23 ms·

Reddit Presents: Upvoted

276 points by jsnathan 11y ago

mikepurvis 11y ago
Looks like Buzzfeed and every other online clickbait publication.
- negrit 11y ago
  That's the idea behind it. Though Buzzfeed actually have a news branch with actual journalists behind it based in west-coast & east-coast. I was interviewed by a couple of them and it was a pleasant experience. I don't know if upvoted is planning on hiring journalists on staff. May be Alexis can tell us more here.
  - Laaw 11y ago
    Seems like they do have journalists* on staff, according to Alexis, in these comments. * "202M+ people can surface his story and raise a ton of money, but our team of reporters has a much easier time following up to close the loop." Is what he said earlier in the comments, I'm sure he'll clarify if I've gotten anything wrong.
  - alexis 11y ago
    We have an awesome Editor, Vickie Chang, who manages a small team of staff writers and freelancers: http://upvoted.com/contributors/ http://upvoted.com/contributors/
- asb 11y ago
  It's not a patch on the excellent Clickhole http://www.clickhole.com/ http://www.clickhole.com/. I hope it's profitable for The Onion
kawera 11y ago
Sad that The Redditor didn't work out: http://www.theredditor.com/ http://www.theredditor.com/
- TomGullen 11y ago
  Never sure what the point of having it as a PDF is apart from being able to print it nicely which has got to be a minority, especially considering it's thick and colourful.
  - kawera 11y ago
    Agree as for the format but what I appreciated was the content, pretty good in my opinion.
  - prawn 11y ago
    There's previously been a PDF-based collection of HN stories/comments too.
    - whatusername 11y ago
      http://hackermonthly.com/ http://hackermonthly.com/
allsystemsgo 11y ago
Is this Reddit trying to take itself more seriously? It's almost like a mask layer to obfuscate the hive mind. I'm curious how the content is created, how something is featured, etc.
- negrit 11y ago
  Content curated for upvoted.com is based on the most upvoted stories on reddit[1]. As for what is featured and where on the homepage is probably based on editorial choices as well as most viewed post. [1]http://www.wired.com/2015/10/no-comments-allowed-reddits-new-news-site-upvoted/ http://www.wired.com/2015/10/no-comments-allowed-reddits-new...
  - debacle 11y ago
    You missed the part about sponsorship being part of the curation.
    - alexis 11y ago
      No. Trending articles are determined by traffic and not salable. When we do have a sponsored post on upvoted.com (just like on reddit.com) it's clearly marked as sponsored. http://upvoted.com/promoted/the-united-franks-of-america-goldbely/ http://upvoted.com/promoted/the-united-franks-of-america-gol...
- ljk 11y ago
  Also from the article http://www.wired.com/2015/10/no-comments-allowed-reddits-new-news-site-upvoted/ http://www.wired.com/2015/10/no-comments-allowed-reddits-new... > it will post sponsored content paid for and approved by advertising partners—and written by the same editorial team that writes editorial posts. “
- alexis 11y ago
  It's a way to follow up on stories that bubble up on Reddit's frontpages and give them more depth. 202M+ people can do a great job surfacing and discussing content in real-time, but our awesome editor, Vickie, and her team can do a much more effective job following up on those stories, interviewing, and adding more substance. E.g., This photo of an unemployed man handing out resumes went to the top of r/pics: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3kc1sh/this_man_lost_his_job_and_is_struggling_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3kc1sh/this_man_lost_... We interviewed the guy pictured + wrote about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Upvoted/comments/3kxp7q/bottom_of_the_ninth_why_this_unemployed_father/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Upvoted/comments/3kxp7q/bottom_of_t... Then a week later a photo of the guy (now with a job) topped on r/pics again and a random redditor linked to our story to provide context for everyone on the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3lv1b3/way_to_go_reddit_you_helped_the_guy_passing_out/cv9lojy https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3lv1b3/way_to_go_redd... This was back when we just posted as selfposts to r/upvoted, so I suspect that same article in a beautiful blog layout: http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/donnie-grooms-unemployed-busch-stadium-resume/ http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/donnie-grooms-unemployed-busch... Would do even better and reach even more people!
notacoward 11y ago
Nice. The thing I don't like about Reddit itself is that it's hard to find what each article is actually about, and most of the time it's some in-jokey/meme-y stuff I wouldn't have bothered with if I'd been able to see even one image or quote. Finding quality content there is hard; if I wanted to spend that much time separating wheat from chaff I might as well try Google+. Upvoted looks like a much more accessible way to get some light reading/entertainment done. Good idea, and AFAICT so far a good implementation.
pvg 11y ago
http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-redditorial.html http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-reddit... actually explains what it is and might be a more informative link.
- alexis 11y ago
  Thanks and here is my welcome note: http://upvoted.com/2015/10/06/a-redditorial-publication/ http://upvoted.com/2015/10/06/a-redditorial-publication/
  - mthoms 11y ago
    Alexis, You might want to put some of that in the about menu. Right now it's not immediately obvious what the site is/does.
  - pvg 11y ago
    Oops, I did see that first but my initial uncaffeinated impression was that it was the intro for advertisers rather than users, what with the open rates and the click throughs and the numbers. One the more entertaining/interesting things about original subreddit content is that it often gets fleshed out, corrected (occasionally to a full 180˚) and otherwise improved by further contributions. I'm curious how upvoted deals with that. Perhaps your editor could do an AMA sometime after things settle down post-launch.
roymurdock 11y ago
For anyone confused about why this exists: http://upvoted.com/advertise/ http://upvoted.com/advertise/
- bhrgunatha 11y ago
  A safe place to generate ad revenue.
minimaxir 11y ago
There was a recent allegation that the Reddit administration had encouraged vote brigading with Tom Hanks' comments: http://i.imgur.com/Obafhpc.png http://i.imgur.com/Obafhpc.png From the looks of the Upvoted front page, looks like they're doing it as a content marketing strategy, which doesn't bode well. Also, it seems like a BuzzFeed clone, which Redditors despise. (Disclosure: although I have done a LOT of work analyzing Reddit [http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-bigquery/ http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-bigquery/], I have not been approached to write anything for Upvoted)
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  > Also, it seems like a BuzzFeed clone, which Redditors despise. I'll stipulate that some redditors despise buzzfeed, but the population of users is too big for you to be that assertive. I bet you despise it, though, and decided that you are the protoredditor. Am I right?
  - minimaxir 11y ago
    No, you are not right. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1vqs25/whats_up_with_all_the_animosity_towards_buzzfeed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1vqs25/whats_... Actually, many of the comments in the Reddit thread about Upvoted have this sentiment too: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_upvoted_a_redditorial_publication/ http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_upv...
  - Domenic_S 11y ago
    Shouldn't it be more likely that a common attitude is true [0] within a big userbase? [0] Where "true" == many/most users feel the same way.
- alexis 11y ago
  The top thread on the announcement is a great discussion of why it's so important to us to credit Redditors in every article, which folks seem to appreciate. https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_upvoted_a_redditorial_publication/cvq6trw https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_up... As for Tom, here's what I posted on r/defaultmods addressing that concern. >> I ran those ads when I learned Tom was using the site. I did that because for the last few weeks more and more celebrities have been coming on or reaching out to use reddit as members of the community. And we've run sponsored headline to draw attention to it, these ads have been viewed over 14M times in the last couple of weeks without incident. They've also performed exceptionally well (Bill Gates' for instance had 368% higher CTR than average). +That moment when Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) shows up to compliment your Rebel helmet patch +Oh, just Bill Gates hanging out on r/infographics +Lil Dicky drops a new music video, shows up in the comments of r/Music thread Admittedly, these ads all went up at least 24hrs after the celeb showed up and left, whereas I jumped on the Tom Hanks one as soon as I realized it was happening. We're not going to do that again. Those ads also performed very well (63% higher than site average) but were a really bad look. To be clear: we're not paying them. They're coming because we're actually making progress showing them the value of joining the community. Wynter (u/808sandhotcakes) has been doing a lot of great work, by virtue of her great reputation in the industry alone, people are genuinely reaching out to learn how to join the Reddit community. We're excited about that, because it clearly makes our users very happy and by every account the talent enjoys it, too. edit: (See, I'm already getting better: Arnold + Adam Savage stopped by since Tom and no obnoxious sponsored headlines.)
TomGullen 11y ago
Looks nice, functions nicely, I can see what they are doing but it's just not for me. Content appears pretty shallow at a brief browse through it all, buzzfeed esque.
- alexis 11y ago
  Take a look at the piece on survivors of suicide, it's one of my favorites from launch: http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/survivors-of-suicide-spent-their-last-days-on-earth/ http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/survivors-of-suicide-spent-the... We're not trying to be first with a cheap quick post (Reddit.com is always going to be faster than any newsroom anyway) and I'm really excited about the vision Vickie (editor) has for longer-form features like this one.
- dikdik 11y ago
  Agreed. But from what I see through my social media, a large majority love the shallow content. Instagram is filled with highly-followed users that just repost curated reddit content (fuckjerry, thefatjewish, etc), it's obviously filling a large niche.
staunch 11y ago
I sold upvoted.com to Alexis Ohanian earlier this year. I'm glad it's not just a redirect anymore! I wanted to do something cool with it but never did. Then one day I got an email from an assistant of Alexis Ohanian's asking to sell it cheap for his little school project :P I knew he was just trying to avoid being gouged, so I offered to sell it to Alexis for his initial asking price, if he'd give me a meeting and some feedback on my startup. He agreed and we had a good meeting. He gave my co-founder and I some genuinely usable advice, and technically funded our bootstrapped startup (https://portal.cloud https://portal.cloud) for a few weeks there.
- alexis 11y ago
  Thanks again! Let's have another date. Email me! edit: Update: It's happening!!!!!! Thanks, HN.
  - staunch 11y ago
    Thank you! Would love to talk some more. Sent.
  - ForFreedom 11y ago
    @alexis Why on a wordpress VIP? http://ajean.net/reddits-news-website-upvoted-com/ http://ajean.net/reddits-news-website-upvoted-com/
    - on_ 11y ago
      Wordpress is an extremely new framework, so it will be new to a lot of developers, but it provides an extremely performant developer friendly product. One drawback is that it is highly specialized, so it only had a few applications but luckily upvoted fits into this niche. Hosting is really still a problem as their is a lack of providers and a steep complexity curve. No one has really provided a flexible way to host a platform like wordpress and coupled with the lack of maturity and bleeding edge nature it makes sense that they went with a managed hosting service. Even as new as the organization is, they have a great array of security products and plugins which will certainly shield it from the less scrupulous users. This is going to likely be the first major company using wordpress, but I bet it could be a platform that will underpin a large percentage of websites.
tscosj 11y ago
Is that ordinary Wordpress site?
- johnward 11y ago
  wordpress.com it appears /wp-admin redirect to https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com the footer: Powered by WordPress.com VIP
thejew 11y ago
Looks like it's a Wordpress blog: http://upvoted.com/wp-admin http://upvoted.com/wp-admin
- tscosj 11y ago
  https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com/wp-admin/ https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com/wp-admin/
- minimaxir 11y ago
  For this use case, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a WordPress blog.
  - debacle 11y ago
    There may be. WordPress is not ironclad and Reddit is a big target. At the very least, there's value in whitelisting IP access to the wp-admin login.
CJKinni 11y ago
So this feels like a way of obfuscating comments and some of the less appealing aspects of the reddit community, while turning it into a buzzfeed style community. It feels like a prettier version of http://thisisthe.link/ http://thisisthe.link/
- alexis 11y ago
  Every article posted to upvoted.com gets submitted to http://reddit.com/r/upvoted http://reddit.com/r/upvoted with a link at the bottom of said article. We were not going to put facebook comments an DEFINITELY not going to take devs away from all the work they've been doing on mod/community tools (http://reddit.com/r/modnews http://reddit.com/r/modnews), alien blue, and infrastructure.
tlrobinson 11y ago
Publications like BuzzFeed have been making money off of Reddit's content, or at least content discovered on Reddit, for years. Makes sense Reddit would want to capture some of that value.
- rndn 11y ago
  Maybe I’m mistaken, but it seems to me that Reddit would be much better off as a dontation-based non-profit. It seems ethical that nobody should make money off of user-generated content except the users are compensated for their time (which is unpractical); at least not beyond what’s necessary to keep the system up and running and occasionally add handy features to it. I bet the amount of time it takes to develop and run Reddit fades in face of the collective amount of time there is spent on creating and curating content by millions of people. I’m actually surprised that none of the comments here are touching on this point.
austenallred 11y ago
I think this is a brilliant move. To all those saying whether or not current redditors will use it: that's not the point. This is Reddit attempting to use the content users generate on the platform for the 99% of people who don't use Reddit. Call it buzzfeed if you want, an absurd amount of people use buzzfeed. So long as Reddit and Upvoted are separate, I think it makes a ton of sense.
- alexis 11y ago
  Thanks. Yep, they're separate, but based on the success of the Upvoted podcast and newsletter over this year, we definitely see the potential of upvoted.com to be a gateway to get new users into Reddit. One reason why, for instance, we have a link to a comment section on r/upvoted at the bottom of every article (each Upvoted.com gets automatically submitted to r/upvoted upon posting).
  - halcyondaze 11y ago
    Yo Alexis - was the main logic behind starting this the fact that so many other sites are using Reddit UGC to drive their content machines (and thus revenues)?
tumes 11y ago
It's interesting to me that between this and Apple's news app that we're steering to a less-social-engagement centric model for news presentation. One new way to save myself from looking at the comments.
joesweeney 11y ago
I feel that normal Reddit users are going to hate this for the most part because it does a lot of the same things that BuzzFeed does in that it takes content from Reddit presents it in a somewhat dumbed-down, clickbait way. However, I don't think this is a problem. Upvoted is not supposed to be for Redditors, it's supposed to be for a different audience who isn't yet ready for Reddit. It's going to capture at least some of the traffic that usually lands on other clickbait sites which take content from Reddit, and it's going to allow them to monetize.
- gcb0 11y ago
  yes. and nobody cares. they already have the normal reddit user. they want the rest now.
dom96 11y ago
This looks awesome but I am scared to keep it open for too long as it looks like an even bigger time sink than Reddit.
ebbv 11y ago
Here's a question I have; reddit is full of liars. What efforts are the Upvoted staff making to verify stuff that appears on reddit before bringing it over to Upvoted?
- gcb0 11y ago
  they will do nothing, because they are not journalists. "The newsletter has hundreds of thousands of subscribers that wake up each Sunday to enjoy a curated digest in their inbox. Last month, we started posting original content directly to r/upvoted, including an interview with the guy handing out his resume at Busch Stadium. The subreddit amassed its highest traffic with over 700,000 unique visitors. With Upvoted, editorial, original video, podcasts, and graphic art have a place to thrive and tell Reddit’s tales in the most creative ways possible." -- http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-redditorial.html http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-reddit... it is nothing more than a pretty RSS feed with a little curation and images, linking to all the lies that are business as usual on reddit.
  - Laaw 11y ago
    I said this in another comment, but based on what Alexis said here, it seems like there might actually be staffers (reporters) doing additional research into the stories as they appear on upvoted.com.
jokoon 11y ago
Can't really like this, but at least it has the virtue of containing the kind of stuff that happened to digg. Whatever happens, I'm really with reddit in light of all the controversies that surrounded it. I really have a high esteem of community driven websites who can be user-oriented and still grow and attract more users. It's not an easy task. I'm sure there must be some kind of game theory around it if you want to keep it going. Making balanced rules for such a website might be no easy thing. Some call it "plebeian" but I think it's still a very good website if you don't focus too much on the default subreddits. I will never be able to wrap my head around the 4chan UI, even if it has an attractive community.
chinathrow 11y ago
why no https? Even reddit itself is on https.
samstave 11y ago
Upvoted! -- The Fisher Price (R) of Reddit!!
on_ 11y ago
I have been pretty critical of reddit lately, but there was a time when I really enjoyed using it and it does provide a ton of value to many people. It is a great website in a very difficult situation due to the community culture (very anti-corporate/advertising mentality), diversity of users and content ownership issues. On a real level, the site is pretty awesome. I want to see them succeed because sub-communities and even the organization have stood for an opened internet and positive things. I think upvoted looks really sleek and I hope it is successful, but they really need a way to monetize and it is a really hard problem to solve. Obviously, using a widely supported mature CMS like wordpress makes it easy to produce content with minimal effort and cost but that has been reddit users largest gripe. Upvoted is a curator/aggregator built on top of a curator/aggregator, which is weird. Reddit's success and problems stem from providing the long tail of content, allowing diverse topics and communities to be covered while allowing globally popular things to float to the top. This means that there is rarely community consensus, so while upvoted has little risk as it is cheap to make, I can't see it providing much financial support for the company. In all honesty though, I wish them the best of luck and hope to see them do cool and intersting things in the future. Obviously, improving the search would be a great start because Google is an awesome search engine, but for content discovery and curation, Reddit is doing a great job. Best of luck guys and sorry about the sarcastic comments about Wordpress and PHP, it really is a good way to quickly test out something like upvoted without significant dev reources and is a good content management system, edit: [if used correctly]
- cheepin 11y ago
  I think the Reddit execs see other aggregators just ripping off things that were popular on Reddit[0] and thinking that they are missing out on a potential revenue source. Their user base seems to really dislike this move[1], but it seems to be more of an expansion to get users that don't normally use Reddit. I imagine users of Upvoted will be people that would normally use Buzzfeed or 9gag, probably largely disjoint from the actual Reddit community. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimMeta/comments/3fnkni/9gag_is_automatically_copying_some_of_the_most/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimMeta/comments/3fnkni/9g... [1] 45% upvoted at time of posting: https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_upvoted_a_redditorial_publication/ https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_up...
rndn 11y ago
I’m not sure what this site is supposed to be for: Is it (a) to generate more ad revenue for reddit to be finally self-sustaining or (b) an attempt to come up to the expectations of Reddit's VC shareholders (i.e. a separate startup to generate more revenue than necessary for self-sustenance).
natvod 11y ago
Another Buzzfeed-y content site? Meh. What I would actually like to see: Have journalists contact Redditors who post interesting stories for interviews to write up more fully fleshed stories. A lot of Redditors post really interesting stories about their experiences, businesses etc. It'd be super cool to read more about it.
- FilterSweep 11y ago
  How does one establish validity on stories one reads on reddit?
- daxelrod 11y ago
  That sounds like what they might be doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10341384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10341384
it_learnses 11y ago
how did you get a .cloud domain?
hugh4 11y ago
The most bizarre thing about this is that it's all over HN and voat, but I can't find any mention of it on reddit.
- nols 11y ago
  It's there, it's just been downvoted to 0 because they don't like it.
mcintyre1994 11y ago
I can't quite put my finger on it but this feels like one of them websites someone will share on Facebook and I'll tell Facebook never to show me anything from that domain again. I'm sure those sites are making lots of money though and are getting shared because people like them, so they'll probably do way better with it than I expect.
markdown 11y ago
Unidan lives!! http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/bizarre-beasts-with-unidan-the-numbat/ http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/bizarre-beasts-with-unidan-the...
z92 11y ago
Looks like a "portal site", which were popular in the 90s.

276 points by jsnathan 11y ago

mikepurvis 11y ago

Looks like Buzzfeed and every other online clickbait publication.

negrit 11y ago
That's the idea behind it. Though Buzzfeed actually have a news branch with actual journalists behind it based in west-coast & east-coast. I was interviewed by a couple of them and it was a pleasant experience. I don't know if upvoted is planning on hiring journalists on staff. May be Alexis can tell us more here.
- Laaw 11y ago
  Seems like they do have journalists* on staff, according to Alexis, in these comments. * "202M+ people can surface his story and raise a ton of money, but our team of reporters has a much easier time following up to close the loop." Is what he said earlier in the comments, I'm sure he'll clarify if I've gotten anything wrong.
- alexis 11y ago
  We have an awesome Editor, Vickie Chang, who manages a small team of staff writers and freelancers: http://upvoted.com/contributors/ http://upvoted.com/contributors/
asb 11y ago
It's not a patch on the excellent Clickhole http://www.clickhole.com/ http://www.clickhole.com/. I hope it's profitable for The Onion

kawera 11y ago

Sad that The Redditor didn't work out: http://www.theredditor.com/ http://www.theredditor.com/

TomGullen 11y ago
Never sure what the point of having it as a PDF is apart from being able to print it nicely which has got to be a minority, especially considering it's thick and colourful.
- kawera 11y ago
  Agree as for the format but what I appreciated was the content, pretty good in my opinion.
- prawn 11y ago
  There's previously been a PDF-based collection of HN stories/comments too.
  - whatusername 11y ago
    http://hackermonthly.com/ http://hackermonthly.com/

allsystemsgo 11y ago

Is this Reddit trying to take itself more seriously? It's almost like a mask layer to obfuscate the hive mind. I'm curious how the content is created, how something is featured, etc.

negrit 11y ago
Content curated for upvoted.com is based on the most upvoted stories on reddit[1]. As for what is featured and where on the homepage is probably based on editorial choices as well as most viewed post. [1]http://www.wired.com/2015/10/no-comments-allowed-reddits-new-news-site-upvoted/ http://www.wired.com/2015/10/no-comments-allowed-reddits-new...
- debacle 11y ago
  You missed the part about sponsorship being part of the curation.
  - alexis 11y ago
    No. Trending articles are determined by traffic and not salable. When we do have a sponsored post on upvoted.com (just like on reddit.com) it's clearly marked as sponsored. http://upvoted.com/promoted/the-united-franks-of-america-goldbely/ http://upvoted.com/promoted/the-united-franks-of-america-gol...
ljk 11y ago
Also from the article http://www.wired.com/2015/10/no-comments-allowed-reddits-new-news-site-upvoted/ http://www.wired.com/2015/10/no-comments-allowed-reddits-new... > it will post sponsored content paid for and approved by advertising partners—and written by the same editorial team that writes editorial posts. “
alexis 11y ago
It's a way to follow up on stories that bubble up on Reddit's frontpages and give them more depth. 202M+ people can do a great job surfacing and discussing content in real-time, but our awesome editor, Vickie, and her team can do a much more effective job following up on those stories, interviewing, and adding more substance. E.g., This photo of an unemployed man handing out resumes went to the top of r/pics: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3kc1sh/this_man_lost_his_job_and_is_struggling_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3kc1sh/this_man_lost_... We interviewed the guy pictured + wrote about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Upvoted/comments/3kxp7q/bottom_of_the_ninth_why_this_unemployed_father/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Upvoted/comments/3kxp7q/bottom_of_t... Then a week later a photo of the guy (now with a job) topped on r/pics again and a random redditor linked to our story to provide context for everyone on the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3lv1b3/way_to_go_reddit_you_helped_the_guy_passing_out/cv9lojy https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/3lv1b3/way_to_go_redd... This was back when we just posted as selfposts to r/upvoted, so I suspect that same article in a beautiful blog layout: http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/donnie-grooms-unemployed-busch-stadium-resume/ http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/donnie-grooms-unemployed-busch... Would do even better and reach even more people!

notacoward 11y ago

Nice. The thing I don't like about Reddit itself is that it's hard to find what each article is actually about, and most of the time it's some in-jokey/meme-y stuff I wouldn't have bothered with if I'd been able to see even one image or quote. Finding quality content there is hard; if I wanted to spend that much time separating wheat from chaff I might as well try Google+. Upvoted looks like a much more accessible way to get some light reading/entertainment done. Good idea, and AFAICT so far a good implementation.

pvg 11y ago

http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-redditorial.html http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-reddit... actually explains what it is and might be a more informative link.

alexis 11y ago
Thanks and here is my welcome note: http://upvoted.com/2015/10/06/a-redditorial-publication/ http://upvoted.com/2015/10/06/a-redditorial-publication/
- mthoms 11y ago
  Alexis, You might want to put some of that in the about menu. Right now it's not immediately obvious what the site is/does.
- pvg 11y ago
  Oops, I did see that first but my initial uncaffeinated impression was that it was the intro for advertisers rather than users, what with the open rates and the click throughs and the numbers. One the more entertaining/interesting things about original subreddit content is that it often gets fleshed out, corrected (occasionally to a full 180˚) and otherwise improved by further contributions. I'm curious how upvoted deals with that. Perhaps your editor could do an AMA sometime after things settle down post-launch.

roymurdock 11y ago

For anyone confused about why this exists: http://upvoted.com/advertise/ http://upvoted.com/advertise/

bhrgunatha 11y ago
A safe place to generate ad revenue.

minimaxir 11y ago

There was a recent allegation that the Reddit administration had encouraged vote brigading with Tom Hanks' comments: http://i.imgur.com/Obafhpc.png http://i.imgur.com/Obafhpc.png From the looks of the Upvoted front page, looks like they're doing it as a content marketing strategy, which doesn't bode well. Also, it seems like a BuzzFeed clone, which Redditors despise. (Disclosure: although I have done a LOT of work analyzing Reddit [http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-bigquery/ http://minimaxir.com/2015/10/reddit-bigquery/], I have not been approached to write anything for Upvoted)

oldmanjay 11y ago
> Also, it seems like a BuzzFeed clone, which Redditors despise. I'll stipulate that some redditors despise buzzfeed, but the population of users is too big for you to be that assertive. I bet you despise it, though, and decided that you are the protoredditor. Am I right?
- minimaxir 11y ago
  No, you are not right. https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1vqs25/whats_up_with_all_the_animosity_towards_buzzfeed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1vqs25/whats_... Actually, many of the comments in the Reddit thread about Upvoted have this sentiment too: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_upvoted_a_redditorial_publication/ http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_upv...
- Domenic_S 11y ago
  Shouldn't it be more likely that a common attitude is true [0] within a big userbase? [0] Where "true" == many/most users feel the same way.
alexis 11y ago
The top thread on the announcement is a great discussion of why it's so important to us to credit Redditors in every article, which folks seem to appreciate. https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_upvoted_a_redditorial_publication/cvq6trw https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_up... As for Tom, here's what I posted on r/defaultmods addressing that concern. >> I ran those ads when I learned Tom was using the site. I did that because for the last few weeks more and more celebrities have been coming on or reaching out to use reddit as members of the community. And we've run sponsored headline to draw attention to it, these ads have been viewed over 14M times in the last couple of weeks without incident. They've also performed exceptionally well (Bill Gates' for instance had 368% higher CTR than average). +That moment when Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca) shows up to compliment your Rebel helmet patch +Oh, just Bill Gates hanging out on r/infographics +Lil Dicky drops a new music video, shows up in the comments of r/Music thread Admittedly, these ads all went up at least 24hrs after the celeb showed up and left, whereas I jumped on the Tom Hanks one as soon as I realized it was happening. We're not going to do that again. Those ads also performed very well (63% higher than site average) but were a really bad look. To be clear: we're not paying them. They're coming because we're actually making progress showing them the value of joining the community. Wynter (u/808sandhotcakes) has been doing a lot of great work, by virtue of her great reputation in the industry alone, people are genuinely reaching out to learn how to join the Reddit community. We're excited about that, because it clearly makes our users very happy and by every account the talent enjoys it, too. edit: (See, I'm already getting better: Arnold + Adam Savage stopped by since Tom and no obnoxious sponsored headlines.)

TomGullen 11y ago

Looks nice, functions nicely, I can see what they are doing but it's just not for me. Content appears pretty shallow at a brief browse through it all, buzzfeed esque.

alexis 11y ago
Take a look at the piece on survivors of suicide, it's one of my favorites from launch: http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/survivors-of-suicide-spent-their-last-days-on-earth/ http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/survivors-of-suicide-spent-the... We're not trying to be first with a cheap quick post (Reddit.com is always going to be faster than any newsroom anyway) and I'm really excited about the vision Vickie (editor) has for longer-form features like this one.
dikdik 11y ago
Agreed. But from what I see through my social media, a large majority love the shallow content. Instagram is filled with highly-followed users that just repost curated reddit content (fuckjerry, thefatjewish, etc), it's obviously filling a large niche.

staunch 11y ago

I sold upvoted.com to Alexis Ohanian earlier this year. I'm glad it's not just a redirect anymore! I wanted to do something cool with it but never did. Then one day I got an email from an assistant of Alexis Ohanian's asking to sell it cheap for his little school project :P I knew he was just trying to avoid being gouged, so I offered to sell it to Alexis for his initial asking price, if he'd give me a meeting and some feedback on my startup. He agreed and we had a good meeting. He gave my co-founder and I some genuinely usable advice, and technically funded our bootstrapped startup (https://portal.cloud https://portal.cloud) for a few weeks there.

alexis 11y ago
Thanks again! Let's have another date. Email me! edit: Update: It's happening!!!!!! Thanks, HN.
- staunch 11y ago
  Thank you! Would love to talk some more. Sent.
- ForFreedom 11y ago
  @alexis Why on a wordpress VIP? http://ajean.net/reddits-news-website-upvoted-com/ http://ajean.net/reddits-news-website-upvoted-com/
  - on_ 11y ago
    Wordpress is an extremely new framework, so it will be new to a lot of developers, but it provides an extremely performant developer friendly product. One drawback is that it is highly specialized, so it only had a few applications but luckily upvoted fits into this niche. Hosting is really still a problem as their is a lack of providers and a steep complexity curve. No one has really provided a flexible way to host a platform like wordpress and coupled with the lack of maturity and bleeding edge nature it makes sense that they went with a managed hosting service. Even as new as the organization is, they have a great array of security products and plugins which will certainly shield it from the less scrupulous users. This is going to likely be the first major company using wordpress, but I bet it could be a platform that will underpin a large percentage of websites.

tscosj 11y ago

Is that ordinary Wordpress site?

johnward 11y ago
wordpress.com it appears /wp-admin redirect to https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com the footer: Powered by WordPress.com VIP

thejew 11y ago

Looks like it's a Wordpress blog: http://upvoted.com/wp-admin http://upvoted.com/wp-admin

tscosj 11y ago
https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com/wp-admin/ https://redditupvoted.wordpress.com/wp-admin/
minimaxir 11y ago
For this use case, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a WordPress blog.
- debacle 11y ago
  There may be. WordPress is not ironclad and Reddit is a big target. At the very least, there's value in whitelisting IP access to the wp-admin login.

CJKinni 11y ago

So this feels like a way of obfuscating comments and some of the less appealing aspects of the reddit community, while turning it into a buzzfeed style community. It feels like a prettier version of http://thisisthe.link/ http://thisisthe.link/

alexis 11y ago
Every article posted to upvoted.com gets submitted to http://reddit.com/r/upvoted http://reddit.com/r/upvoted with a link at the bottom of said article. We were not going to put facebook comments an DEFINITELY not going to take devs away from all the work they've been doing on mod/community tools (http://reddit.com/r/modnews http://reddit.com/r/modnews), alien blue, and infrastructure.

tlrobinson 11y ago

Publications like BuzzFeed have been making money off of Reddit's content, or at least content discovered on Reddit, for years. Makes sense Reddit would want to capture some of that value.

rndn 11y ago
Maybe I’m mistaken, but it seems to me that Reddit would be much better off as a dontation-based non-profit. It seems ethical that nobody should make money off of user-generated content except the users are compensated for their time (which is unpractical); at least not beyond what’s necessary to keep the system up and running and occasionally add handy features to it. I bet the amount of time it takes to develop and run Reddit fades in face of the collective amount of time there is spent on creating and curating content by millions of people. I’m actually surprised that none of the comments here are touching on this point.

austenallred 11y ago

I think this is a brilliant move. To all those saying whether or not current redditors will use it: that's not the point. This is Reddit attempting to use the content users generate on the platform for the 99% of people who don't use Reddit. Call it buzzfeed if you want, an absurd amount of people use buzzfeed. So long as Reddit and Upvoted are separate, I think it makes a ton of sense.

alexis 11y ago
Thanks. Yep, they're separate, but based on the success of the Upvoted podcast and newsletter over this year, we definitely see the potential of upvoted.com to be a gateway to get new users into Reddit. One reason why, for instance, we have a link to a comment section on r/upvoted at the bottom of every article (each Upvoted.com gets automatically submitted to r/upvoted upon posting).
- halcyondaze 11y ago
  Yo Alexis - was the main logic behind starting this the fact that so many other sites are using Reddit UGC to drive their content machines (and thus revenues)?

tumes 11y ago

It's interesting to me that between this and Apple's news app that we're steering to a less-social-engagement centric model for news presentation. One new way to save myself from looking at the comments.

joesweeney 11y ago

I feel that normal Reddit users are going to hate this for the most part because it does a lot of the same things that BuzzFeed does in that it takes content from Reddit presents it in a somewhat dumbed-down, clickbait way. However, I don't think this is a problem. Upvoted is not supposed to be for Redditors, it's supposed to be for a different audience who isn't yet ready for Reddit. It's going to capture at least some of the traffic that usually lands on other clickbait sites which take content from Reddit, and it's going to allow them to monetize.

gcb0 11y ago
yes. and nobody cares. they already have the normal reddit user. they want the rest now.

dom96 11y ago

This looks awesome but I am scared to keep it open for too long as it looks like an even bigger time sink than Reddit.

ebbv 11y ago

Here's a question I have; reddit is full of liars. What efforts are the Upvoted staff making to verify stuff that appears on reddit before bringing it over to Upvoted?

gcb0 11y ago
they will do nothing, because they are not journalists. "The newsletter has hundreds of thousands of subscribers that wake up each Sunday to enjoy a curated digest in their inbox. Last month, we started posting original content directly to r/upvoted, including an interview with the guy handing out his resume at Busch Stadium. The subreddit amassed its highest traffic with over 700,000 unique visitors. With Upvoted, editorial, original video, podcasts, and graphic art have a place to thrive and tell Reddit’s tales in the most creative ways possible." -- http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-redditorial.html http://www.redditblog.com/2015/10/introducing-upvoted-reddit... it is nothing more than a pretty RSS feed with a little curation and images, linking to all the lies that are business as usual on reddit.
- Laaw 11y ago
  I said this in another comment, but based on what Alexis said here, it seems like there might actually be staffers (reporters) doing additional research into the stories as they appear on upvoted.com.

jokoon 11y ago

Can't really like this, but at least it has the virtue of containing the kind of stuff that happened to digg. Whatever happens, I'm really with reddit in light of all the controversies that surrounded it. I really have a high esteem of community driven websites who can be user-oriented and still grow and attract more users. It's not an easy task. I'm sure there must be some kind of game theory around it if you want to keep it going. Making balanced rules for such a website might be no easy thing. Some call it "plebeian" but I think it's still a very good website if you don't focus too much on the default subreddits. I will never be able to wrap my head around the 4chan UI, even if it has an attractive community.

chinathrow 11y ago

why no https? Even reddit itself is on https.

samstave 11y ago

Upvoted! -- The Fisher Price (R) of Reddit!!

on_ 11y ago

I have been pretty critical of reddit lately, but there was a time when I really enjoyed using it and it does provide a ton of value to many people. It is a great website in a very difficult situation due to the community culture (very anti-corporate/advertising mentality), diversity of users and content ownership issues. On a real level, the site is pretty awesome. I want to see them succeed because sub-communities and even the organization have stood for an opened internet and positive things. I think upvoted looks really sleek and I hope it is successful, but they really need a way to monetize and it is a really hard problem to solve. Obviously, using a widely supported mature CMS like wordpress makes it easy to produce content with minimal effort and cost but that has been reddit users largest gripe. Upvoted is a curator/aggregator built on top of a curator/aggregator, which is weird. Reddit's success and problems stem from providing the long tail of content, allowing diverse topics and communities to be covered while allowing globally popular things to float to the top. This means that there is rarely community consensus, so while upvoted has little risk as it is cheap to make, I can't see it providing much financial support for the company. In all honesty though, I wish them the best of luck and hope to see them do cool and intersting things in the future. Obviously, improving the search would be a great start because Google is an awesome search engine, but for content discovery and curation, Reddit is doing a great job. Best of luck guys and sorry about the sarcastic comments about Wordpress and PHP, it really is a good way to quickly test out something like upvoted without significant dev reources and is a good content management system, edit: [if used correctly]

cheepin 11y ago
I think the Reddit execs see other aggregators just ripping off things that were popular on Reddit[0] and thinking that they are missing out on a potential revenue source. Their user base seems to really dislike this move[1], but it seems to be more of an expansion to get users that don't normally use Reddit. I imagine users of Upvoted will be people that would normally use Buzzfeed or 9gag, probably largely disjoint from the actual Reddit community. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimMeta/comments/3fnkni/9gag_is_automatically_copying_some_of_the_most/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimMeta/comments/3fnkni/9g... [1] 45% upvoted at time of posting: https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_upvoted_a_redditorial_publication/ https://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/3npxm4/introducing_up...

rndn 11y ago

I’m not sure what this site is supposed to be for: Is it (a) to generate more ad revenue for reddit to be finally self-sustaining or (b) an attempt to come up to the expectations of Reddit's VC shareholders (i.e. a separate startup to generate more revenue than necessary for self-sustenance).

natvod 11y ago

Another Buzzfeed-y content site? Meh. What I would actually like to see: Have journalists contact Redditors who post interesting stories for interviews to write up more fully fleshed stories. A lot of Redditors post really interesting stories about their experiences, businesses etc. It'd be super cool to read more about it.

FilterSweep 11y ago
How does one establish validity on stories one reads on reddit?
daxelrod 11y ago
That sounds like what they might be doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10341384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10341384

it_learnses 11y ago

how did you get a .cloud domain?

hugh4 11y ago

The most bizarre thing about this is that it's all over HN and voat, but I can't find any mention of it on reddit.

nols 11y ago
It's there, it's just been downvoted to 0 because they don't like it.

mcintyre1994 11y ago

I can't quite put my finger on it but this feels like one of them websites someone will share on Facebook and I'll tell Facebook never to show me anything from that domain again. I'm sure those sites are making lots of money though and are getting shared because people like them, so they'll probably do way better with it than I expect.

markdown 11y ago

Unidan lives!! http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/bizarre-beasts-with-unidan-the-numbat/ http://upvoted.com/2015/10/03/bizarre-beasts-with-unidan-the...

z92 11y ago

Looks like a "portal site", which were popular in the 90s.