
Ask HN: What is the secret of Reddit's success? Early adopters? - zeynalov
I'm going to build a community portal for my country, something between HN and Reddit. But I'm not sure if it will be loved by people. Does anyone know how reddit made it's popularity among the users and why many people like to use it. Some possible reasons:<p>- Early adopters which were friends of Alexis and Steve, constantly used Reddit and helped to build the community.<p>- Simplicity of user interface.<p>- New and better discussion forums. Revolutionary voting system. A good commenting system.<p>- They did guerrilla marketing.<p>- They paid for advertising.
======
citricsquid
They faked it until they made it, they created fake accounts and submitted /
commented to pretend there was activity when there wasn't. A community needs
people to work.

Alexis has some good stories / info on his blog:
[http://alexisohanian.com/how-reddit-became-reddit-the-
smalle...](http://alexisohanian.com/how-reddit-became-reddit-the-smallest-
biggest)

~~~
kn0thing
If you want to know what the non-technical co-founder did those first couple
of weeks, it was a lot of submissions under a dozen or so usernames.
Fortunately, Steve & I only had to do that for a few weeks. The first bump we
got in traffic was from a Paul Graham essay, which gave us a great initial
community -- setting the bar rather high, actually.

edit: also, that link from my blog pretty much sums up why I think we
succeeded.

~~~
yuhong
I can see the fundamental flaw here. Anyone can think of a better way to solve
it? I am no fan of real name policies, but this is still a horrible solution.

~~~
kn0thing
One of the reasons I was so excited to help Steve & Adam launch hipmunk.com
was that it was a totally anti-social website. If I could run all the
marketing/pr/community-etc stuff and achieve a similar result with a site that
was devoid of any community, maybe we were on to something.

Fortunately, launching hipmunk was 100x easier than reddit because unlike in
2005, there are far more platforms for people to share things they like online
today (reddit being one of them).

~~~
rms
There was a certain lull point in Reddit, where it was still great for what it
was, but it had lost the intellectual early adopter set but had not yet become
the cultural juggernaut that it is now. Maybe it was right before the Digg
exodus? I'm not quite sure of the timing, but guessing you know what I mean.

Do you have any input on what happened to take Reddit from where it was two or
three years ago to where it is now?

~~~
kn0thing
Consistency. The power of user-created subreddits took years to really gain
momentum. For the first year or so I was spending a lot of my time raising
awareness for communities we'd created that seemed like obvious fits (like
/r/gaming) doing things like running house ads and being a good moderator of
the subreddit -- things that our awesome mods are now doing themselves.

I encourage you to subscribe to subreddits like
<http://truereddit.reddit.com/> if you're missing the old days. There's a
wealth of great, smaller subreddits that maintain the intellectual roots.
<http://philosophy.reddit.com/> too!

~~~
kn0thing
By consistency, I mean even after Steve & I left, the team continued to
maintain the course and endured a lot of ups and downs in the process. What
they've done is really impressive.

------
petercooper
A great way to digg into this topic is by reading interviews and listening to
podcast interviews with Alexis. For example, if you're a Mixergy member (or
have been subscribed to the podcast to see this interview still in the feed),
[http://mixergy.com/no-reddit-didnt-copy-digg-heres-how-it-
wa...](http://mixergy.com/no-reddit-didnt-copy-digg-heres-how-it-was-built-
with-alexis-ohanian/) was a great interview.

------
lutusp
The interface is part of the reason -- it's easy to navigate, and
conversational threads are clearly laid out. There is an alert icon that tells
you if someone has replied to one of your earlier posts, something missing
from many social-media sites. You click the alert icon, and all the replies
are listed in chronological order, simplifying the management of multiple
conversations.

The public "font page" display is also intelligently laid out, with posts that
have been read and upvoted ranked according to popularity.

And there is a voting scheme -- although controversial, the voting "karma"
system allows the system to rearrange posts by popularity without any effort
or intervention.

The site is broken into forums, and users can create a new forum if they care
to.

I used Usenet for many years before there was a Web, and Reddit reminds me in
some ways of those days (but it has a better interface).

~~~
StavrosK
I just realized that your fan statistics probably get inflated by me telling
you on different sites how much I used to love Arachnophilia, so I won't do it
here too.

But I did.

~~~
lutusp
Okay that was funny. :)

------
eli
I don't mean this in a bad way, but I think Luck was the single biggest
factor.

~~~
kn0thing
I agree with this and have said so on a number of occasions, but it's not very
useful advice ;)

------
gte910h
Subreddits (anyone can have their own reddit...on reddit) and the
messaging/reply system in my opinion.

------
gchucky
I believe the big surge to Reddit was when Digg put up version 4 and a drove
off a lot of its members. A lot of the older members of Reddit tend to lament
how it went from a decent place to what it is now (reposts, etc.) which is why
I think the Digg implosion was so important to Reddit's success. My guess,
then, is that part of why Reddit is popular is because of the hands-off
approach of the site's owners and moderators as opposed to sponsored posts and
that sort of thing. The mods there step in really only when absolutely
necessary and haven't really messed with the way the site runs.

~~~
shorttime
Reddit was successful prior to Digg going to version 4. They just received
more users after Digg's move. I wonder how many...

But your second point on the owners letting reddit run itself is spot on. They
just made sure the site worked (most of the time ;D) and basically let people
govern themselves. But what really ties it in, is subreddits. If a mod on a
subreddit ruins something or acts like a jerk, the people are free to setup a
new subreddit, circumventing the overlord of the previous sub.

Then there's the simple UI.

And most of all, the people. The people posted interesting stories to the main
subreddits. It's kind of disappointing to see the noise level increasing
against the signal lately but that's where subreddits come in.

I almost see HN as the new reddit, but with a new feature, filtering out
downvotes of new people. I come to HN and a few specific subreddits for
intelligent conversation, then the main reddit page for OMG CATS.

~~~
kn0thing
<http://alexisohanian.com/an-open-letter-to-kevin-rose>

Oh yes, I got flamed by Arrington for predicting it, but diggv4 had to have
been some VCs getting hungry for a return they'd expected before the fickle
market turned.

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/29/guy-who-copied-digg-
slams-d...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/29/guy-who-copied-digg-slams-digg-
for-copying-twitter/)

Conversely, Steve and I always talked about 'letting users do the hard stuff.'
The more power and ownership we could give them (with guidelines) the more
they impressed us. See things like /r/IAMA and /r/Skyrim for a couple examples
of genius in idea & execution we alone never could've come up with.

As for traffic, reddit's traffic the Monday before diggv4 was about 600k
uniques and 900k the Monday after.

It pretty much skyrocketed from there. Last month reddit had 34M uniques and
2.3B pvs. All after Steve & I left, too. Correlation or causation, I leave up
to you.

------
bootload
If you are talking popularity, the sale to Condé Nast has to factor. Without
this sale Reddit might have made it. The sale turbo charged user adoption ~
[http://techcrunch.com/2006/10/31/breaking-news-conde-
nastwir...](http://techcrunch.com/2006/10/31/breaking-news-conde-nastwired-
acquires-reddit/)

The biggest single factor is probably applying to YC.

~~~
kn0thing
"The sale turbo charged user adoption"

That's simply not true. Traffic continued to grow rather steadily after the
acquisition, largely because Conde wisely didn't interfere very much, but it
certainly didn't 'turbo charge' it.

We were lucky enough to be in the very first round of Y Combinator, which
meant far less to people back then compared to now. The mentorship, talks, and
friends in the program were invaluable, though.

To my knowledge this is the first article ever written on YC:
<http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/09/68710>

~~~
bootload
_"... That's simply not true. Traffic continued to grow rather steadily after
the acquisition, largely because Conde wisely didn't interfere very much, but
it certainly didn't 'turbo charge' it. ..."_

excellent to confirm I'm wrong from the source.

~~~
kn0thing
NP! However, diggv4 provided a big boost.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3580800>

------
zmmmmm
For me it was the UI / commenting system. I had been a lurker on slashdot for
years but never made a comment. Then I went to reddit and was commenting 5
times a day because it was so light weight and easy and was totally
pseudononymous. (re: the last point - I have not made one single public
comment on Google+, while I have made _thousands_ on reddit. Reddit has just
the right balance of pseudonymity). I also think that making it possible to
edit or delete your comment after writing it, which was quite radical at the
time, improved the average quality of conversations enormously. The very few
poor quality posts I made were either voted to oblivion, edited to improve
them within 5 minutes or deleted if I realized I should never have opened my
mouth.

~~~
zeynalov
For you pseudonymity is good, but would it not be better for other users to
see a real human thoughts instead of comments of some anonymous nickname? For
example, I prefer to speak to real human.

~~~
zmmmmm
> would it not be better for other users to see a real human thoughts instead
> of comments of some anonymous nickname?

I think that's a false premise. My thoughts are no less human because of
coming from a nickname. While I'd agree there's a tradeoff (some people will
be total assholes) on the balancing side you actually get far more honest (and
'human') thoughts from me because I'm pseudonymous than you do if you ask me
to broadcast publicly.

------
kolya3
Most people hate their jobs. Give those people a safe way to waste time at
work and they will. The Reddit spartan UI (blue links/white background) looks
like you are being productive even when you are not.

~~~
kn0thing
Haha! Never thought of that. It's just because Steve and I were 21-year-olds
without much design talent. I still hate myself for picking Verdana....

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/33809408@N00/315073292/in/photo...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/33809408@N00/315073292/in/photostream/)

------
Urgo
I know a lot of people have already said it but I'm going to agree with digg
being one of the biggest reasons reddit has done so well. I was amongst the
top users on digg in its heyday (had the best overall success rates at hitting
the front page second to kevin rose basically). When digg version four came
out it really ruined the site. Most people left for reddit. I came here since
tech was what I was looking for and this was a much better community for that
IMHO.

------
lukasb
The UI is easy to use, but I wouldn't call it simple. There is a lot of
information, and there are a lot of ways to interact with the content. Every
comment has at least seven clickable links and three pieces of metadata,
compare with HN (four and two.) They just did a good design job so it doesn't
seem overwhelming.

The UI probably has something to do with the composition of the userbase.
reddit feels not just interactive but malleable. That appeals to geeks raised
on videogames.

~~~
reddit_clone
> Every comment has at least seven clickable links

Tell me about it :)

I was a Conkeror user. It was fun to hit Ctrl-f and watch all the links light
up !

(For those who don't know: Conkeror is a web browser - same engine as FF - but
driven by the keyboard. It emulates Emacs for the most part. The way you
navigate the hyperlinks is to hit Ctrl-f and each hyperlink will show a number
which you can enter using your keyboard. No mouse. Reddit is unusable in
Conkeror!)

------
avar
One thing that makes them successful is that they weren't trying to build
"something between X and Y". Why would anyone use your community portal
instead of just creating a subreddit or discussing things on Facebook /
Google+ / etc.?

Why would anyone use your site instead of other online discussion forums? Once
you can answer that you have a shot at being successful.

~~~
zeynalov
1\. They would use it instead of creating a new subreddit, because as I
mentioned above it will be in another language and country, there is no such
portal.

2\. It will have better site architecture/sharing system/notification and
commenting system than traditional discussion forums.

3\. Building "between" doesn't mean it will be something mutant. Structural
like reddit, from community philosophy perspective like HN is a good system, I
think.

~~~
avar
The Google/Facebook/Reddit interfaces are available in dozens of languages.
Millions of people who aren't from the U.S. use those platforms, so clearly
most Internet users don't find that using sites aimed at multiple
nationalities is in any way troublesome.

I'm not saying it won't work, I'm just wondering why you're planning on
targeting one specific demographic in particular? I remember when nation-
specific sites were much more common, now that's increasingly not the case. If
you think your architecture / notification system etc. is going to be better
you'd be doing yourself a disservice by making it overly narrow.

Anyway. I don't mean to be dismissive of your idea. But to me it sounds a lot
like "I want to set up a discussion forum for my country". Without any of the
details about why your countrymen would sign up, what they're using _now_ to
communicate and why they'd be motivated to switch to your platform.

~~~
zeynalov
To find out some of pissible "why"s, I started this thread. My question is,
why someone would prefer my "Reddit" instead of other sites. What is the
secret of reddit's success.

------
leak
I'm going to have to say it was two parts luck and ease of joining the
conversation. You can create an account so easily (no email required) and that
probably allowed a lot of people to chat about subjects that they would
normally not put their name/identity on. That's my guess.

~~~
kn0thing
My post from above pretty much sums up how reddit succeeded as far as I can
tell: [http://alexisohanian.com/how-reddit-became-reddit-the-
smalle...](http://alexisohanian.com/how-reddit-became-reddit-the-smallest-
biggest)

The ridiculously low registration barrier is something PG has preached to all
YC startups. It's great advice. I should also point out that reddit has
achieved all of this growth without a single email notification, or tweet, or
facebook like, or all of those things apps now do automatically (and we're for
the most part OK with).

I really didn't see that coming.

------
daimyoyo
The community is what attracted me to, and what has kept me going back to
reddit. The comment threads there are full of people who genuinely seem to
care about one another in a way I have never seen in any other site.

------
doctoboggan
In my opinion the idea that made them take off was subreddits. Where
previously I would have joined many different websites/forums for my varied
interests, on reddit I can just join the subreddit.

~~~
AtTheLast
Exactly. Passionate people running subreddits. Its a community within a
community and you can find a wide variety of information on almost anything
you are interested in.

------
Zak
It was the Lisp. No, really. I found reddit because pg posted about it on
comp.lang.lisp and I wanted to give any startup that used Lisp a chance.

I came for the Lisp, but I stayed for the zombie dogs.

------
prawn
Regular content makes it a daily (or more often) read for procrastinators and
people looking to share new links with peers. I think that's a big part of it.

------
fufulabs
I think the biggest factors are:

\- unique user flows / user interface

\- persistence (team + Conde Nast parent)

\- big stumble of Digg

everything else is a result of these

------
jayzalowitz
1\. Mascot 2\. Mascot 3\. Bacon

~~~
kn0thing
Thank you.

~~~
jayzalowitz
You are welcome good chap.

------
jeffdechambeau
They've come up with an economic way to homogenize the behaviour of community,
this makes it really easy for people to fit in and feel at home. more here:
<http://jeffdechambeau.com/redditing-to-the-mean.html>

------
mkramlich
UI convenience helps. I'm still frustrated by HN's posting usability compared
to Reddit. Reddit sets a high bar in terms of my expectations now.

------
mkramlich
Personality. Personality goes a long way.

