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Reddit prepares to launch new news website 'Upvoted'
- DigitalSea 11y agoEh. This feels like what Digg pivoted into, a news website. Except of course, Reddit will be providing the content so it will be more straightforward. Interestingly they mention that it has been in the works for the last year, it seems like this is going to be a basic Wordpress site (unless the hosting page currently is misleading).
- almostarockstar 11y agoUsing wordpress as a CMS would be quite suitable. I would assume what makes more than 'just another wordpress site' will the back end. Load balancing, caching etc. I would have expected a custom landing page though.
- wiiittttt 11y agoDNS for the domain only has a 300 second TTL. The site can easily be pointed somewhere else before the launch. ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;upvoted.com. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: upvoted.com. 300 IN A 192.0.79.33 upvoted.com. 300 IN A 192.0.79.32
- DigitalSea 11y agoSeems they are indeed using Wordpress (based on the page source). The real site is here: https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com/ https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com/ - I think you'll find they're using existing plugins for load-balancing and caching. I don't know specifics though, so a fair bit could be custom but it seems to me 90% of this site was probably design and 10% development.
- dang 11y agoAlso https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10336961 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10336961.
- jacobheller 11y agoAs of Tuesday at midnight, here's what you see at http://upvoted.com http://upvoted.com: http://i.imgur.com/KsnPvXN.png http://i.imgur.com/KsnPvXN.png
- r-w 11y agoCould it end up being built on WordPress?
- meritt 11y agoSure. Something to monitor reddit for highly upvoted and interesting content. Once it hits a certain threshold, add the post to WP. Generate the cache entry and you're pretty well set.
- r-w 11y agoWell, I was commenting in particular on the fact that the site is currently a private WordPress server. The plan appears to be a bit more involved than aggregation, comprising interviews with Reddit OPs and curated articles written by Reddit staff themselves (although they’re probably hiring mostly new people to work on that).
- anabis 11y agoThis sounds like まとめサイト, "curation site" for 2ch.net . Take interesting threads from the main site and edit comments to make it more palatable for the wider audience. It generates quite a revenue from affiliate contracts, I hear.
- wodenokoto 11y agoI don't know if it still is, but most of Yahoo's magazine content is run on Wordpress. There is nothing weird about building news sites on Wordpress.
- debacle 11y agoIMHO that looks really awful.
- orthoganol 11y ago> Reddit has a reputation as the dark, unruly id of the Internet Stopped reading there.
- Fluid_Mechanics 11y agoSomeone needs to introduce the author to /b/.
- archagon 11y agoSorry, but it's true. From what I've observed, Reddit has started to supplant 4chan in that role in the public eye.
- orthoganol 11y ago? From what I've observed, people either don't know much about Reddit (usually over 40 y/o), or they talk about Reddit like an established site. See Bloomberg's interview with Sam Altman posted today. See the consistently incredible turn out of famous figures to Reddit's AMA series. I mean, how can a website with 200 million users be considered a "dark corner"? Absurd.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pvg 11y agoI'm over 40 and my reddit badge looks like this: https://s3.amazonaws.com/redditstatic/award/9_year_club-40.png https://s3.amazonaws.com/redditstatic/award/9_year_club-40.p... I don't think it's an entirely absurd statement.
- 36erhefg 11y agoarchagon is making the hasty generalization combined with a biased sample fallacy.
- Angostura 11y agoThere are over 300,000 Subreddits. Plenty of room for dark corners, even if the thing as a whole is well known.
- jorams 11y ago> But most importantly, it just isn’t Reddit. I think the thing that would set Upvoted apart, and that's basically the one reason it could work, is the fact that under the hood it is Reddit. Reddit has an enormous community that practically supplies stories and also validates them as "traffic-worthy". I've seen several articles on other news sites that were clearly inspired by a popular post on Reddit, though I can't currently find a good example. If other people are doing it, why not Reddit themselves?
- jonlucc 11y agoEvery terrestrial radio station I've listened to has a story a couple times a month about the "top 10 things people said about something" that is lifted directly from a top post in /r/AskReddit. Some stations mention that it's from Reddit, but some don't.
- wingerlang 11y ago> Nor, despite its name, will it have any kind of upvoting system Well the name says the stories have already been upvoted, so no system of the sorts are really implied anyway. I'm sure there are more takes on that though.
- nindalf 11y ago> Rather it will post sponsored content paid for and approved by advertising partners—and written by the same editorial team that writes editorial posts. “They’re going to be just as interesting as actual content,” Chang says. “It could be a piece on Tesla, a piece on how WiFi works, no matter what it’ll be good content—and it’ll just happened to be sponsored.” This gives me some disquiet. I realise that this is what advertisers want - high quality ads that can't be blocked, but I think its harmful. In general, I avoid going to sites that have a policy of doing this.
- anc84 11y agoSites like Buzzfeed are cashing in hard with this kind of sham so this fad will ruin a lot more sites in the coming years.
- crdb 11y agoI talked to an Australian magazine that will remain nameless where the executive on the other side of the table told me their business model was 100% sponsored content. I couldn't tell, from their website. Every single article was a sophisticated ad. He said they were doing fantastically and growing fast, users wanted that kind of stuff. It reminds me of Ogilvy's book on advertising [1]; Ogilvy's experience taught him that informative ads that explained the advantages of the product were most successful with customers. Sponsored content is exactly that, and the opposite might be something like clickbait [2]. Sponsored articles are accessed voluntarily by the customer clicking on them and reading them, and returning to the site; they are unobstrusive being mostly made of text and of (relatively) higher editorial quality, with good photography and so on. I wonder if they are the future of advertising. On the topic of being unable to filter advertorial content from, well, content, I don't think it's as clear cut as ads vs not-ads, since every writer has their own set of opinions and presents their world view only (with few exceptions). A necessary life skill is critical thinking, learning to dissect an argument, examine its assumptions and data, and come to an independent conclusion as to the point it is making. [1] core principles are summarized in his "house ad": http://smartonlinesuccess.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/david-ogilvy-how-to-create-advertising-that-sells.jpeg http://smartonlinesuccess.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/dav... [2] famously (NSFW): http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/a-history-of-evony-ads-the-insanity-continues/ http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/a-history-of-evony-ads...
- personjerry 11y agoSo tomorrow Reddit launches its own version of 9gag?
- romanovcode 11y agoMore like own version of Digg
- felixthehat 11y agoBuzzfeed, usvsth3m, The Metro and their ilk just recycle reddit submissions anyway, I think it makes sense for reddit to take a slice of that pie themselves.
- rayalez 11y agoI think it's a smart and awesome decision. Curated reddit. It solves so many problems and can offer a lot of value to everybody. - People who want "clean" and moderated reddit get what they want, - advertisers get what they want, - and, hopefully, reddit users get what they want(because there will be less pressure to moderate reddit.com). At the very least they will capture all the value that buzzfeed and other bad blogs are currently taking from reddit. Everybody wins.
- adrusi 11y agoHardly any will be captured by this new venture. This is in competition with clickbait sites and internet culture sites like 9gag. At best it will capture some lurkers.
- pjc50 11y agoless pressure to moderate reddit.com I very much doubt it; the pressure to moderate harder comes from within redditors as well whenever the toxic subreddits leak.
- cuchoi 11y agoI feel that this can disincentivize commenting. I am probably going to be a user of Upvoted, taking me out of Reddit where I comment when a story compels me to do it. If there is more people like me, you will reduce your commenting user base.
- nahiluhmot 11y agoI've got a feeling that the Reddit community won't be too keen on this, mostly seeing it as another news organization "stealing" their content. IMO a good way to get users behind this would be to compensate the original posters for their content being posted on Upvoted.
- austenallred 11y agoMeh. I'm putting it on Reddit, I'd rather they profit from it than Buzzfeed.
- flashman 11y ago9.5-year-old Reddit account here, so perhaps my view is atypical, but I see this as Reddit's answer to the new Digg, and to the broader trend of editorial curation as a counterpart (not necessarily a competitor) to aggregation. Reddit has web aggregation and communities pretty much sewn up as a market. How can they grow? By leveraging their insight into that traffic to create their own publication. I think they see their audience for Upvoted as people who know what Reddit is, and perhaps use it, but aren't power users and just like to have interesting and entertaining stuff presented to them. Best of luck to them, I certainly don't think Upvoted's success is written in stone (especially given Reddit's history of half-delivering on their initiatives).
- Grue3 11y ago>I see this as Reddit's answer to the new Digg Why does the new Digg need answering though? It's now nothing but an obscure website that is only mentioned in connection to how big it once was.
- Scarblac 11y agoI wish companies would stop trying to grow, and just continue doing their best at what they do best. Everything that tries to keep growing always goes to shit after a while.
- gopowerranger 11y agoI'm pretty sure the Reddit community is exactly what they want to get away from with this.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- romanovcode 11y agoSeems like Reddit has the same fate as Digg after all.
- vnchr 11y agoAlmost no mention of it on Reddit prior to this story [0] aside from rumors in a couple small Subreddits. Feels weird as a Reddit user to see something like this out in the news without attempts for creating community buy-in, as if the Reddit team has lost faith in aligning with their user base and instead leans toward working around them. EDIT: The Wired article is starting to make its way around [1] [0] https://www.reddit.com/search?q=upvoted.com&sort=new&t=week https://www.reddit.com/search?q=upvoted.com&sort=new&t=week [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3nnw6v/reddit_launching_new_site_called_upvoted_that/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3nnw6v/reddit_l...
- fluidcruft 11y agoI think it makes sense as a strategy to leverage the existing backend with a new frontend that caters to an entirely different audience. If I were building that to attract a new audience, I wouldn't particularly care what current users think. For example, I think it's pretty well known that reddit is much more successful among men whereas women have preferred other aggregators. If executed well, a new view that sidelines the traditional reddit interface could be a valid alternative for people that are turned off by aspects of reddit's community. I think it depends on whether reddit is being smart (targeting pinterest) vs retarded (targeting 9gag).
- debacle 11y agoLets be honest here: Reddit has done a lot of censoring lately. It's not a surprise you're not hearing anything about Upvoted on Reddit, it's just sad.
- rspeer 11y ago...what? How does that make sense? You think Reddit is censoring discussion of its own news website?
- mason240 11y agoThey have made it pretty clear over the last couple of years that want to jettison their original userbase for a much larger, more mainstream userbase. There is more money in it so I can't say I blame them, but they had better hope they have the critical mass needed to make that happen.
- T3RMINATED 11y agobasically digg.com
- snarfy 11y agoIf I wanted editorial content and spin I'd read mainstream news.