Reddit is one of the top social media sites out there. Being my homepage for years now. And today I got a chance to talk to the co-founder of this awesome site, Alexis Ohanian. A part from reddit, he has also started another note-worthy website called Breadpig. Where, some of his side projects have gone on.
- First off, tell me just a little bit about yourself, and reddit?
I graduated from UVa with Steve Huffman (my co-founder) in 2005 with degrees in History and Commerce. That summer, we started
reddit.com with $12,000 in funding from Y Combinator. At the time, our aim was simply to create a front page of the web. Since there was only two of us, it made sense to rely on the community to scour for the great content and build a site that catered to them. reddit is a place for people to discover, share, comment on interesting links, which rise and fall on the front page throughout the day as readers vote them up or down.
We’ve grown quite a bit since that little apartment in Medford, Mass. Not in company size, though, as there are only 5 of us working on the site these days, but we get around 4 million uniques a month.
- It’s been about 7 months now since the launch of user created Reddits. Do you have any plans in the future to expand on this idea, possibly making it even better?
We’ve been really impressed with some of the reddits that have already been created (
worldnews and
environment are two of my favorite successes). That said, we’d like to evolve the creation and navigation of these many diverse communities so that an even broader range of people can see the value of creating or joining a reddit.
- On a broad scale, where do you see the future of social news heading, in the coming years?
Well, social news is still a very, very small fraction of news consumption for the general population. I believe time will have the most significant impact on changing people’s tastes, but in the meantime, there’s a significant number of younger news consumers (there I go sounding old) who have no preconceived notions about using the Internet as their primary source for being informed.
We’ve still got a long way to go before social news becomes mainstream, but we’re aiming to get the alien at the front of the parade.
Yes, they’re going to have a parade to celebrate social news becoming mainstream.
- Besides Reddit, you started another website called Breadpig. So what are your main goals for Breadpig? And have you accomplished any of them yet?
Breadpig is an uncorporation I started with the intent of satisfying my design ambitions. I like creating things that people enjoy buying, I just don’t have any interest in personally profiting from them (hence the “un”).
Geeky shirts and an assortment of
unHolidayCards have been the focus so far, but we debuted the world’s first
LOLmagnetz (magnetic LOL poetry) at
ROFLCon to a great response. After months of pre-orders, they’re finally shipping next week (sorry everyone, breadpig isn’t my dayjob).
The profits get reinvested into future products and donated to various non-profits I’ve become involved with over the years. I’d also been planning a small-scale “X-prize” for open source development, but some family matters tabled the breadpig prize — for now.
- I’ve seen videos of you guys with Rock Band equipment playing in the streets. Tell me about that.
That’s the
breadpig band (yes, the brand is as versatile as Branson’s Virgin). The guys I grew up with and I were playing Rock Band one day and had to mute the TV, the result was the most pathetic sound we’d ever heard. Click, click, click, tap, tap…
Then it dawned on me to take our act to the streets of DC and record people’s reactions. 60K views later, a reporter from the Washingtonian magazine was calling for an interview — about breadpig. The magic of the Internet.
We’ve got an album (When Will Then Be Now?), too, which we’re trying to get on iTunes. That will be a sad day for the music industry.
- Finally, do you have any thoughts circling your head, about social media, the internet, or anything else technology related?
If you’re online as much as most of the people I know in this business, take a day off this weekend and go outside to read a book (that’s the alpha-version of your Kindle). And if you’re as sensitive to sunlight as I am, there’s always a cafe nearby.
Trust me, the Internet will be there when you return.
- Thanks so much for you time Alexis!
My pleasure, Adam. Keep the great reddit submissions coming.
