel confident, however, that because we do not collect any personal information from our users, the ability to do harm with the data that was taken is greatly reduced. Nonetheless, we decided to inform you right away so that any necessary precautionary measures can be taken.

last updated 2 years ago #

Last night we had a bit of a fiasco transferring the domain for reddit.com. We're one day of propagation delays away from being back on track. Although, to be honest, the spamish landing page was beginning to grow on me.

Accountability is paramount here at reddit hq, but we're not going to play the blame game. Besides, it's clear that the alien was wholly responsible for this blunder.

As a result, we're pleased to announce that the alien is being promoted to senior mascot.

last updated 2 years ago #

5 December

We've spent the last few weeks transitioning and taking some time off with our loved ones over the holiday. But we're 100% back now.

Our first duty as Wired employees was to get reddit running on some smoking new servers. We had a brief outage last Friday (and we all thought Steve was perfect...), but hopefully you've noticed things have gotten a bit snappier.

These new servers are quick, but weren't setup for mail yet, so we missed a few days worth of feedback email. If yours wasn't replied to, we're sorry, and if you'll please take the time to rewrite your feedback, we'll be sure to respond promptly.

The alien is back, too, with a bit of a sunburn. If you've got an idea/theme/concept/suggestion for a custom logo, please send it. As you could probably tell, I'm starting to run out of ideas... (although some might argue that I ran out a few months ago)

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31 October

This morning, CondeNet acquired reddit. (Whoever submits this first is due for some major karma!) Needless to say, we're pretty excited.

We started reddit to solve a problem: There was tons of stuff on the Web; we wanted a front page to help us find the best of it.

Y Combinator took a chance on us and although we may have programmed reddit, we're not kidding ourselves: you all have made it everything that it is. A number of you even stuck with us after we switched away from Lisp.

As reddit grew, we were never quite sure where it would take us. To keep up with reddit's growth, we'd need to decide between taking more investment or getting acquired. As much as we enjoyed VCs taking us out to lunch, CondeNet's pitch was a little more enticing (they had better food).

We're still going to be the guys reading your feedback emails and keeping reddit chugging along. We've also been given about as much autonomy as an acquired company could get. In fact, they've insisted that we focus on growing reddit. With their resources, we're looking to do some neat things in the coming months.

The alien is also quite pleased.

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8 September

Ironically, the first newspaper article written about reddit (a Boston-based startup) was in a British newspaper -- The Guardian. It was good to see that they'd gotten over the time we dumped that tea into the harbor harbour.

Here we are nine months later and they've outdone themselves by putting reddit "like" and "dislike" buttons on their op-ed blog, CommentIsFree. It turned out they were one step ahead of us Yanks (and possibly sneaking glances at our todo list) because we hadn't quite built the functionality for them to work properly.

Encouraged, Steve sat down and built the buttons, which are now available for your websites. Then, Ajay went and made a sweet Wordpress plugin for it. Thanks, Ajay!

Now if only we could apply the reddit voting and ranking system to Speakers' Corner...

last updated 3 years ago #

19 August

We've been meaning to publish these browser stats for a while. Chris slogged through our logs and here's what he found:

43.90 | firefox
26.76 | msie
4.56  | googlebot
4.22  | safari
2.58  | opera
1.96  | msnbot
1.73  | python-urllib
1.68  | gecko
0.96  | slurp (Yahoo scraper)
0.88  | java
0.86  | camino
0.62  | teoma (ask Jeeves Scraper)
0.56  | gigabot
0.53  | thunderbird
0.38  | bloglines
0.36  | applesyndication
0.34  | netnewswire
0.31  | nutchcvs
0.28  | liferea
0.23  | akregator
0.22  | wordpress 
0.21  | snapbot
0.20  | netscape
0.18  | google desktop
0.16  | magpierss
0.15  | sharpreader
0.15  | irlbot
0.13  | baiduspider+(+http:
0.12  | edi
0.12  | gomezagent 1.0
0.11  | sage
0.11  | newsfire
0.11  | feedreader 3.05 (powered by newsbrain)
0.11  | universalfeedparser
0.10  | feeddemon
0.10  | feedfetcher-google:
0.09  | rssowl
0.08  | greatnews
0.08  | technoratibot
0.08  | newsgatoronline
0.07  | rss popper
0.06  | netvibes (http:
0.06  | ilse-cleaning-lady
0.05  | avantgo 6.0; freebsd
0.05  | set user agent
0.05  | uri::fetch
0.05  | user-agent: mozilla
0.04  | site research indexer 0.75 alpha
0.04  | rss2email
0.04  | rssbandit
0.04  | fast metaweb crawler (helpdesk at fastsearch dot com)
0.04  | apachebench
0.04  | protopage
0.04  | ilse-patgen
0.04  | ia_archiver
0.04  | msnbot-products
0.03  | pageflakes
0.03  | windows-rss-platform
0.03  | jetbrains omea reader 2.1.4 (http:
0.03  | feedonfeeds
0.03  | rssreader
0.03  | (psp (playstation portable); 2.00)
0.03  | mj12bot
0.03  | cfnetwork
0.02  | feeds.reddit
0.02  | (compatible; httrack 3.0x; windows 98)
0.02  | bilgibetabot
0.02  | lynx
0.02  | shrook
0.02  | blogbridge 2.13 (http:
0.02  | unsupported
0.02  | newzpile
0.02  | live.com feed manager
0.02  | yahoofeedseeker
0.02  | libwww-perl
0.02  | http_client
0.02  | lwp::simple
0.02  | wizz rss news reader
0.02  | microsoft data access internet publishing provider protocol discovery
0.02  | vienna
0.02  | feedpath
0.02  | carp
0.02  | beijingcrawler
0.02  | alestifeedbot
0.02  | wget
0.02  | attensaonline
0.01  | newzcrawler
0.01  | feedtools
0.01  | jakarta commons-httpclient
0.01  | jyxobot
0.01  | feedreader
0.01  | lwp-trivial
0.01  | outfoxbot
0.01  | fotki - links fetcher libwww-perl
0.01  | feedtree.proxy
0.01  | reblog 2.0
0.01  | gregarius
0.01  | sunrise
0.01  | simplepie
0.01  | mt-rssfeed
0.01  | windows rss platform
0.01  | blogbeat ( www.blogbeat.net)
0.01  | drupal (+http:
0.01  | jetbrains omea reader 2.1.6 (http:
0.01  | feedreader 3.02 (powered by newsbrain)
0.01  | sunrise xp
0.01  | intravnews
0.01  | jetbrains omea reader 2.0 (http:
0.01  | (compatible; lylina ; freebsd)
0.01  | parss server maintained by interface@p3k.org
0.01  | depspid - the dependency spider
0.01  | kickrss
0.01  | nokia6820
0.01  | krugle
0.01  | cococ
0.01  | desktop sidebar v1.05.114.0
0.01  | poco rss spider
0.01  | feedreader 3.04 (powered by newsbrain)
0.01  | (compatible; avantgo 3.2)
0.01  | newsalloy
0.01  | freshreader
0.01  | newsgator
0.01  | (windows nt 5.1; u; en) opera 9.01
0.01  | (compatible; najdi.si/3.1)
0.01  | popfeed.com - feed updater (http:
0.01  | planet.mindstab.net +http:
0.01  | findlinks
0.01  | onfolio    0.01  | speedyfeed
0.01  | feedlounge (http:
0.01  | the rss collection of tim bertram +http:
0.01  | rssbar
0.01  | myearthlinkreadertest
0.01  | plantynet_webrobot_v1.9 yangsam@plantynet.com
0.01  | microsoft url control - 6.00.8862
0.01  | slashdock
0.01  | yandexblog
0.01  | plagger
0.01  | feedburner
0.01  | yandexsomething
0.01  | pluck soap client
0.01  | zhuaxia.com 1 subscribers
0.01  | ieautodiscovery
0.01  | larbin_2.6.3 larbin2.6.3@unspecified.mail
0.01  | (danger hiptop 2.0; u; avantgo 3.2)
0.01  | knewsticker v0.2

edit: Here's your reward for scrolling all the way down. OS stats:

75.46 | windows 2000/Xp
 9.67 | linux
 8.48 | ppc mac os x
 3.29 | intel mac os x
 1.04 | windows 98
 0.28 | freebsd
 0.08 | windows 95

(some of you might be quick to point out that these %s don't add up to 100% -- you've likely just miscounted)

last updated 3 years ago #

4 August 2006

When I met Steve shortly after we moved into our first year dorm at UVA, he was playing a game of Gran Turismo on his PS2. It was going to be a good year.

We've often debated the merits of Goldeneye 007 vs. Perfect Dark -- both fantastic FPSers on the N64, both from Rare, both long before frat guys were hyping the already overrated Xbox title, Halo.

Goldeneye multiplayer had some nifty post-match awards that we found ourselves squabbling over constantly. They seemed like a good idea for reddit, so we thought we'd give it a go. No Klobb required.

Chris put together the queries and Steve's fitting them into place. We'll be adding some more tweaks to this soon, along with some better documentation. Let us know what you think.

Watch out ousama, now everyone has a chance at some reddit fame ;-)

last updated 3 years ago #

26 July 2006

Since our very first days, recommendations have been a huge part of reddit. I still remember writing the first recommendation system that we launched while sitting on the couch with Steve. And even before that, Steve had experimented with other forms of filtering and recommending.

Thanks to Chris, the system I worked on has since been replaced several times over and I'm pleased to announce our newest system is live today. One major improvement is that it's faster than ever before -- it's practically live. Head to your recommended page and vote on something and the recommender should whisk it away and give you a new recommendation within seconds.

The technology we're trying out is new and unproven -- and we appreciate you bearing with us and helping us out as we've tried to get it tuned over the past couple of days. And, of course, we continue to want to hear your thoughts about how it's doing. But the most important contribution you can make is simply to vote on stories on your recommended page and teach reddit what you like.

We continue to work on new and smarter recommendation algorithms. Lately I've been working on smarter ways to find stories on blogs that might interest you. I've posted some of my early results but there's still plenty more work to be done. Thanks for sticking with us.

-- Aaron

last updated 3 years ago #

25 July 2006

We're pleased to announce that we're working with Slate to give its readers a new way to find and discuss its best content. We've recently turned on Slate.reddit as the first step in bringing the reddit format to Slate readers (integration with the Slate website is on the way).

Slate articles have always tended to do fairly well on reddit, so we thought we'd give you a first look.

It's populated via RSS, so there's no submission necessary, just vote and comment away.

last updated 3 years ago #

25 July 2006

We updated the search system this morning to help alleviate some load problems we've been experiencing. In addition to search being much more snappy, you may also use a url tag so search within urls. For example, the search phrase "reddit AND url:pcworld" will find links with reddit in the title and pcworld in the domain.

Please bear with us as we grow, speed is always a priority and we'll continue to do our best to keep things cruising.

last updated 3 years ago #

13 July 2006

Aaron slapped together a nifty widget if you'd like a little slice of reddit on your own website, it'll display top headlines in a variety of ways.

Most of you probably noticed the color we added to the number of a link that had hit #1 on the front page. This was a neat little feature request because the rising and falling action of the reddit hot page makes this possible.

Some of you may attest to having seen an * to indicate these #1 links, but after some good feedback, we swapped these out in favor of something less obtrusive.

Clicking on an illuminated number will send you to a listing of toplinks.

Lastly, after quite a few requests, we have black reddit shirts. Just in time for the summer heat!

Fortunately, if you're like us, the most light you get exposed to comes from a monitor.

edit: Thanks for reminding me, austinb. You all asked for it, so we started collapsing comments once they sank below your default threshold (-4, but you can change it in your preferences). This should help clean up the comment threads.

last updated 3 years ago #

28 June 2006

This past Saturday, June 24th, marked the one year anniversary of reddit.

Frankly, we're a little surprised to still be here, let alone doing this well. But we're very grateful.

Like so much over this past year, the timing couldn't have been better. It seems like everywhere we read about a competitor, someone is speaking up for the site run by three guys without VC funding from an apartment three thousand miles from the Valley. Chris, you don't count as a full person until you either quit grad school or get your PhD.

Reddit's fantastic growth hasn't come from a PR firm or from advertising (not counting paulgraham.com) -- you the users have spreddit (sorry, I couldn't help myself) across the globe (really, our FM survey data shows that roughly 50% of you are not living in the USA, very cool).

Basically, this seemed like a good excuse to thank you all. Let's face it, no one would visit this site if it weren't for the community. We brag about you... well, maybe not all of you ;-) but most of you. Furthermore, you tell us when we've screwed up, how we can improve reddit, and even when we've occasionally done something right. We know how lucky we are to be doing this, so we're trying to deserve it.

This also seemed like a good time to display the original version of our alien mascot (check today's reddit logo). There were a few more incarnations that I'm grudgingly going to show over the next couple of days. I know they're a bit rough, but just so you know, I can hear you laughing.

Anyway, thanks.

We're far from done, so hopefully we'll get to thank you again in another year.

last updated 3 years ago #

25 June 2006

It's been a while since we've used the blog; we've been corresponding with you all largely through comments, messages, and emails lately. Tonight we added a first version of a friends system. It's fairly basic at the moment, but we've got a number of features in mind. Presently, if you add someone as your friend their name will be highlighted in various listings to make their submissions easy to spot. Also, if you head over to friends.reddit.com you'll see a reddit comprised of only submissions from your friends.

In other news, we've been very busy lately keeping up with growth. The volume of spam has increased dramatically lately. Thank you to everyone who reports spam links; it's very helpful. We have a couple tricks up our sleeve that we'll deploy soon to help combat this problem. As always, we prefer solutions that affect our well-behaved users as little as possible.

Keep the feedback coming and enjoy the site!

last updated 3 years ago #

30 May 2006

We made an addition to the "report" tab for each link tonight. In addition to reporting a link as spam, and the submitter as a spammer, you may now report the domain as a spam domain in general.

last updated 3 years ago #

24 May 2006

You know that feeling you get in the bottom of your stomach once you've read everything there is to read on reddit? No? Yeah, me neither.

Um, anyway, I've been wishing there was a place with the clean, easy interface of reddit that let me subscribe to read the latest updates on my favorite websites. So I went and built it. Introducing feeds.reddit.com.

For more details, take a look at what I wrote about it on my blog.

last updated 3 years ago #

16 May 2006

We've been working on the recommendation engine lately, and Chris turned up an interesting observation. The most popular words in reddit titles:

word	appearances
new	2564
googl	2173
web	1395
video	1371
get	1218
blog	1187
news	1159
world	1143
use	1130
time	1095
free	1030
make	1028
bush	945
us	900
game	846
microsoft	806
year	767
softwar	765
onlin	732
internet	699

last updated 3 years ago #

12 May 2006

In response to the discussion over the top story on reddit's front-page at the moment, we've made the hot page no longer count down votes. Down-votes still influence your recommendations, which, by the way, are in for a major overhaul soon, but the hotness algorithm is only going to pay attention to the up votes for the time being.

In addition, where the score used to be displayed as "points," it's now displayed as "ups." There are a few glitches still (when you vote it says "points" still, for instance), but this is a potentially temporary change.

One change that we should see immediately is that the stories that are currently controversial, but formerly had a score near 0, are now bubbling up on the hot page.

We're not sure the exact ramifications of this change, but we're going to give it a couple days to see how it works.

last updated 3 years ago #

9 May 2006

We added a new feature today to notify you when one of your comments has been replied to. You should receive a message in your inbox stating that there is a new reply to one of your comments.

There will be a 'context' link below the message to take you to the comment thread.

Enjoy!

last updated 3 years ago #

6 May 2006

You've likely already noticed the addition of the mail icon beside your username now. Private messaging has been requested quite a bit lately and after hearing it suggested by a number of the redditors we spoke with at Startup School, we knew we had push it to the top of the todo list -- let us know what you think.

We also snuck in a new sort option, comments, a little while back, so if you're looking for some hearty discussion, this'll show you where all the chatter is.

last updated 3 years ago #

20 April 2006

We didn't expect the great response from the last shirt sale, but we've since ordered a slew of new shirts. By request, we also picked up some 2XLs and Women's T's (we were excited to learn that women apparently like reddit, too). Our printer decided that the shirts would be better off with a transparent alien in this new batch, so only the Larges still have the original alien in white. Now, back to geek stuff...

last updated 3 years ago #