Reddit is one of the most popular social media platforms out there. Its website is the 9th most visited in the world and the 6th most visited in the US. In this article, we’ll review the beloved platform’s history, look into its mobile app and discover Reddit’s San Francisco headquarters.
The platform has 1.5 billion users who take advantage of it to learn, share and debate in communities dedicated to basically any topic that crosses your mind.
The history of Reddit
Reddit was founded in 2005 by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. The founders met at the University of Virginia and created the platform for fun. Their initial idea was to find a way to order food from local gas stations through their cell phones.
Although this idea didn’t get much traction, they soon came up with a better one: creating a front page for the internet. That same year, San Francisco-based accelerator Y Combinator gave them $100,000 for what we now know as Reddit.
Soon after, Reddit merged with Infogami, a content management system created by programmer Aaron Swartz. The programmer rewrote the codebase for Reddit and the platform soon took off.
In 2006, the platform was acquired by Condé Nast Publications and soon moved its offices to San Francisco. In 2010, now established as a subsidiary company, Reddit started offering memberships to make the platform profitable.
As of 2022, Reddit has over 1.5B registered users, with 430M monthly active users and 52M using the platform every day. The site has over 130,000 active communities and is most popular in the 18-29 age range.
Reddit basics
Reddit cannot be categorized as just one thing. The online platform combines social news, web content, a social network, and a forum all in one place.
Reddit members are not only able to contribute content in all shapes and sizes (links, text, images, and videos), they can also upvote or downvote other users’ content.
Regarding the forum aspect of Reddit, the platform is divided into subreddits encompassing specific topics. In short, subreddits are micro-communities that cover anything and everything, from crafts and fitness to entrepreneurship and science. There is even a subreddit devoted to pointless stories. You can sort posts in subreddits by popularity or how recent or controversial they are.
As for its social media aspect, Reddit includes personal profiles with everything users post and a “Home” page showing posts of the subreddits they are following. There is also a chat to communicate with other Redditors. That said, Reddit is more focused on the community than the individual.
Moreover, the platform relies on anonymity as users don’t usually use their real names. Many also have a main account and several “throwaway” ones when they don’t want to be recognized. This anonymity allows users to interact more freely than on other social media platforms. However, this does not mean you get a free pass to do whatever you want. The Reddit community is good at policing itself and every subreddit has its own set of rules.
Accounts’ credibility is based on Reddit Karma points. You earn these points through upvotes on your posts and comments on other people’s posts. You can also lose points through downvoting.
Reddit also has its very own jargon. Strangers to the platform might be puzzled by acronyms such as DAE or FTFY. Seasoned Redditors, however, know they stand for “does anyone else” and “fixed that for you,” respectively.
If you’d like to know more about how to use the platform, check out this article.
Reddit mobile app
In addition to its website, Reddit has an official mobile app that has been downloaded over 120M times. In fact, most US users (72%) access the platform through their phones.
The mobile app rolled out a Discover Tab in early 2022, which has proven to be highly successful in engaging new users. Reddit also added Community and Profile Drawers to help users organize and prioritize the communities they are involved with. You can learn more about these new features here.
In addition to the official app, there are quite a few unofficial options. You can find some of the best ones for both iOS and Android in this article.
Reddit developer community
Among Reddit’s countless communities, quite a few are devoted to the development world. There is one for programming, one for developers, one specifically for web developers, and one for machine learning. Not to mention there is at least one for each development technology currently in use.
Reddit’s developer community is full of resources to learn, and members offer each other support and help in their endeavors. The community is so strong that Reddit has even announced they’ll be launching a developer portal for those who want to build extensions for the platform.
Reddit San Francisco headquarters
Reddit has been based in San Francisco since 2006. Originally in Tenderloin, the company’s offices are now located in the Mid-Market neighborhood, where you can also find Twitter’s headquarters.
So what are Reddit’s San Francisco headquarters like? Well, the company has an open office floor plan and also offers a remote work program. Cross-functional training is encouraged and the company provides paid holidays and sick days.
The company doubled the number of employees from 350 in 2018 to 700 in 2022. Of course, not all of them work at Reddit’s San Francisco headquarters; this represents the number of employees across the globe.
Reddit employees seem very happy with the company, as 95% of them describe it as a great place to work. The three main reasons cited for the company’s popularity are its culture, benefits, and people.
If you want to take a peek at life at Reddit’s San Francisco headquarters, you can see some staff photos here.
Final thoughts on Reddit’s San Francisco HQ
We can’t deny Reddit’s popularity and usefulness. People find support, share resources, and interact in ways not possible on other social media platforms.
Moreover, its employees have excellent benefits and Reddit’s San Francisco headquarters seems to be an incredible place to work.
We hope you’ve found this insight into this social media monster useful. Have you found your favorite subreddit yet?
