Memphis Wilson
Mr. Barazzuol
New Media 10
20 September 2020
Reddit was founded in June 23, 2005 by two university 
students called Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman. Their original idea was to create a sandwich ordering app however when they presented the idea to Paul Graham who was working at Y combinator (Y combinator is a startup accelerator). Paul did not like the idea of a sandwich ordering app, so he asked them to create the front page of the internet instead. What they wanted to do was to create a bulletin board of the internet. They worked on coding reddit for about three weeks before they had their first working prototype. The original age group for Reddit was meant for adults however throughout the years the audience became younger with the more subreddits that were added. The purpose of Reddit is one that has stayed the same since the beginning and that is to become the front page of the internet and in my opinion they have done a particularly good job considering as of July 13 2020 there are more than 430 million active users worldwide. Making it the 11th most popular
social networking platform in the world. Reddit makes their money through adds and their add free premium membership plan, “Reddit has raised $550.1 million in total funding to date” (Johnston2020). By the end of 2019 Reddit made a total of 119 million USD and by 2021 it is expected to double. New users can be very confused the first time they go on reddit with the amount of jargon there is. Some of the most used jargon on reddit is TL; DR which stands for too long didn’t read. It is used to summarize large amounts of reading in just a few sentences. There is also Cakeday which is the users reddit account birthday, OP, OP stands for original poster so the person who started the thread or comment. Last but not least there is OC. OC stands for original content which is something the user created themselves. Some cool facts about reddit are, “The name reddit is a play on words for read it” (Kemeny2018). Reddit also has some etiquette that the community calls reddiquette, “it encourages participation in the internet and for that participation to be as polite as possible” (IONOS2020).
Works Cited
Clement, J. “Most Used Social Media Platform.” Statista, 21 Aug. 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social- networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/.
Haslam, Oliver. “Picture of Reddit Logo.” What Is a Throwaway Reddit Account, And How Do I Create One, 17 May 2019, www.howtogeek.com/414765/what-is-a-throwaway- reddit- account-and-how-do-i-create-one/.
Johnston, Matthew. “How Reddit Makes Money.” Investopedia, Investopedia, 12 Sept. 2020, www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/093015/how- reddit-makes-money.asp.
Kemeny, Luke. “How Reddit Was Created.” Geekclub, 18 July 2020, geekclub.blog/2018/08/08/how-reddit-was-created/.
“Logo of Reddit.” Google Play, play.google.com/store/apps/details? id=com.reddit.frontpage&hl=en.
Olson, Randy, et al. “Retracing the Evolution of Reddit through Post Data.” Dr. Randal S. Olson, 30 Apr. 2020, www.randalolson.com/2013/03/12/retracing-the- evolution-of-reddit-through-post-data/.
“Reddit, Pinterest, Whatsapp and Other Apple Apps on IPhone Screen Stock Photo.” IStock, 31 July 2018, www.istockphoto.com/photo/reddit-pinterest-whatsapp- and-other-apple-apps-on-iphone-screen-gm1048288996- 280402561.
“What Is Reddit?” IONOS Digitalguide, www.ionos.ca/digitalguide/online-marketing/social- media/what-is-reddit/.