
Reddit Presents: Upvoted - jsnathan
http://upvoted.com
======
staunch
I sold upvoted.com to Alexis Ohanian earlier this year. I'm glad it's not just
a redirect anymore!

I wanted to do something cool with it but never did. Then one day I got an
email from an assistant of Alexis Ohanian's asking to sell it cheap for his
little school project :P

I knew he was just trying to avoid being gouged, so I offered to sell it to
Alexis for his initial asking price, if he'd give me a meeting and some
feedback on my startup. He agreed and we had a good meeting. He gave my co-
founder and I some genuinely usable advice, and technically funded our
bootstrapped startup ([https://portal.cloud](https://portal.cloud)) for a few
weeks there.

~~~
alexis
Thanks again! Let's have another date. Email me!

edit: Update: It's happening!!!!!! Thanks, HN.

~~~
ForFreedom
@alexis Why on a wordpress VIP?

[http://ajean.net/reddits-news-website-upvoted-com/](http://ajean.net/reddits-
news-website-upvoted-com/)

~~~
on_
Wordpress is an extremely new framework, so it will be new to a lot of
developers, but it provides an extremely performant developer friendly
product. One drawback is that it is highly specialized, so it only had a few
applications but luckily upvoted fits into this niche. Hosting is really still
a problem as their is a lack of providers and a steep complexity curve. No one
has really provided a flexible way to host a platform like wordpress and
coupled with the lack of maturity and bleeding edge nature it makes sense that
they went with a managed hosting service. Even as new as the organization is,
they have a great array of security products and plugins which will certainly
shield it from the less scrupulous users. This is going to likely be the first
major company using wordpress, but I bet it could be a platform that will
underpin a large percentage of websites.

~~~
falcolas
> Wordpress is an extremely new framework

Unless we're thinking of two very different blogging platforms, Wordpress is
pretty much exactly the opposite of "extremely new". Can you please elaborate
on why you consider it to be extremely new and unfamiliar to a lot of
developers?

> steep complexity curve

Brought on by the basic insecurity of the Wordpress blogging platform.
Executable PHP in the Database, as a single example...

> No one has really provided a flexible way to host a platform like wordpress

Sorry? Wordpress hosts have been around for years, again, I'm really not
understanding what you're trying to convey here.

> This is going to likely be the first major company using wordpress

You mean, aside from just about everybody; Wired coming to mind as a recent,
big example.

I feel like I'm really missing some context here.

EDIT: Satire. Got it. Of course, then there's the question of whether the +1
response by heathwblack is also satire, or... :D

~~~
on_
Yeah, I am sorry. I hardly ever make comments like this and it is doubly
dubious because I lost my account recently, but this was meant to be satire.
When the PM responded, I couldn't help myself but double down.

My account is new so it does look like a straight troll account but I was just
having a bit of fun. TBH, as I stated in another comment ITT, wordpress
provides a really easy way to test out this concept. I expanded my thoughts on
the concept in that comment, but as to wordpress:

I bet reddit is just getting crushed with improvements and the engineering
team is overworked. It is really easy and inexpensive to test this concept out
without losing developer bandwith. wordpress provides a pretty good CMS
(obviously bloated, [standard other wordpress criticsims], etc.) but they can
get a tight feedback cycle on this idea and it could successful, but if not,
will not be resource intensive.

I generally wish them the best of luck, they need something to work at a
monetization level, and I hope this helps as it likely is not the long term
solution.

I had a rough first experience with wordpress for a client recently and I just
had to vent.

~~~
falcolas
OK. I appreciate the response; I've had my own issues and thus jumped to a
totally WTF response. Looking upon it as satire makes much more sense. :)

------
minimaxir
There was a recent allegation that the Reddit administration had encouraged
vote brigading with Tom Hanks' comments:
[http://i.imgur.com/Obafhpc.png](http://i.imgur.com/Obafhpc.png)

From the looks of the Upvoted front page, looks like they're doing it as a
content marketing strategy, which doesn't bode well. Also, it seems like a
BuzzFeed clone, which Redditors _despise_.

(Disclosure: although I have done a LOT of work analyzing Reddit
[[http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-
bigquery/](http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-bigquery/)], I have not been
approached to write anything for Upvoted)

~~~
timdorr
> Also, it seems like a BuzzFeed clone, which Redditors despise.

Primarily because Buzzfeed just copy-pastes content from Reddit with minimal
credit. Upvoted at least looks to be providing genuinely improved-upon content
with strong attribution linkage. To me, it gets rid of a lot of the scuzzy-
ness associated with Buzzfeed, so I'm all for it.

~~~
lobster_johnson
It tastes pretty bland and artificial to me. For example, this [1] post is
fluffy in the most aesthetically offensive, buzzfeedy way:

* It doesn't link back to Reddit

* There's no context

* It's glib, impersonal and bland

* It has an unnecessary illustration

* It adds nothing to the original content

Contrast this with what I presume is a comment from Tom Hanks about what his
perfect sandwich is. _That 's_ meaningful.

[1] [http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/perfect-sandwich-tom-hanks-
red...](http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/perfect-sandwich-tom-hanks-reddit/)

~~~
meowface
Agreed. This is an 8-word tumblr post stretched out to be an entire "article"
of content.

I honestly see no value added with any of the articles I looked at. Every
single one could be replaced with links to reddit comments, maybe with some
quotes of the reddit comments, and the images down at the bottom.

It's a little less sensationalist than Buzzfeed, and I'd rather look at this
than Buzzfeed, but I really don't want to use either of them.

------
on_
I have been pretty critical of reddit lately, but there was a time when I
really enjoyed using it and it does provide a ton of value to many people. It
is a great website in a very difficult situation due to the community culture
( _very_ anti-corporate/advertising mentality), diversity of users and content
ownership issues. On a real level, the site is pretty awesome. I want to see
them succeed because sub-communities and even the organization have stood for
an opened internet and positive things.

I think upvoted looks really sleek and I hope it is successful, but they
really need a way to monetize and it is a really hard problem to solve.
Obviously, using a widely supported mature CMS like wordpress makes it easy to
produce content with minimal effort and cost but that has been reddit users
largest gripe. Upvoted is a curator/aggregator built on top of a
curator/aggregator, which is weird. Reddit's success and problems stem from
providing the long tail of content, allowing diverse topics and communities to
be covered while allowing globally popular things to float to the top. This
means that there is rarely community consensus, so while upvoted has little
risk as it is cheap to make, I can't see it providing much financial support
for the company.

In all honesty though, I wish them the best of luck and hope to see them do
cool and intersting things in the future. Obviously, improving the search
would be a great start because Google is an awesome search engine, but for
content discovery and curation, Reddit is doing a great job. Best of luck guys
and sorry about the sarcastic comments about Wordpress and PHP, it really is a
good way to quickly test out something like upvoted without significant dev
reources and is a good content management system, edit: [if used correctly]

~~~
cheepin
I think the Reddit execs see other aggregators just ripping off things that
were popular on Reddit[0] and thinking that they are missing out on a
potential revenue source.

Their user base seems to really dislike this move[1], but it seems to be more
of an expansion to get users that don't normally use Reddit. I imagine users
of Upvoted will be people that would normally use Buzzfeed or 9gag, probably
largely disjoint from the actual Reddit community.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimMeta/comments/3fnkni/9g...](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimMeta/comments/3fnkni/9gag_is_automatically_copying_some_of_the_most/)

[1] 45% upvoted at time of posting:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_up...](https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_upvoted_a_redditorial_publication/)

~~~
actionscripted
If it's going to get snagged and distributed through blog and news networks
they might as well try to be the first to do it.

------
austenallred
I think this is a brilliant move.

To all those saying whether or not current redditors will use it: that's not
the point. This is Reddit attempting to use the content users generate on the
platform for the 99% of people who don't use Reddit. Call it buzzfeed if you
want, an absurd amount of people use buzzfeed.

So long as Reddit and Upvoted are separate, I think it makes a ton of sense.

~~~
alexis
Thanks. Yep, they're separate, but based on the success of the Upvoted podcast
and newsletter over this year, we definitely see the potential of upvoted.com
to be a gateway to get new users into Reddit. One reason why, for instance, we
have a link to a comment section on r/upvoted at the bottom of every article
(each Upvoted.com gets automatically submitted to r/upvoted upon posting).

~~~
halcyondaze
Yo Alexis - was the main logic behind starting this the fact that so many
other sites are using Reddit UGC to drive their content machines (and thus
revenues)?

------
pvg
[http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-
reddit...](http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-
redditorial.html) actually explains what it is and might be a more informative
link.

~~~
alexis
Thanks and here is my welcome note:
[http://upvoted.com/2015/10/06/a-redditorial-
publication/](http://upvoted.com/2015/10/06/a-redditorial-publication/)

~~~
pvg
Oops, I did see that first but my initial uncaffeinated impression was that it
was the intro for advertisers rather than users, what with the open rates and
the click throughs and the numbers.

One the more entertaining/interesting things about original subreddit content
is that it often gets fleshed out, corrected (occasionally to a full 180˚) and
otherwise improved by further contributions. I'm curious how upvoted deals
with that. Perhaps your editor could do an AMA sometime after things settle
down post-launch.

------
mikepurvis
Looks like Buzzfeed and every other online clickbait publication.

~~~
negrit
That's the idea behind it. Though Buzzfeed actually have a news branch with
actual journalists behind it based in west-coast & east-coast. I was
interviewed by a couple of them and it was a pleasant experience. I don't know
if upvoted is planning on hiring journalists on staff. May be Alexis can tell
us more here.

~~~
alexis
We have an awesome Editor, Vickie Chang, who manages a small team of staff
writers and freelancers:
[http://upvoted.com/contributors/](http://upvoted.com/contributors/)

------
allsystemsgo
Is this Reddit trying to take itself more seriously? It's almost like a mask
layer to obfuscate the hive mind. I'm curious how the content is created, how
something is featured, etc.

~~~
alexis
It's a way to follow up on stories that bubble up on Reddit's frontpages and
give them more depth. 202M+ people can do a great job surfacing and discussing
content in real-time, but our awesome editor, Vickie, and her team can do a
much more effective job following up on those stories, interviewing, and
adding more substance.

E.g.,

This photo of an unemployed man handing out resumes went to the top of r/pics:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3kc1sh/this_man_lost_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3kc1sh/this_man_lost_his_job_and_is_struggling_to/)

We interviewed the guy pictured + wrote about it:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Upvoted/comments/3kxp7q/bottom_of_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Upvoted/comments/3kxp7q/bottom_of_the_ninth_why_this_unemployed_father/)

Then a week later a photo of the guy (now with a job) topped on r/pics again
and a random redditor linked to our story to provide context for everyone on
the thread:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3lv1b3/way_to_go_redd...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3lv1b3/way_to_go_reddit_you_helped_the_guy_passing_out/cv9lojy)

This was back when we just posted as selfposts to r/upvoted, so I suspect that
same article in a beautiful blog layout:
[http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/donnie-grooms-unemployed-
busch...](http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/donnie-grooms-unemployed-busch-
stadium-resume/)

Would do even better and reach even more people!

~~~
vit05
Internet now is only about the moment. The momentum sometimes last less than a
second.Transform those seconds, in a story, could be useful and remarkable. I
hope you succeed.

------
roymurdock
For anyone confused about why this exists:
[http://upvoted.com/advertise/](http://upvoted.com/advertise/)

~~~
bhrgunatha
A safe place to generate ad revenue.

------
CJKinni
So this feels like a way of obfuscating comments and some of the less
appealing aspects of the reddit community, while turning it into a buzzfeed
style community. It feels like a prettier version of
[http://thisisthe.link/](http://thisisthe.link/)

~~~
alexis
Every article posted to upvoted.com gets submitted to
[http://reddit.com/r/upvoted](http://reddit.com/r/upvoted) with a link at the
bottom of said article.

We were not going to put facebook comments an DEFINITELY not going to take
devs away from all the work they've been doing on mod/community tools
([http://reddit.com/r/modnews](http://reddit.com/r/modnews)), alien blue, and
infrastructure.

------
TomGullen
Looks nice, functions nicely, I can see what they are doing but it's just not
for me. Content appears pretty shallow at a brief browse through it all,
buzzfeed esque.

~~~
dikdik
Agreed. But from what I see through my social media, a large majority love the
shallow content. Instagram is filled with highly-followed users that just
repost curated reddit content (fuckjerry, thefatjewish, etc), it's obviously
filling a large niche.

------
joesweeney
I feel that normal Reddit users are going to hate this for the most part
because it does a lot of the same things that BuzzFeed does in that it takes
content from Reddit presents it in a somewhat dumbed-down, clickbait way.
However, I don't think this is a problem. Upvoted is not supposed to be for
Redditors, it's supposed to be for a different audience who isn't yet ready
for Reddit. It's going to capture at least some of the traffic that usually
lands on other clickbait sites which take content from Reddit, and it's going
to allow them to monetize.

~~~
gcb0
yes. and nobody cares.

they already have the normal reddit user.

they want the rest now.

------
tlrobinson
Publications like BuzzFeed have been making money off of Reddit's content, or
at least content discovered on Reddit, for years. Makes sense Reddit would
want to capture some of that value.

~~~
rndn
Maybe I’m mistaken, but it seems to me that Reddit would be much better off as
a dontation-based non-profit. It seems ethical that nobody should make money
off of user-generated content except the users are compensated for their time
(which is unpractical); at least not beyond what’s necessary to keep the
system up and running and occasionally add handy features to it. I bet the
amount of time it takes to develop and run Reddit fades in face of the
collective amount of time there is spent on creating and curating content by
millions of people. I’m actually surprised that none of the comments here are
touching on this point.

------
natvod
Another Buzzfeed-y content site? Meh.

What I would actually like to see:

Have journalists contact Redditors who post interesting stories for interviews
to write up more fully fleshed stories.

A lot of Redditors post really interesting stories about their experiences,
businesses etc. It'd be super cool to read more about it.

~~~
daxelrod
That sounds like what they might be doing:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10341384](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10341384)

------
notacoward
Nice. The thing I don't like about Reddit itself is that it's hard to find
what each article is actually about, and most of the time it's some in-
jokey/meme-y stuff I wouldn't have bothered with if I'd been able to see even
one image or quote. Finding _quality_ content there is hard; if I wanted to
spend that much time separating wheat from chaff I might as well try Google+.
Upvoted looks like a much more accessible way to get some light
reading/entertainment done. Good idea, and AFAICT so far a good
implementation.

------
ebbv
Here's a question I have; reddit is full of liars. What efforts are the
Upvoted staff making to verify stuff that appears on reddit before bringing it
over to Upvoted?

~~~
gcb0
they will do nothing, because they are not journalists.

"The newsletter has hundreds of thousands of subscribers that wake up each
Sunday to enjoy a curated digest in their inbox. Last month, we started
posting original content directly to r/upvoted, including an interview with
the guy handing out his resume at Busch Stadium. The subreddit amassed its
highest traffic with over 700,000 unique visitors. With Upvoted, editorial,
original video, podcasts, and graphic art have a place to thrive and tell
Reddit’s tales in the most creative ways possible." \--
[http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-
reddit...](http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-
redditorial.html)

it is nothing more than a pretty RSS feed with a little curation and images,
linking to all the lies that are business as usual on reddit.

~~~
Laaw
I said this in another comment, but based on what Alexis said here, it seems
like there might actually be staffers (reporters) doing additional research
into the stories as they appear on upvoted.com.

------
rndn
I’m not sure what this site is supposed to be for: Is it (a) to generate more
ad revenue for reddit to be finally self-sustaining or (b) an attempt to come
up to the expectations of Reddit's VC shareholders (i.e. a separate startup to
generate more revenue than necessary for self-sustenance).

------
jokoon
Can't really like this, but at least it has the virtue of containing the kind
of stuff that happened to digg.

Whatever happens, I'm really with reddit in light of all the controversies
that surrounded it. I really have a high esteem of community driven websites
who can be user-oriented and still grow and attract more users. It's not an
easy task. I'm sure there must be some kind of game theory around it if you
want to keep it going. Making balanced rules for such a website might be no
easy thing.

Some call it "plebeian" but I think it's still a very good website if you
don't focus too much on the default subreddits. I will never be able to wrap
my head around the 4chan UI, even if it has an attractive community.

------
tumes
It's interesting to me that between this and Apple's news app that we're
steering to a less-social-engagement centric model for news presentation. One
new way to save myself from looking at the comments.

------
mcintyre1994
I can't quite put my finger on it but this feels like one of them websites
someone will share on Facebook and I'll tell Facebook never to show me
anything from that domain again. I'm sure those sites are making lots of money
though and are getting shared because people like them, so they'll probably do
way better with it than I expect.

------
hugh4
The most bizarre thing about this is that it's all over HN and voat, but I
can't find any mention of it on reddit.

~~~
nols
It's there, it's just been downvoted to 0 because they don't like it.

------
markdown
Unidan lives!!

[http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/bizarre-beasts-with-unidan-
the...](http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/bizarre-beasts-with-unidan-the-numbat/)

------
kawera
Sad that The Redditor didn't work out:
[http://www.theredditor.com/](http://www.theredditor.com/)

~~~
TomGullen
Never sure what the point of having it as a PDF is apart from being able to
print it nicely which has got to be a minority, especially considering it's
thick and colourful.

~~~
prawn
There's previously been a PDF-based collection of HN stories/comments too.

~~~
whatusername
[http://hackermonthly.com/](http://hackermonthly.com/)

------
thejew
Looks like it's a Wordpress blog: [http://upvoted.com/wp-
admin](http://upvoted.com/wp-admin)

~~~
minimaxir
For this use case, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a WordPress blog.

~~~
debacle
There may be. WordPress is not ironclad and Reddit is a big target.

At the very least, there's value in whitelisting IP access to the wp-admin
login.

------
z92
Looks like a "portal site", which were popular in the 90s.

------
samstave
Upvoted! -- The Fisher Price (R) of Reddit!!

------
tscosj
Is that ordinary Wordpress site?

~~~
johnward
wordpress.com it appears /wp-admin redirect to
[https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com](https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com)

the footer: Powered by WordPress.com VIP

------
dom96
This looks awesome but I am scared to keep it open for too long as it looks
like an even bigger time sink than Reddit.

------
chinathrow
why no https? Even reddit itself is on https.

------
it_learnses
how did you get a .cloud domain?

