michael ian black gets on reddit, has his best week ever, then blogs about it, and reddit becomes significantly more relevant

And that, ladies in gentlemen, is how reddit became famous -- Hollywood famous.

Michael, I'm glad you handled those surly commenters with such aplomb. You're a man to be respected, no, honored -- with a statue.

I'm not going to help build that statue, but I would like to mail you a reddit alien bobblehead. It works just like any other bobblehead (read: it bobbles) except it's special because it looks like our mascot. I suspect few people in L.A. have ever seen such a thing. Your celebrity friends will be in awe of this modern marvel.

You can host dinner parties around it. Or whatever it is celebrities do (cocaine & hooker parties?)

All I ask is that you get a photo of Major Quimby holding the bobblehead. He must also be standing in the express line of a supermarket carrying a basket of more than 15 items -- all turnips or turnip-based products.

reddit-powered shaving cream democracy

Vote for the superior shaving cream. Seriously. It's a reddit-powered poll on TheUpgrader, along with a variety of other hot-lists, including "product" and contrast collar shirts. Admit it, you're curious to see the hottest contrast collar shirt.

This is just the kind of thing we never would have dreamed up (Steve doesn't even shave yet).

Our administrative tools for the 'reddit self-serve polling widget' (that's the shortest name we could come up with) have been floating around CondéNet for a while now and I'm constantly surprised with what they've produced.

The reddit alien and GQ may not appear to be likely partners, but here they are. Well, the alien isn't anywhere to be found -- it's there in spirit.

hacker news reviews the reddit redesign

I had to ask. I really enjoy the Hacker News community, so I knew there'd be some good feedback. The discussion was fairly evenly split between positive and negative, but Paul Graham won the day with the best comment:

I think you should change the name; "reddit" is ok, but there are still a lot of good names available.

Nicely done, Paul.

all hail rich, guru of redesigns

One more thing about the redesign: Rich has asked that we send your feedback to a reddit.uservoice page for better analysis.

It's like a features.reddit that's been designed to be a features.reddit!

2 things I never thought I'd see: xkcd in the nytimes and microsoft building a delicious-clone (why?)

In case you missed it, the New York Times business section wrote a nice piece on Mr. Munroe's brilliant webcomic.

And if that wasn't enough of a mindjob, Microsoft is rolling out a social bookmarking site. Someone please throw a chair at whomever dreamed this one up.

They should have just acquired furl and saved themselves the trouble.

after almost 3 years, reddit gets a redesign

And Mashable was there on the scene just before we pushed it live.

Adam Ostrow writes:

While I’ve long thought Reddit often offers a more appealing story selection than Digg, its interface has long been so Spartan that it hurts (my eyes!). The new look definitely makes the site easier to navigate, read, and customize, without losing the simplicity that Reddit old-timers appreciate.

Steve wrote a blog entry outlining the new features and thanking our homeboy (and CSS-fiend) Rich White for his invaluable help getting this redesign together.

Of the 5 of us who work on reddit, I'm the only one who has a copy of Photoshop, so I end up being "designer." That said, I'm well aware that I'm not a proper web designer (and can't call myself one without laughing a little). But Rich is. You should see what he can do with some CSS, an HTML file, and a couple hours. It's like he's a web-McGuyver.

Thanks, Rich -- you complete me.

a bad sign for hillary at bwi

Maybe I was wrong about the signs in BWI not having a sense of humor...

ROFLCon video: the LOLcats panel I moderated

Respectably French did something uncharacteristically French (sorry, Antoine) and got this online ahead of schedule. I also mentioned it on the breadpig blog, but wanted you all to see it, too. The Guardian even wrote about it.

I had a fantastic group of panelists, who made my job very easy. Even if you're not a student of LOLspeak, I think you owe it to yourself to watch this for your own cultural edification.

And notice the slick (and shameless) LOLmagnetz promotion I sneak in there...

shameless yourweek promotion on reddit

Yes, we were pleased with yesterday's buzz, but I didn't think it'd hurt to run a house ad as well. With provocative gradients!

reddit this ad

yourweek ftw: the internet apparently likes pbs-produced, reddit-powered TV news

We announced something very cool today on the reddit blog. We're producing a television news show with PBS that is powered by reddit -- it's called YourWeek. All the content for the show will come from the reddit front page and from the YourWeek reddit (for meta discussions about the show).

We're finishing filming for the pilot this weekend, but wanted to get the word out in order to pull together some choice comments and even get some help remixing the theme song.

The pilot should go online June 6th; I can assure you that a D-Day anniversary deployment was totally coincidental.

Seems we're not the only ones excited about this, here's the latest tally of press hits from Erik (a fellow redditor and the guy running web production on their end). To quote Borat: "very nice."

http://valleywag.com/392393/wireds-reddit-launches-tv-show-your-week
http://newteevee.com/2008/05/21/reddit-users-get-their-own-tv-show/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9949715-36.html
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2008/05/21/social-media-service-reddit-gets-a-tv-show/3863
http://thestandard.com/news/2008/05/21/classy-diggnation-reddit-launches-tv-show-pbs
http://i-stuff.blogspot.com/2008/05/your-week-reddit-powered-television.html
http://www.techmeme.com/080521/p100#a080521p100
http://www.profy.com/2008/05/21/yourweek-on-reddit-and-pbs/
http://venturebeat.com/2008/05/21/the-classy-diggnation-reddit-launches-a-tv-show-with-pbs/
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/pbs_taps_wisdom_of_the_reddit_crowd
http://vcsandangels.com/blog/?p=3948
http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9949715-2.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Webware
http://www.podcastingnews.com/2008/05/21/reddit-pbs-intro-user-generated-weekly-television-show/
http://www.brentcsutoras.com/2008/05/21/reddit-and-pbs-launch-yourweek/
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/05/21/reddit-hits-the-vids-with-yourweek
http://culturite.wordpress.com/2008/05/21/reddit-headlines-to-be-magically-transformed-into-tv-news/
http://www.webtvwire.com/meet-yourweek-a-weekly-web-tv-show-following-the-latest-headlines-at-reddit/
http://www.winextra.com/2008/05/21/elite-tech-news-the-pbs-version/
http://www.reelpopblog.com/2008/05/reddit-pbs-laun.html
http://www.inquisitr.com/a-reddit-powered-tv-show-id-like-to-see-that

And yes, we even made digg -- though I really don't see the comparison:
http://digg.com/tech_news/Is_Reddit_s_New_YourWeek_TV_Program_a_Diggnation_Ripoff

.77% clickthru rate on an ad for zombie alien bobbleheads

Well, that's the effect I was going for. They're not actually zombie bobbleheads.

It was quite a feat to get it under 30K (our limit), so I'm pleased it pulled .77%

I like designing ads, but I wish there were a way for robots to do it -- they're infinitely superior. Especially if they were as anthropomorphic as R2D2 while they did it...

the new york times likes it when our geeky barbarians storm conde nast empire (presumably not to bring about its downfall)

Reporting on the recent acquisition of Ars Technica, David Carr even gives us a little shoutout:

True to form, the captains of the Condé Nast Death Star have not meddled with kids from Reddit — it was founded by a couple of students at the University of Virginia — any more than they have told Ms. Wintour what cover models to put on Vogue.

It's true, we remain rather unmeddled-with, but I wonder if he's talking about the first or second Death Star. Can I be Chewbacca?

And when do we stop being kids? I just turned 25 after all. It must be Steve's boyish good looks...

breadpig project: one roflaptop per child

Here's the latest breadpig project, getting my XO laptop (unusable with my ogreish hands) signed by the meme-makers of the Internet at ROFLCon and auctioning it on eBay for OLPC. There's even a trailer to prove it...

Or if you don't need proof, just go right to the eBay listing and bid or at the very least, email/IM it to all of your friends and family

Oh, and here's a photo of the XO laptop in Randall Munroe's embrace.

That's one lucky laptop...

reddit alien + rocket sled = fun!

Kevin Jordan had a dream. He wanted to destroy a reddit alien bobblehead using the power of rocket science. Happy to oblige, we sent him one.

He's just posted the video on his blog, I Dream in Code. If you're a fan of rocket sleds, or watching reddit aliens getting blown up (or burned), there's something there for you!

scoble's been reading programming.reddit (and getting a redesign?)

Seems Mr. Scoble has been spending some time on programming.reddit and highlights some juicy comments about the latest dose of Ballmer.

The reddit headline reads: Awkward moment for Steve Ballmer at the Microsoft MVP summit:"How many of you use Yahoo search as your default?"

To which redditor, sirbyt, simply responded:

Does Steve Ballmer have non-awkward moments?

Well played, sirbyt.

But why do I feel like the last person to know about Scoble's redesign?. Maybe that's just the kind of thing I need to boost my traffic numbers and bump me into the ranks of top tier web2.0 bloggers...


On second thought, no, that's just grotesque.

interviewed by wired's marketing guy

Conflict of interest? Of course not.

Last week, Jim Hopkinson sat down with me for his podcast, The Hopkinson Report (download and listen) and we chatted about reddit: its history, community, and the redesign.

Chris joined us for the second half of the podcast (coming on Wednesday) and even confesses the secret to beating the reddit hotness algorithm.

Oh, and there's some thought-provoking Mister Splashy Pants discussion in part II as well. Did you know he has his own Wikipedia page? That's one hell of a whale...

the independent covers reddit's helen thomas "floral thank you"

Does this mean it's a legitimate news story now?

I know reddit wasn't the only community heartened to see her line of questioning, so it'd be refreshing to see this get some more attention. The news media loves talking about itself, right? (or reporting live on breaking trapped pelican stories) The real key will be getting a photo of Thomas with the reddit alien bobblehead and a really perplexed look on her face.

Now if only we could pack a few more journalists like her into the White House press corps...