Calling all local businesses!

Before we announce our newest Free Ad campaign, we'd like to give you a brief follow up on how the Nonprofit Organization campaign we held in September turned out.

In just over two weeks, we gave away more than 250 free advertisements for anyone advertising for their favorite non-profit, equaling a grand total of $27,300 of ad space! The genres of campaigns ranged from Disaster Relief to Education, Health to Community Awareness, Fighting Poverty, Environmental Protection, Children, and Pet and Wildlife Safety and Protection. The turnout was astounding, and a special "Thanks!" to you, our awesome users, for engaging with these nonprofits. You gave feedback, asked questions, and gave donations when you could. We honestly couldn't have asked for a better community of redditors.


On to the new campaign

Now, with two successful free advertising successes under our belts, let's move on to our next big campaign: We're looking for Local Businesses who are interested in some free ad space through the month of November.

Owning a local, private business is like having three jobs and a new baby all at the same time — especially when you're first starting up. Also, these days, more community-oriented businesses are popping up than ever, and we want to help them live long and prosper.


But wait, there's more!

It's easy for a local business in a specific community to get lost in the advertising crowd. That's why, this time around, we are going to encourage them to target their ads to their community's subreddit if and when possible. There are tons of smaller subreddits dedicated to certain cities or regions, whose users would love to find out about fine establishments they've never heard of and are right under their noses.

If you pimp your local subreddit in the thread, we'll add it here as you go, and we will be sure to keep it in mind when businesses make inquiries as to where their ad would be best received.

Here is a great directory of community oriented subreddits. Take a look and subscribe to yours!


How to get started.

If you run a business in your area, and would like to take advantage of this opportunity, it's simple. You need only a reddit username (which is free and very easy to register).Once you have a reddit account, visit this link to get your ad created. Once your ad is created (and this is very important), email me the "edit" link of your ad (don't click "pay"!) and I and our team will review your ad and give you the freebie. You also have the option of uploading a 70x70 pixel thumbnail, which is a great way to garner interest through imagery!


Tell me more about the free ad space.

What you'll get for your business is three days of advertising at a $100 spend. We encourage you to target your ad to your local community's subreddit — you'll have a much more captive audience, and more exposure than a site-wide run ad.


This is where YOU, the reddit community, comes in.

If you have a favorite local business, get out there and tell them about our campaign! And since we all know how hard it is to explain "reddit" to people (especially people who are too busy working long hours, and might not have time to be reddicted like most of us are), you can give them my email address, where they can get more information.

If you can manage to get a perfect stranger to sign up for a free ad, AND tell us that [YourScreenNameHere] sent them, you're going to get a month of reddit gold, on the house!

Grow A College Subreddit Competition Results

The college subreddit competition has come to an end. We tracked the growth of 463 college subreddits from August 20 to October 26 and the results were pretty impressive:

• Subscribers to all college subreddits grew from 42,957 to 71,423
• Traffic to those subreddits grew from 9,375 uniques/32,122 impressions per day to 30,196 uniques/118,943 impressions per day
  
• Subreddits from 18 countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, England, Germany, Guatemala, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, United States, Wales)
• Subreddits from 48 U.S. states plus Washington DC (Alaska and Wyoming are the only hold outs)
  

Subreddit growth was measured by subscriber count and traffic and was normalized by the total growth of all college subreddits. In addition to absolute growth we also looked at a weighted growth relative to each school's size.

Top 10 Absolute:

1. Rochester Institute of Technology
2. University of California, Los Angeles
3. University of California, Berkeley
4. University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
5. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
6. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
7. University of Waterloo
8. Rutgers University
9. Texas A&M University
10. Georgia Institute of Technology
    

Top 10 Relative:

1. Rochester Institute of Technology
2. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
3. University of California, Los Angeles
4. University of California, Berkeley
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
7. Johns Hopkins University
8. University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
9. Georgia Institute of Technology
10. St. John's College (United States)

We originally stated that there would be prizes for the top absolute growth, top relative growth, and admin's choice. We've decided to increase that to 7 winners:

• Rochester Institute of Technology - The biggest and most active subreddit at the start of the competition, still the biggest and most active. Great job!
• University of Waterloo - The biggest and best growing non-US subreddit.
  
• University of California, Los Angeles - Crazy subscriber growth over the final weeks of the contest. How did they do it?
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - Among the top 20 largest subreddits despite having only 5,394 undergrads.
  
• University of California, Berkeley - Great hustle making in becoming the 2nd biggest college subreddit.
  
• University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign - Very active subreddit.
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University - Satisfyingly long school name and also had some pretty decent growth.
  

Lots of engineering schools. Where are all the Liberal Arts students?

The winning schools will each get a box of goodies (shirts, stickers, surprises?) and we will change the frontpage style to reflect the school's logo for a day. Also depending on our availability we will try to organize some meetups/parties at the winning schools.

Great job everyone, now go study.

See some numbers here

reddit goodies and free stickers!

We’re excited to announce a new look to the reddit store and reddit schwag. Now available on www.reddit.com/store is a list of destinations to find a whole host of reddit goodies. Check back often as this list is sure to grow. From reddit's official store at xkcd to other uniquely reddit products and community favorites like Soapier, the store is a one-stop-shop for all things reddit IRL.

We've made some changes and solidified our commitment with ourselves and vendors to provide high-quality alien products in a timely manner. We struggled with backorders in the past, and we apologize to those that were affected. We're working closely with xkcd and the other reddit vendors to provide great customer service moving forward.

In addition to the spruced up reddit store page, we are excited to announce our new official reddit sticker producer, Sticker Mule. Check out reddit’s sticker store on Sticker Mule, StickerMule.com/reddit. You'll be able to find stickers and sticker sheets, limited edition stickers, and iPhone skins here. You’d never guess it by the quality of their stickers or storefront design, but the majority of their team is color blind, including their design lead!

These guys love making stickers and have been passionate about getting customers quality custom stickers at affordable prices since their inception. They are super excited to be creating reddit stickers and have generously arranged to ship 1,000 lucky redditors a free 3-inch Snoo sticker. Go here to see if you are one of the first 1,000 to see this post. You can also find them on reddit as StickerMule.

Saying goodbye to an old friend and revising the default subreddits

As of today the subreddit /r/reddit.com will be archived, and will not be accepting any more submissions. It's an artifact of an earlier, simpler time and has long since run its course. You'll still be able to see all of the submissions and comments, and PMing the mods of /r/reddit.com is still the best way to get in touch with the admins.

When reddit was first started there were no subreddits. As subreddits were added (first by the admins and then later by the community), the original "front page" remained as /r/reddit.com. In recent times it has ended up being a confusing, ill-defined catch-all, which was not really moderated like all the other subreddits. Let's take this chance to review the top ten all time /r/reddit.com posts, which include something from each of the co-founders, political rage, a complaint about karma-whoring, and, of course, something about Sears. Good times, great oldies.

10. Nutjob gives TED talk
9. Falsely accused death row inmate
8. Congrats to reddit co-founder Spez on getting married
7. DEA is monitoring your IP address
6. Improvised Piano on Chat Roulette
5. Dear old people, don't screw up health care reform
4. Disgusted at California over Prop 8
3. reddit, less personal crap. more articles
2. Pixar helps girl dying of cancer see new movie, UP
1. Fuck Sears

/r/reddit.com, your subreddits are all grown up now and your work is done: thanks for your service. You were one of the 10 default subreddits which were shown on the homepage for non-logged in users and logged in users who had not customized their subscriptions. We've updated the list (primarily based on unique visitors) and expanded the list to 20. We also checked with all the mods to make sure they wanted their subreddit included in the default set.

The new default set is now (in no particular order):

1. pics
2. gaming
3. worldnews
4. videos
5. todayilearned
6. IAmA
7. funny
8. atheism
9. politics
10. science
11. AskReddit
12. technology
13. WTF
14. blog & announcements
15. bestof
16. AdviceAnimals
17. Music
18. aww
19. askscience
20. movies

(Logged in users, now might be a good time to update your subscriptions)

In the future we may have some more dynamic systems for how to handle the default subreddits, but this new & expanded list should provide a bit more variety to the "front page". We'll be keeping a close eye on feedback in the next few weeks to see what kind of effect the new set is having.

All is well. And yet we can't help wondering about the friend we leave behind. There are always... possibilities

redditcon...If we build it, will you come?

Ever since last year’s amazing DC Rally & party, we at reddit have been discussing having a convention--redditcon, if you will. I have met with convention planners and have been told what it takes to make a large convention happen, and it is a gargantuan undertaking. What we want to know now is this: are you all interested in attending a convention where you can meet fellow redditors, participate in fun activities, and help the surrounding community?

The only facet we’re pretty set on is the idea that the subreddits should be able to have their own presence at redditcon. Be it a booth, panel, event, class, fundraiser, concert, tournament, etc. we would want to have subreddits able to make the event their own.

I’ll be honest--even after months of discussion, we still aren’t really sure in what direction we want to take this. We have a lot of great ideas, but it really all depends on the kind of response we get from the reddit community (i.e. how many of you would actually show up) and what is your idea of an ideal redditcon experience. In regard to where this would take place, we have a few locations in mind: San Francisco (or the surrounding area), New York City (or the surrounding area), Chicago, Austin, or Seattle. Bear in mind that these places are not set in stone and we’re open to suggestion (but please be realistic... according to the recent survey results, the aforementioned places have the highest populations of redditors).

We would love for this to happen, but in order to get started we want your feedback on the following things: where would you be willing to travel to attend a reddit convention? What would you like to see or do there? Are there any ideas you have that would make this convention even more alluring? Who would be your ideal line up for panelists, speakers, events, bands, etc?

So what say you, reddit? redditcon? Crazy or just crazy enough?

Post ideas, schemes, questions, cautionary tales, blueprints, etc. in /r/redditcon. PM cupcake1713 if you have a lead or question that you don’t feel comfortable posting in comments.

reddit is Hiring! Position: Community Manager for the best Community in the World.

reddit is looking for a Community Manager who is passionate and dedicated to supporting the best online community (ok, we're biased).

The main responsibilities of the job are to triage all varieties of feedback, and help mods, users, and the reddit team improve and promote reddit. You will be the main admin point of contact for redditors, and coordinate closely with the moderators to make sure they have the tools and support they need to create and moderate their subreddits.

Almost all of the reddit staff was hired from within the community, so chances are that the Community Manager will be as well. However, we don't want to rule out hiring someone with great qualifications but relatively little reddit experience.

I was Community Manager at reddit for 3 years before switching to a new role. It's an amazing position and working at reddit is by far the most rewarding job I've ever had, but let's face it, there are far easier and less stressful jobs. We're flexible about hours and have fun, but you're going to be checking in from home most evenings, and occasionally woken up in the middle of the night by an internet emergency. Consider yourself warned. It's a cask strength job, and dedication to the cause is very important.

Here are some details:

• Regular full-time employee position.
• You must be legally able to work in the United States
• You'll have to physically be in our offices in San Francisco's SOMA neighborhood for something in the ballpark of "normal business hours"
• Good benefits and competitive salary based on experience.

As always, the admins go through all of the applications personally, so that's why the application includes some longer questions. Please be patient if you don't hear back soon.

APPLY HERE

And the servers rejoiced

Greetings redditors,

After a year of insane growth in both traffic and infrastructure, the demands of the site have given us the charge of growing the reddit admin team. To that end, I am extremely pleased to welcome Ricky Ramirez - aka rram - to the systems administration team.

Ricky will be joining in the unending mission of ensuring that reddit's stability and speed continue to improve. He arrived only a week ago, and I've already successfully inundated him with a mountain of Cassandra and Akamai to-dos.

Previous to joining reddit, Ricky has honed his systems kung-foo at places such as Rackspace and The Tech. He is also working on obtaining his private pilot's license, after-which he will be required to provide for our air transportation at any time.

Everyone please join me in welcoming Ricky to the team!