online technology and the white house - together at last!

A little while ago, I had a nice phone interview with the National Journal about the role of technology within the Obama White House. My synthesized thoughts follow those of Lawrence Lessig, a humbling position indeed.

Alexis Ohanian is one of the founders of the popular site Reddit.com, which launched in 2005 and is used by thousands to rank which news stories appear on the site's home page. Based on what he's seen with Reddit, he said, most Americans won't bother going to a site to rank projects to fund, and of those people who do visit, most won't contribute a vote. What will remain, he hopes, are people who consider themselves informed enough to cast a vote. For his part, Ohanian takes transparency a step further, dreaming of a day when the Internal Revenue Service lets Americans log in to see how their individual tax dollars are being spent and then lets them redirect their money.

Reading it this way, I felt compelled to clarify what appears to be a rather bleak forecast for participation.

Based on what he's seen with Reddit, he said, most Americans won't bother going to a site to rank projects to fund, and of those people who do visit, most won't contribute a vote.

My belief that most Americans wouldn't bother going is a combination of apathy (something I believe these technologies would ameliorate) and that the majority of reddit traffic is not logged in -- and thus non-voting.

That said, the motivations for visiting reddit.com and this policy site are quite different. The majority of redditors just want to be informed or entertained and needn't affect the rankings. Whereas I'd envision a significant portion of traffic to this site would be visitors arriving to make an impact. And you can be sure a number will be driven by email blasts from interest groups.

Ultimately, the more transparency that can be brought to the process, the better. Lessig is right to point out that replacing the decision-making process with ill-informed citizens would have a negative impact. But this technology can be just the thing to make citizens better informed about their government. If we can get up to the minute stock quotes and news about Apple, we ought to demand (and get) the same from our representatives.

After all, we're paying for them -- let's get our money's worth.

new u.s. president sworn in, reddit keeps chugging along

LATimes blogger, Mark Milian, emailed in the run up to President Obama's (haven't gotten tired of saying that yet) inauguration. He was curious to know what kind of traffic surge we expected and if there was anything we were doing to prepare. While we take great pride in our 'reddit is down' messages, we didn't expect to need them -- thankfully, I didn't eat my words:

And Reddit is equally unworried.

"Actually, we're expecting a bigger traffic spike on Wednesday as people come back to their computers loaded with stories to share from the day before," Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian said in an e-mail. "Granted, there will be plenty of people watching the inauguration with a computer on their lap, but it won't be a surge significant enough to affect us."

But Reddit has thrown together a new "site is down" image (pictured at left) in case any problems arise.

Yes, I did leak it. And I'm not ashamed of it. But I'm even happier we didn't need to use it.

businessweek doesn't want you to feel stupid for not knowing about reddit

Steve McKee wrote a piece for BusinessWeek explaining Why Social Media Is Worth Small Business Owners' Time. Although I'm not entirely convinced social media is really worth small business owners' time, I enjoyed the zen-like opening to his argument:

The first thing I want to encourage you to do is relax. Take a deep breath and release that tightness in your chest. This column isn't about making you feel stupid for not knowing what Reddit.com is, or chastising you for not having three extra hours a day to spend tweeting and blogging. I simply want to encourage you to get started. (For background on social media, check out this story.)

But the implication that not knowing what reddit.com is grounds for making someone feel stupid is a nice touch. Evidently, the alien is worth knowing about. Fear not, reddit-virgins, we'll welcome you with open arms -- probably. And if you do find yourself at odds with various communities, you can always just create your own reddit.

Steve's tone is much gentler than the approach one redditor took when leaving a note on the car of a digg fan. Thanks for that, Steve. Although you could still be the person responsible for said note...

thanks to a virus, i create the greatest advertisement in reddit history

At the moment, it has 175 points on ads.reddit. We've had voting on reddit ads for a long time now and even my favorite house ads never got more than a dozen points. Until now.

It also managed to sell a number of bobbleheads, which is nice.

If this ad doesn't resonate with you, that's OK.

If you can't stand being on the outside of an inside joke, read this -- but be warned, once you go reddit...


... still trying to come up with a rhyme for that.

cnet's don reisinger says reddit "leads the pack" - is it the alpha dog of your social network portfolio, too?

Don Reisinger of cnet offers some tips for downsizing your network portfolio. We only need to be subscribed to so many dot-coms with silly names, right?

Well not only does he nail the difference between social bookmarking (e.g., delicious) and news aggregation, he also happens to think reddit is "the keeper."

Trying to find the ideal news aggregator on the Web can be difficult. Depending on your definition, there's conceivably hundreds of services that package the best stories into one page. But it's the "social" news aggregation services, like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon that lead the pack. And although Digg is the most popular service in that grouping, I'm a firm believer that Reddit deserves to stay in your portfolio as your chosen news aggregation service.

Normally, I would pick the social site that offers the largest and most engaged community. But when it comes to news aggregation sites, Digg simply doesn't cut it. Sure, it's the biggest and arguably the most important to content sites, but that alone doesn't make it the best. Instead, I find Reddit's site design, while simple and ugly to some, incredibly useful and designed to help users find the best stories as quickly as possible without gaudy extras. But the most important differentiating factor working to Reddit's advantage is its community. It might be smaller than Digg's, but generally, the comments on each story are more edifying and lack the invective that has become a staple for Kevin Rose's brainchild.

Reddit may not be the biggest, its site design may be odd, and its community not as rabid, but in terms of providing interesting stories on a slew of topics without as much "gaming," it leads the pack and deserves to be in your social network portfolio.

Needless to say, team reddit is pretty pleased with the review. The quote our community manager, Erik: Smaller, odd, rabies-free, and pack leader. reddit = Cesar Millan!

reliving fond memories of a LOLpresentation and hoping i'll get invited to speak again

Dreams really do come true. I gave my first presentation entirely with LOLcat photos along with three other guys who probably spend too much time on the Internet. The conference was the Magazine Publisher's Association's 4th Digital Conference held in New York last February and I haven't had a PowerPoint experience quite like it since. The MPA audience was quite receptive to the silly cat photos with pidgin English captions.

Not only did they laugh, they apparently took away quite a bit, and even produced this recap that I hadn't noticed until just now. Bonus points for including my B-more Sun shoutout.

Alexis Ohanian described reddit as a site that allows users to rate what stories are worth keeping around and what stories should be sent to the lower parts of the list. Ohanian stressed that online, “great, fresh content is king.” It’s a world where a story from the Baltimore Sun could be the more important story to read than the one in The New York Times.

Readers are fickle,” he said, which can be a bad thing since users are only one click away from leaving a site. But it can also be a good thing if the site is providing good, fresh content—people won’t leave right away and a connection could be born. “Once it gets online, brand is less important. It’s still important but content is king.”

Ohanian encouraged magazine publishers to build up their online content in order to take advantage of those readers who are fanatics about the publication. They can read the print edition every day for the month and net the publisher nothing, or they can visit the site every day and net the publisher some gain.

He also encouraged publishers to get involved with user-generated content. “They’ll do a lot of work for you and for free,” he said. One example he used was an editor posting a question and readers posting their thoughts alongside other content. “It feeds itself for relatively little work,” he noted. Letting that kind of conversation occur will help build a loyal community.

joe the peacock is mentally incontinent and why that's a good thing

Mentally Incontinent is a book by Joe Peacock and the Internet. He wrote it, they edited it. Think of it as a collection of those funny stories you read about on the Internet, only they all happened to one guy (Joe). Better yet, imagine Joe as that friend you have (or wish you had) who always has those hilarious stories he tells you over a few beers. This book reads just like that beer-fueled storytelling.

And here's the best part: he's actually a nice guy. It's like Tucker Max without all the douchecockery.

So help Joe write more books and buy a copy of Mentally Incontinent for someone you love or even just like (or yourself, if you don't like yourself, this book might change that).

Either because the economy sucks or because he's a classy guy, Joe made the book available for your reading pleasure on Google. Take a look-see.

belated happy new year, thanks to the (not)great firewall of vietnam

Fun fact: Blogger.com and all blogspot blogs are blocked in Vietnam. While this is mildly inconveniencing for the traveler, for Vietnamese, this kind of censorship must be quite frustrating -- not just because they can't read my blog. Combine Vietnam's rapid development with the growing global movement for Internet freedom and I'm certain the government will find this censorship harder and harder to maintain. And that's a great thing.

Anyway, here's a recap of reddit news from the last couple of weeks:

We continued our well-publicized love affair with Treehuger, which published its top 25 reddited stories of 2008.

There were some epic Zune pun threads on reddit thanks to an epic Zune failure. The Guardian reported on the pun-tastic behavior, as did CrunchNotes.

The LATimes found the modern hobo code traveling up the reddit front page.

And Gizmodo reported on the greatness of the Yoshimoto Cube, which bubbled up on science.reddit.

instant quaker reddit

zachalexander just created a quaker reddit for the online Quaker community. He blogged about it on his LiveJournal and thus I couldn't help but give him a shout-out here.

Best of luck growing your new reddit. Hopefully it develops as quickly as some of that instant oatmeal. I have a feeling there won't be many flamewars or trolls on a Quaker reddit.

Remember, zachalexander, you can customize the look of your reddit with a little CSS, or simply change the logo. Not that I have any suggestions...

an extra serving of holiday mirth

FeedANeed is kicking ass and taking names -- literally (well, only the second part, that's how we sign up all our volunteers and non-profits). Erik is doing some great work, but that would obviously be moot if it weren't for our community, which has responded so enthusiastically.

And I can't say enough about the job a bunch of Canadian geeks did with HoHoTO. In fact, I thought I'd said everything here on the breadpig blog. But here it is again, just because I'm so impressed by how a disparate group of people can mobilize and do some good so quickly and efficiently.

I'm actually feeling good about 09.

JoelOnSoftware gets a neat redesign - with a few blurry aliens

Joel got a redesign. It's pretty hip. It features a header with a huge picture of the FogCreek offices. And if you look closely in the upper-left corner...

I'm waiting to get some conclusive numbers back, but I'm almost certain those bobbleheads have increased FogCreek productivity significantly. Thanks for not cropping them out, Joel.

And a thanks to Mike, an avid Spolsky reader, for first pointing this out.

reddit is trying to make the world suck a little less again this december

One year ago it was the reddit-xkcd fundraiser for the EFF (as chosen by the greater reddit community). This year, it's Feed A Need.

The economy sucks and we know that. More to the point, Erik realized that, so when he joined reddit, he came armed with a radical new idea for this year's fundraiser.

It wouldn't even be a fundraiser. It would be a skill-raiser.

To quote blog.reddit:

This holiday season, reddit.com is launching its first Feed A Need project. Instead of asking for monetary donations, we're asking people to donate a few hours of their skills & energy. So if you are a programmer, designer, artist, lawyer, geology professor, bacon cooker, or anyone else with a few hours to spend for a good cause please consider participating in this year's Feed a Need charity drive.

And from these volunteers, a chunk will be randomly selected to win a range of prizes - including an XBOX 360 (with games) from Destructoid and autographed XKCD goodies. Of course, none of these great prizes will compare to that feeling you get from volunteering some of your time and skills. But they are nice.

deadspin gets a redesign, blames reddit

How touching. Deadspin got a very reddit-esque redesign

Yeah, yeah. I know. You're looking at this page and thinking 'when the hell did Deadspin turn into Reddit?'

But relax. What you're seeing right now is the "condensed" version of the front page. This whole thing is done to make the Deadspin reading experience more enjoyable, especially for people who just like to skim headlines and pretty photos of Steve Young getting bopped in the face with a plastic cup.

Aww, shucks. Thanks for the shout-out, DAULERIO.

I think it'd be worth asking Nick why you don't have reddit buttons yet...

We've got an up and coming sports.reddit, you know. Don't worry, I'm not going to tell it -- it's sensitive.

bostonist is reading reddit (appropriate, given we're a boston - er, somerville - founded company)

Yes, we were happy to read that students in Massachusetts are defying the overall American trend of math and science failure.

Bostonist nailed it in this recent entry, Mass Kids Smarter than Scottish Schoolchildren, Slightly Dumber than Singaporeans:

Unfortunately, the US as a whole still lags behind at 539, which could mean that while we won the race to the Moon, even Latvia could beat us to Mars. Here's hoping that with a sitting president in office who values math (read: won't insist on manipulating data to suit his needs) and science (read: doesn't believe that humans and dinosaurs shared caves back in the old days) these scores will improve. Until then, Reddit readers may continue to vote this story up as proof that the liberals of Massachusetts are, in fact, smarter than the rest of the country.

Sure, redditors were no doubt upvoting this with gusto, but despite the misleading reddit headline, this has little to do with ideology (left or right) and more to do with a heightened focus on math and science education.

That, and I bet all of those kids who skewed up the average are hardcore redditors...

the secret is out

I take it as a compliment that people still get surprised we're not just "some dudes in their basement." A redditor named oddasudda just realized we'd been acquired.

We've tried to maintain the feel of a small site and Condé Nast has gone out of their way to not intervene with how we operate reddit. As a result, the site has continued to grow and we continue to have disappointed redditors learn we've got health insurance and work in an office.

And we've even open sourced!

In fact, we're still learning about our own users, who volunteered to share a bit about themselves on this ask.reddit: Who Are You?

a good week for cute on thecutelist

We've been busy naming dogs and a cat on reddit's TheCuteList, but this is our second reddit dog (Bacon was our first). Andrewinmelbourne spotted this dapper canine and submitted it yesterday.

Granted, redditors like mdedm were conflicted:

+1 for Reddit logo. -1 for putting a shirt on a dog.

But that's why you can vote up, down, and not at all. Don't worry, reddit dog, I voted you up.

going to be in new york on january 24th? you should be

Mark your calendar for the first ROFLThing of 2009: January 24th, 2009. New York will never be the same.

Not only will it be as epic an event as the first ever ROFLCon of last April, it's also going to be hosted by me. I'm still trying to decide on a costume, but I have a feeling this is an event you wont want to miss.

It's the same ROFLtastic team who brought you all those other flavors of ROFL, only this one is going to be in the New York city, which means LOLcats doing lines off strippers and TronGuy brawling with Naked Cowboy (TronGuy wins, easily).

They generously announced it on the ROFLBlog, but you should probably see my moderation of the LOLcats panel that sealed the deal.

And then watch this clip from the original ROFLCon in Cambridge:

biggest reddit alien ever

I need to share this. A redditor called AlLnAtuRalX made a huge frigging alien.

He shared it in this comment thread two months ago, yet somehow I only found it this week.

A huge Reddit alien (55 inches x 42.5 inches) on my wall above where I sleep... I am welcoming our new overlords.

Took me an hour to make, but it was worth it.

And we're even treated to an update:

it's still proudly taking up that whole wall... You can see it from outside my house and at night it kind of glows... Makes for a nice eerie, Reddit-y feeling as I near my house :D.

I can only hope that one day everyone gets a "nice, eerie, reddit-y feeling" when they approach their house...

sarah palin invades reddit? i think this was photoshopped

Whoa, ProbablySucks.com must really like Mrs. Palin. Will the LOL-Palin catch on?

half-life redux is 1 minute and 54 seconds of awesome

Now this is impressive.