Reddit’s history, evolution, and technicalities. 

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Reddit is a  social news aggregator, that is to say, a mix between a discussion platform and a linked broadcaster, which is divided into forums, the “subreddits”. Users, editors, are content creators, readers, and curators at the same time. Using a scoring system of Upvotes (upvotes) and Downvotes (downvotes), the community determines what content and discussions are important and therefore show up at the top of the feed. The platform is largely self-managed, the moderators act as moderators of the forum.

According to Similar Web surveys, nearly 40% of Reddit users are from the United States. The other Anglo-Saxon countries complete the top ranking. / Source: https://www.similarweb.com/website/reddit.com

Indeed, Reddit is especially popular in the United States, where its influence is far from negligible since nearly 40% of Reddit users live there. But a French and francophone community is slowly developing. In French, we call Reddit users “Redditors”.

Perhaps the increasingly negative media coverage of Facebook as a result of the recent private data scandals and the ensuing leak of Facebook users is an opportunity for other social networks like Reddit. But what exactly is Reddit?

 

 

What is Reddit? Basic idea and evolution:-

Reddit describes itself as “The Front Page of The Internet ”. The network functions like the cover page of a printed newspaper, where readers find the topics of the day that the editorial staff considers to be the most important or topical. Even if the network in France is dragging a bit to really win this place, Reddit does have the potential. In fact, the number of subreddits has increased in ten years, from nearly 11,000 (2008) to around  1.64 million  (September 2019) of subreddits.

Buy Reddit account collects social news in an almost countless number of forums, these are the subreddits. These are created by users (editors) and filled with content. The idea of ​​the forum, as used in ancient Roman times, can be seen as the basis of the perception of the website. The Forum Romanum, for example, was not only a central place where people visited temples and attended public trials, but it was above all a  place of intellectual exchange.

Modern Internet forums have developed using the 1980s bulletin boards as a model. A forum usually deals with one main topic and divides it into subtopics. There are directories,  sub-forums, for Reddit these are subreddits. In a sub-forum, users create new posts (messages) on a specific topic. These can be questions and requests for help, but also informative articles, photos, and videos. Humorous and creative contributions as well as controversial discussion topics are common.

A quick history of Reddit:-

Reddit refers us to  Alexis Ohanian and  Steve Huffman. The two met at the University of Virginia. Soon after graduation, they wanted to develop a site called “MyMobileMenu” with the help of start-up investors,  Y Combinator. The idea was rejected, but the process was launched. A little later, they thus received seed capital from the same company for the “Reddit – The Title Page of the Internet” project. Physicist  Christopher Slowe and internet activist  Aaron Swartz with his company Infogami have joined the development team.

Despite personal setbacks, the young founders continued to work on the project. Condé Nast Publications bought the company and shortly thereafter fired Aaron Schwartz. The other founders also took other paths after the end of their contract, they notably met for the online travel start-up project Hipmunk.

While initially developers still used fictitious accounts to boost activity on the site, Reddit already had 10,926 subreddits in 2008. In  2011, the number grew to 60,191, Reddit stepped out of the shadows of Condé Nast and became independent under its parent company, Advance Publications. A year earlier, the platform launched the Reddit Premium subscription model.  For around $ 6 per month, Premium Editors have access to the “Lounge,” a restricted subreddit, as well as more functionality on the user interface.

The company and its founders attracted a lot of attention when in 2012 they campaigned in the United States against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and, along with popular websites such as Wikipedia, put it out. line their entire domain with a Blackout in opposition and protest.

Site administrators are always committed to protecting the freedom of expression and anonymity of their users. This is expressed both in the site guidelines and in the Reddiquette (Reddit etiquette and rules). The annual transparency reports published since 2014 precisely guarantee transparency.

In 2015, Steve Huffman, a founding member, became CEO again. At that time, Reddit employed a hundred people; in 2017, the company had 230 and at that time the majority of users were American. However, there is a small but active Francophone community. This notably made it possible to make the most important official documents like the Reddiquette and a large part of the user interface in French. In addition, Reddiquette is available in seven other languages ​​and the user interface is available in almost 90 different languages ​​or dialects.

Reddit technical basics:-

Originally the site was written in Common Lisp, but before its release, the development team decided to switch it to  Python.  The   web.py web framework, which Swartz had built for Reddit and which is now available as open-source software, has also been replaced. The successor is now  Pylons. From 2008 to September 2017, the source code for Reddit was officially available as an open-source code on GitHub. However, by its own statements, the company had strayed so far from its chaotic beginnings that, for example, the prolonged development of public codes now hampered the launch of new products… Nonetheless, Reddit continues to use open source tools, which is in line with company policy.

In 2009, Reddit migrated to the Amazon Web Services Cloud, and since 2012 Amazon CloudSearch has been responsible for internal search. For the cloud database,  the free NoSQL Apache Cassandra database management system is used more and more.

RabbitMQ open source software is message-oriented middleware and supports Reddit offline processes.

The official Reddit app is available for Android and iOS. As they are not very popular within the community, some competitors have therefore established themselves, including Boost, Relay, BaconReader, and Sync. For tablets that run on Android, there is Reddit. Even for desktop PCs, there is an (unofficial) app that works on multiple platforms: Reddit.

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