We just received confirmation that Condé Nast, owner of Wired and other magazines/websites, acquired Boston-based Reddit earlier this morning, and will make the announcement later today. The price is not being disclosed.
All four reddit employees will relocate from Boston to Wired’s San Francisco office and become part of Wired Digital. Reddit, founded and funded in 2005, is a YCombinator company (see our interview with YCombinator founder Paul Graham here). The two original founders are Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, and they were later joined by Christopher Slowe and Aaron Swartz.
Reddit is a social news site that has always played second fiddle to Digg, although Reddit does have an active and loyal userbase. Users praise Reddit for having a very quick load time and no advertising. Like Digg, news stories on Reddit are submitted by users, and other users vote up or down on the story. When it gets enought “up” votes, the story appears on the home page.
Wired will leave Reddit as a standalone site, and also integrate it into Condé Nast web properties.
See our earlier coverage on recent Digg acquisition rumors.
Update: Marshall and I just recorded a podcast with Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, and it will be up on TalkCrunch shortly. We couldn’t get them to tell us the acquisition price, but they did tell us that the company has raised just $100k (all in summer 2005) and currently has an average of 70,000 daily unique visitors and 700,000 or so page views.
Congrats…
Thus far Mr. Graham’s only hit. Would love to hear the sales price.
I wouldn’t have anticipated Reddit only had 4 employees. That is impressive. It’s great to see the smallest of startups be successful. I hope the purchase price made everyone happy.
congrads to them, they have done a great job!
Me neither Louis. The site is never down, there arent any ads that i can see, if any. And the site runs smoother than well… a site with heavy traffic should run!
While they have played “second fiddle” to Digg in number of users, the content is much more varied, the commentary more intelligent, and they built up on a shoe string budget and stayed lean and mean. Congrats to Reddit - they are some of the good guys…
Reddit is the ‘better’ version…if Reddit can be considered a version…of Digg. Echoing Adam (#6), it is clean, fast, uncluttered and the content a tad more substantial!
Hoping Conde’ Nast are true to their intentions and leave Reddit alone and leave it ’steady as she goes’!
Alaska: not Mr Graham’s first hit, actually; see loopt.com.
My best friend works for Conde Nast, so as soon as I read this, I pinged him to see if he knew anything about the acquisition. He hadn’t heard of Reddit, but immediately sent me to http://lipstick.com/, a Conde Nast site. I had never heard of Lipstick.com, but looks almost identical to Reddit.
Obviously, Conde Nast is waaay more tech savvy than I had originally assumed. Although, knowing what my friend is doing at Conde (taking all their mags online), it appears that Conde is preparing a pre-emptive strike on the magazine (media) industry.
Fantastic news for reddit. Just 4 employees was very surprising though. I hope that now we see more features on reddit.
@9:
Lipstick *is* reddit. Click on “help” and you’ll see “never reddit before? here’s how”
One commentator on Reddit has “confirmed” that the sale went through at $65m. Big dose of salt needed. Still, if Digg is worth $150m who knows…?
Great purchase, love reddit!
Congrats to the reddit team!!!!!
How much?
Cash / stock?
Why does people only admire companies when they do not carry advertisements? Are they that bad!??
anyway, I always loved Reddit..four employees!! that was incredible…
Congratulations!
Big fan of reddit. Keep doing what you do!
Yeah, Lipstick.com and Reddit.com look greatly alike, which makes a lot sense for the acquisition.
Excellent exit if the reported $65m is right. Also Paul should be proud of that. Now … Digg how it will go with you?
Congrats to the Reddit Team. I’ve always been a fan.
“(see our interview with YCombinator founder Paul Graham here)”
Last article:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....y-jotspot/
“Founders Joe Kraus and Graham Spencer are also founders of early web portal Excite, now an IAC property.”
Evidence suggests that if you have the name Graham somewhere in your name, you will be acquired.
@Alaska Miller:
It’s not Paul Graham’s only hit .. he sold Viaweb to Yahoo for a massive pile of cash.
Conde Nast’s ownership of Lipstick.com was reported back in June. See here.
I love reddit. I think its better than Digg at filtering awesome content.
No ads.. Still no ads … really no ads.. what about the advertising link at the bottom that goes out to FM. You can continue to believe taht there will be no ads with wired in the game.
I like the tech and the ease-of-use of reddit. the thing i don’t like is how it has become a battleground for politics. i think compaign organizations have highjacked that site and turned it into a democrats vs repukeblican propoganda war.
BRAVO! BRAVO!!!
@Worm: You can read certain topic sections by themselves.
This came as quite a surprise to me. What, is the lack of pre-acquisition buzz the new thing now?
I personally wasn’t a big fan of reddit.
Trying to understand this”
“Wired will leave Reddit as a standalone site, and also integrate it into Condé Nast web properties.”
Huh?
I think he meant integrate Reddit-like features into other web properties.
@Reddit only had 4 employees.
any company with more and no product is in serious trouble. Its not like it takes a lot of work to sit and watch computers.
Congrats to them, although I have grown to hate that site. The user base is way too elitist, and the only thing that makes the front page is politics, religion, and programming (python and lisp mainly).
Blah to that
Kudos to the reddit team. And to think that it’s only a party of four.
Honestly, I don’t use digg or reddit. But I just love it when people make their dreams come true. Just more motivation for other web designers/programmers out there to make their mark on the web.
Why is it when I do a emoticon of a sticking out your tongue( : followed by P ) it makes it into a smiley face? That completely changes the tone of my comment. Blah to techcrunch.
very nice
I love reddit
Im happy for reddit - I think it is far superior to digg…
i started using http://www.plime.com its more of a reddit meets wiki
Just don’t go pop now…….. justin timberlake pop like youtube. People like reddit better FOR NOW.
Wow. You guys are idiots.
Reddit has been Paul Graham’s YCombinator’s first hit. As in sold and gave ROI back to Graham. Loopt was launched back in September, it’s not even that popular. If 65 mil is true then YCombinator just got 15 mil in its coffers.
Conde Nast is very interested in growing online ad revenue and using its sites to increase other Conde titles’ rate base. I expect to see Reddit’s content window shrink and display ads creep across the screen like kudzu. Plus, it might be a good ancillary site for Portfolio once it officially launches. An interesting buy for ol’ Newhouse, in any event.
go reddit go, finally a total fair user driven commnity is becoming a big hit, I justhope wired keep reddit a fair user driven community and lets the user decide what stroies get on the homepage
i am happy for these guys.
HAHAHA, no ads. How the hell did they or will they make any $$??
I think this is just to get hold of the engine underneath and create more reddits for different niches. Each niche might just match one of thier mag IPS
Reddit is very simple to use - that’s why it’s so popular. It should just get bigger. No wonder it’s been taken over before then.
why is infogami so slow ??????????????????
Interestingly, I got turned on to reddit by reading an article by Paul Graham.
Its exactly as he promised and a significant staple of my daily “whatsup?”.
As for accusations of elitism, etc – I’m flattered. reddit has apparently evolved to cater to folks just like me. I cant be bothered with the meaningless or sordid that sites like digg provide. reddit does what it does best, and I hope it doesn’t change a bit,
Great scoop - this wave of acquisitions in recent months is worth watching.
We were lucky enough to interview Reddit crew back in August for our first feature interview over at Juxtaviews.com - they really are a great bunch of people and we wish them the best. They answered A LOT of question for us, which we greatly appreciate.
Here’s the interview if you’re interested:
http://www.juxtaviews.com/2006.....d-so-easy/