
How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet - gatsby
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/christine-lagorio/alexis-ohanian-reddit-how-i-did-it.html
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peterwwillis
What the front page of the internet looks like today:

    
    
      * Image with overlayed snarky text
      * Another image
      * Another image...
      * The Daily Show clip
      * Another image
      * Another image
      * News article about Julian Assange
      * Another image
      * News article about guy doing something strange (which is actually really old)
      * Reddit question thread about Tarantino films
      * Youtube clip
      * "Ask Me Anything" request thread
      * Story on mobile technology
      * Reddit question thread about 'fan theories'
      * Article about astronomy
      * Youtube clip
      * Reddit 'arbitrary gift day' thread
      * Another image
      * Another image
      * Another image
      * Another image
      * Story about finding genetic defects
      * News article about political race
      * Another image
      * Another image
    

Personally, I think there's something wrong with you if you don't find that
list at least a little depressing.

~~~
tylermenezes
You can log in and customize it. The default set of subreddits is bound to be
low-quality.

~~~
kn0thing
I cannot upvote this enough. Thanks.

edit, with bonus explanation! We need to do a better job helping new(and old)
redditors realize the thousands of communities they could be joining for a
diverse blend of content that interests them. When Steve and I started reddit,
we had no categories because it was simple -- and Steve loves simple. Now that
we've got scores of vibrant communities discussing links about things ranging
from cute animal photos (/r/aww) to philosophy (/r/philosophy) and many things
in between, it's up to us to build a more intuitive UX that guides users to
them and helps them assemble a personalized front page.

~~~
moultano
Communities are a great start, but I feel like reddit is missing out on
central observations about how things get upvoted: Things that you can upvote
quickly get upvoted more.

Suppose there are two links of equal quality. (Whatever that means.) One is a
photograph that I can digest in 10 seconds of wow. One is an article that I
can read in half an hour of wow.

The photograph I upvote immediately because I'm done and move on. The article
I read for half an hour, return to my redditing shell shocked and amazed, and
upvote.

Now if something has to get a high volume of upvotes quickly to make it to the
front page and linger, you're going to see a lot of quick content, and not a
lot of slow content, because the click upvote cycle is just faster.

This feels like a social problem, but it's actual a technical problem. Long
stuff gets upvotes slower than short stuff, and nothing in the system accounts
for that. The social problem emerges from the technical problem.

~~~
mehrzad
Actually high effort posts don't get upvotes because most redditors don't give
a shit.

------
Adaptive
We are doomed to reinvent Usenet until we finally break the cycle and improve
upon it.

This has all happened before and will happen again.

~~~
shiftpgdn
If you're talking about eternal September and the decline of quality you might
want to look at forums with heavy handed moderation or a paying userbase. For
example the Something Awful forums have a pretty good signal to noise raito.

~~~
skeletonjelly
Metafilter et al

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dinkle
As I understood it, it was Steve who built Reddit and Alexis is the guy who
did everything else (like draw the logo or act as community manager in the
early days).

I remember Alexis giving a talk on exactly this, he emphasized the importance
of letting the engineers worry about building things and not all the trivial
things that might get in the way of the goal.

I'm not down playing his role or achievement but we shouldn't forget Steve
just because he has a smaller public profile.

~~~
freehunter
Yeah, he gave a humorous, somewhat tongue-in-cheek speech to aspiring founders
(the speech was pretty controversial on Reddit, for obvious reasons).
Paraphrasing what he said since I can't remember the exact words, he basically
told them to come up with an idea, get it funded, hire some rent-a-coders, and
relax on the beach with your profits. His expressed, slightly sarcastic view
of founding a web startup was to do what you do as the architect and let the
construction crew do what they do.

He actually made many good points, if you can sift through what his many jabs
at the programmer types.

~~~
kn0thing
That was a 100% satirical talk.

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adrianwaj
But has he made it to Bilderberg?

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ssx
This may be blasphemy at HN, but I see so many similarities between digg and
reddit. From the power of their service to the complete adoration to their
founders.

Doesn't this fawning over Ohanian remind you of Kevin Rose?

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bashour
nice article

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batista
_> "I want to stay hungry," says Alexis Ohanian. "I really believe my
resources are best used to help projects that make the world suck less."_

I hate this kind of over-indulgence.

What "resources"? He built a social news website and had a strike of luck.
It's not like the guy is an Einstein or a Tesla. Or that Reddit is something
bettering society. It's a glorified internet forum.

Imagine how stupid things like this would sound in other industries:

"I really believe my resources are best used to help projects that make the
world suck less" says multi-millionaire inventor of the Post-it / Jelly+Peanut
butter combo / facial hair remover...

~~~
danilocampos
For the longest time, I thought stupidity was the gravest sin. Then I
discovered these Hacker News commenters and realized that middling but self-
important minds are far more vexing than dumb ones.

~~~
RegEx
Snark on HN gets upvoted faster than puns on Reddit.

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mvid
Alexis Ohanian built AOL?

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Aftershock21
Wow my comment got deleted! Didn't know HN has censorship board.

