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How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

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Re: How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

#61

Post by yaz »

peterwwillis wrote: post #5

What the front page of the internet looks like today: * Image with overlayed snarky text * Another image * Another image... * The Daily Show clip * Another image * Another image * News article about Julian Assange * Another image * News article about guy doing something strange (which is actually really old) * Reddit question thread about Tarantino films * Youtube clip * "Ask Me Anything" request thread * Story on mo…

I discovered reddit 10 months ago and was amazed at the community. Then I quickly grew tired of the boring submissions and comments. Then I discovered reddit's secret - the lesser known subreddits.

The front page of my internet looks pretty interesting to me. It has a Tolkien article, a documentary about rainforest birds, some black-hole-milky-way-gamma-ray article, a usability article (Video captioning techniques and best practices), and a ton of history and grammar discussions.

Re: How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

#62

Post by danilocampos »

batista wrote: post #2

>"I want to stay hungry," says Alexis Ohanian. "I really believe my resources are best used to help projects that make the world suck less." I hate this kind of over-indulgence. What "resources"? He built a social news website and had a strike of luck. It's not like the guy is an Einstein or a Tesla. Or that Reddit is something bettering society. It's a glorified internet forum. Imagine how stupid things like this wo…

For the longest time, I thought stupidity was the gravest sin. Then I discovered these Hacker News commenters and realized that middling but self-important minds are far more vexing than dumb ones.

Re: How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

#63

Post by planetguy »

baddox wrote: post #54
peterwwillis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that the default is supposed to be low-quality is depressing.

The idea that any single default can possibly be considered high quality for tens of millions of users is unrealistic. That's like going to a grocery store, asking for a "default shopping cart," and hoping its contents will be suitable for you.

The default shopping cart is probably much closer to my taste than default reading material would be.

Although, now I come to think of it, for years we did have default reading material, it was called a mass-market newspaper, and it wasn't all that bad. Newspapers are very readable and fairly sensible, content-wise, compared to something like reddit, because they're carefully designed by a small group of people to appeal to a broad cross-section, whereas the dynamics of social news sites tend to push shiny junk to the top.

A newspaper is like a default shopping cart which contains meat, vegetables, eggs, milk, bread, and rice. Not all of it is to everyone's taste, but if it arrived at my door every week I wouldn't die of malnutrition. Reddit is like a default shopping cart constructed by polling a thousand teenagers on their favourite foods; it contains twinkies, cognac, Junior Mints, bacon, Twizzlers and beer.

Re: How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

#64

Post by awj »

planetguy wrote: post #40
dalore wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that you can make it "your" front page of the internet with just the topics that interest you. If you go by the default it's got the most mass market appeal because of popularity but if you're someone who reads hackers news that is not what you want. So customize it. The internet has become popular and just like pop music it will appeal to the lowest common denominator.

If you go by the default it's got the most mass market appeal Well, not really "mass market" appeal, just appeal to the incredibly narrow and apparently homogeneous subslice of the world's population that fits into the reddit demographic. If you're not aged 15-25, college-educated (or college-bound), left-wing, atheist, obsessively interested in every one of the typical geeky pursuits, and already intimately familiar…

...do you actually use reddit, or is this just something you believe?

As someone who only really fits one of your criteria (college education), I evidently don't exist, as I have a good experience on reddit. They have large communities for not-stereotypical-geekery like fitness[1], martial arts[2], and home brewing[3].

Yes, the uncustomized "homepage of the internet" is a giant wad of time-wasting activity. To be honest, that's what the internet is to many people, especially during their work day.

[1] http://reddit.com/r/fitness [2] http://reddit.com/r/martialarts [3] http://reddit.com/r/homebrewing

Re: How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

#65

Post by kn0thing »

cdh wrote: post #53
kn0thing wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot upvote this enough. Thanks. edit, with bonus explanation! We need to do a better job helping new(and old) redditors realize the thousands of communities they could be joining for a diverse blend of content that interests them. When Steve and I started reddit, we had no categories because it was simple -- and Steve loves simple. Now that we've got scores of vibrant communities discussing links about things ra…

It's funny, because your "Announce your vote to the world" comment (ostensibly) wouldn't be welcome on Reddit: http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/reddiquette (No offense intended, I just thought it was hilarious in the context of this conversation. Maybe you meant it as a joke...)

Tongue firmly in cheek :) btw, I'd love to see a HN etiquette guide.

edit: touche! thanks, agscala http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

#66

Post by duaneb »

peterwwillis wrote: post #5

What the front page of the internet looks like today: * Image with overlayed snarky text * Another image * Another image... * The Daily Show clip * Another image * Another image * News article about Julian Assange * Another image * News article about guy doing something strange (which is actually really old) * Reddit question thread about Tarantino films * Youtube clip * "Ask Me Anything" request thread * Story on mo…

Depressing, maybe, but it's definitely accurate being "the front page of the internet"

Re: How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

#67

Post by michael_fine »

cdh wrote: post #53
kn0thing wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot upvote this enough. Thanks. edit, with bonus explanation! We need to do a better job helping new(and old) redditors realize the thousands of communities they could be joining for a diverse blend of content that interests them. When Steve and I started reddit, we had no categories because it was simple -- and Steve loves simple. Now that we've got scores of vibrant communities discussing links about things ra…

It's funny, because your "Announce your vote to the world" comment (ostensibly) wouldn't be welcome on Reddit: http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/reddiquette (No offense intended, I just thought it was hilarious in the context of this conversation. Maybe you meant it as a joke...)

Nor would it be welcome on HN. It's courtesy not to post about your votes, rather letting them speak for themselves.

Re: How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

#68

Post by agscala »

kn0thing wrote: post #65
cdh wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, because your "Announce your vote to the world" comment (ostensibly) wouldn't be welcome on Reddit: http://code.reddit.com/wiki/help/reddiquette (No offense intended, I just thought it was hilarious in the context of this conversation. Maybe you meant it as a joke...)

Tongue firmly in cheek :) btw, I'd love to see a HN etiquette guide. edit: touche! thanks, agscala http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

#69

Post by duaneb »

kn0thing wrote: post #39
notatoad wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story I heard was that Alexis and Steve went to PG together with a somewhat different idea, and PG suggested that they make reddit instead. Steve was the coder, and Alexis was the community manager - a fairly important job when the business is to build an online community.

Yep. Just like in the story. Steve built reddit, I doodled the logo and did the non-tech stuff.

What did that entail in the early days? I only showed up a month or two before comments did and the community was already rolling at that point.

Re: How Alexis Ohanian Built a Front Page of the Internet

#70

Post by RegEx »

danilocampos wrote: post #62
batista wrote: post #2

>"I want to stay hungry," says Alexis Ohanian. "I really believe my resources are best used to help projects that make the world suck less." I hate this kind of over-indulgence. What "resources"? He built a social news website and had a strike of luck. It's not like the guy is an Einstein or a Tesla. Or that Reddit is something bettering society. It's a glorified internet forum. Imagine how stupid things like this wo…

For the longest time, I thought stupidity was the gravest sin. Then I discovered these Hacker News commenters and realized that middling but self-important minds are far more vexing than dumb ones.

Snark on HN gets upvoted faster than puns on Reddit.
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