reddit all: alien artist blog

the end of this blog & where to find updates from now on

2009-05-29T10:00:00.010-04:00

I've already re-purposed redditAll for a radical new way to read the reddit front page.

So if you'd like to keep up with me, follow me on twitter (@kn0thing). And if you're jonesin' for a blog to read, I'll be posting fairly regularly on breadpig (now my full-time startup, of sorts) and my personal blog.

Thanks for following me on this startup journey. It's hard to believe I started this back in 2005 when starting reddit. Below is a TED Talk I gave in 2009, thanks to reddit; this pretty much made my year.

Everything I've accomplished so far has probably in some way been because of you, reader -- be it reddit, breadpig, or my accomplishments with the railgun in Quake II. Thank you.

Unless you've never heard of me before. In that case, please take all the credit for any of my future accomplishments. Deal?

redditAll.com is dead, long live redditAll.com

2009-04-07T16:36:00.003-04:00

You'll still be able to find this blog at reddit.blogspot.com, but there's a project I'll be announcing shortly that will takeover the domain redditAll.com.

Here's a sneakpeek. Stay tuned to blog.reddit for the announcement or follow me on Twitter if you're really curious.

ireddit developers 280north get fastcompany shoutout

2009-04-02T20:06:00.004-04:00

Yes, this has been sitting in my drafts folder for too long. Anyway, check out this slideshow to learn how to make iPhone apps that don't suck and become the next iPhone app millionaire we keep reading about.

Chris Dannen wrote it, who also happens to be the dude who prompted our own iPhone app (now without crashing bug!). Yep, this guy. We've been exchanging emails now and then -- consider all future good reddit ideas the work of Chris.

business of software and how to pitch for a speaking gig

2009-04-02T13:21:00.000-04:00

I, or rather, Pierre Francois, was invited to compete in last year's Business of Software conference. In fact, he won a Macbook Air that I'm enjoying to this day.

Well, Neil Davidson published my pitch for getting a speaking spot.

If you haven't signed up for Business of Software 09, what are you waiting for? If you're waiting for a compelling video highlighting what the con is all about, here it is:

the 37 signals dilemma

2009-04-02T13:06:00.003-04:00

There's been on ongoing open letter exchange between 37Signals and GetSatisfaction. GetSatisfaction allows anyone to create unofficial customer support communities (like UserVoice) that all both remind me of a much better implemented features.reddit (now defunct). 37Signals doesn't want to have one and feels it "misled our customers into thinking the Get Satisfaction site was an official place to get 37signals customer service and support."

At this point, Jason Fried is requesting that the GetSatisfaction team makes it much more obvious that this is not an official 37Signals site, he outlines a number of changes he'd like them to make.

But here's the dilemma: 37signals has long touted the strategy of saying no to feedback.

That's why you start with no. Every new feature request that comes to us — or from us — meets a no. We listen but don't act. The initial response is "not now." If a request for a feature keeps coming back, that's when we know it's time to take a deeper look. Then, and only then, do we start considering the feature for real.

Granted, Jason isn't in this case a user of GetSatisfaction, but hopefully he'll find this as amusing as I do. I just hope he doesn't expect GS to do anything anytime soon. Heh.

reddit alien spotted at uva's new cabell hall

2009-03-29T12:26:00.005-04:00

Thanks to Erin for snapping these pictures from New Cabell Hall at the University of Virginia (where Steve and I did our 4 years). I'm pretty sure this is one stickering I had nothing to do with, so it was quite a nice surprise.

While it may not be the sharpest picture, I think there's no disputing what that is. It's a water fountain. And above it is a reddit sticker.

reddit sponsored links are the new black

2009-03-27T13:26:00.005-04:00

All Things Digital just published a piece on reddit's sponsored links.

The results have made Condé “cautiously optimistic,” says Stinchcomb. You can measure that two ways: Click-through rates for the ads are running at about five percent, which is several times more than the industry average. And readers haven’t revolted.

In fact, we used the sponsored link with great success last week to point people to scifi.reddit for discussion on the final episode of BSG. There are some links we'd just like to put in front of as many redditors as possible (even though it's not actually 'sponsored' in this case) and this lets us denote that we're doing it.

All in all, we're pretty happy with it and the reddit community seems to have picked it up nicely (and, as the writer points out, haven't gone 1776 on us).

what would giger think?

2009-03-27T12:59:00.002-04:00

Quick, someone send this link to the Swiss master who inspired Alien. There are some great My Little Pony remixes here.

fanboys at sxsw

2009-03-21T16:29:00.003-04:00

Erik (hueypriest) snapped this pic in Austin right after my panel. Anthony of HypeMachine had a panel at the exact same time, so I told him I'd wear his shirt in his honor (I wasn't the only one: see pic). Turns out he was wearing a breadpig shirt. Swine on!

newspaper graveyard

2009-03-18T18:32:00.003-04:00

One of the many striking photos on Boston.com capturing the effect of the recession.

i co-author a paper for semj - this was a first

2009-03-10T17:30:00.004-04:00

I was a last-minute edition to the latest edition of SEMJ. I got a chance to give my perspective on how to do well on social news sites like reddit.

!!Spoiler!!

Make good content. Don't be a jerk.

!!End Spoiler!!

If you're still interested in reading it, they've provided me with a copy to distribute. Enjoy.

new reddit shirt design - vintage alien

2009-03-07T14:24:00.004-05:00

What do you think? I've had some luck with shirt designs lately and thought I'd bring back this 'vintage' reddit shirt. Chris suggested we reprint this a few weeks ago and I think he was spot on. Fun fact: the very first and only one of its kind was actually the first reddit shirt I'd ever made back in 2005 (so the est. 2005 with a retro look scored triple irony points!) - it was from CafePress.

You'll be able to find it on our xkcd store in the coming weeks.

the new nonprofit.reddit is getting some good feedback

2009-03-06T18:51:00.002-05:00

We couldn't be happier with the initial feedback from IdealistNews (AKA nonprofit.reddit). Here are a few links that we've tracked down so far, if we missed yours, lemme know.

And there's even a YouTube tutorial, courtesy of our pal Scott @ Idealist.

reddit and the idealist launch a new reddit together - idealistnews.com

2009-03-05T19:40:00.002-05:00

We announced a new reddit today, this is putting a pretty face on nonprofit.reddit.com called IdealistNews.

Both we and Idealist.org (our partner - see their announcement here) are quite excited to be bringing this to life. It started as a few tweets exchanged with Scott Stadum of Idealist and a few weeks later this new reddit is online.

Just a little while back, Beth Kanter lamented that there was no social news geared toward nonprofits and social change. We at reddit (and breadpig) totally agreed and hope this reddit can be the destination for the very best of this news.

the right kind of linkedin profile photo

2009-03-04T15:09:00.001-05:00

HR: "He's got a reddit shirt? Hired!"

over 3 years of life spent using the reddit iphone app, world economy still slumping

2009-03-04T01:45:00.008-05:00

The 280north team plugged Pinch Media analytics into our iPhone app, iReddit and we've already encountered some interesting data.

Chiefly, at this moment the total time spent using the app is 3 years 68 days 14 hours 41 minutes 17 seconds. Never mind the fact that they have it pegged to the second, but this app has only been out for two weeks. I'd rather not imagine how much time users have spent on reddit.com during the 3+ years it's been around.

Instead, I'll be busy finishing up some work for a very cool pair of announcements Wednesday and Thursday (watch blog.reddit.com to see the news).

i spy a bunch of reddit stickers

2009-03-03T21:38:00.005-05:00

vees is a decorated redditor. Impressive.

not one, but two cheers for reddit on slate's the big money

2009-02-26T12:37:00.001-05:00

Still no word on the whereabouts of the third cheer, but we're nonetheless quite happy to have been featured in a recent The Big Money article. Here's just a taste:

I've come to genuinely admire Reddit [...] having trolled around long enough now, I find Reddit, when used properly, to be a decent news source and a relatively intelligent window onto the hive mind. Psychologists for years have argued that the information content of news is less important than the context in which people receive it; Reddit moves at a pace at which you can watch cognition and content commingle in real time.

And I'm thrilled The Cute List got a shoutout, too. Read the whole article to see just how reddit changed James Ledbetter's perspective on social media, which according to him, had "seemed like a shabby foreign country I'd rather not visit."

reddit & the indie: the internet approves

2009-02-24T13:36:00.000-05:00

I somehow forgot to post this entry from Metaprinter about our announcement of a partnership with The Independent:

All in all I think this is a great experiment. It attacks newspaper site problems like social interaction, ranking, linking, user interface, and user experience. I’ll be following this closely as time goes on and the social site builds links and volume.

So far, we've been quite happy with the experiment. And it appears the Indie has been, too, as they even gave me a place in their Independent Minds blogging network. Here's the inaugural post:

oldie but a goodie: reddit the quiz bowl answer

2009-02-24T09:48:00.000-05:00

Aaron forwarded me this a while back and somehow it remained in my drafts folder until now.

My brother is on the quiz bowl team. One of the questions he was given at a Boston tournament was "This Conde Nast acquisition uses karma to ..." (that's when he buzzed).

I must say, that's pretty cool. Thanks for considering us question-worthy, Quiz Bowl!

mint.com on the definition of a user - techcrunch wtf moment

2009-02-21T02:09:00.004-05:00

In short, Quicken sent Mint a pretty lame "WTF is up with your user count?" email.

The story could be over, but then there was a bit of prodding into how a Mint determines a 'user.'

Aside from Mint’s remarkable growth rate, Intuit’s concerns focus on the startup’s definition of “users”. Mint’s reply states that the company considers anyone who has filled in an Email address, Zip code, and password to be a “user”, regardless of whether they’ve ever actually linked their bank account to their Mint user name. This figure obviously overstates the number of people who actually use Mint on a day-to-day basis, but it’s also a fairly standard way to define “users” for most web services. As an outside check, Comscore counts 416,000 monthly unique visitors worldwide, and growing rapidly (see chart below).

This definition "raised some concerns" for TechCrunch.

Is this really standard practice for web services? (Really, I'm curious - lemme know).

In what world is a "user" someone who creates an account and never uses the site again? At the most basic semantic level, they're not even using the site.

Aaron, you've clearly got a successful startup and the established competition is obviously feeling threatened, so why not just omit those non-users from the user numbers you're reporting? Who is impressed by traffic that has visited a website, signed up, and never returned?

reddit, leaking pepsi

2009-02-20T08:21:00.000-05:00

The infamous Pepsi PDF could have just been a marketing ruse, but it was nonetheless leaked on reddit and we found our alien as the source for a number of mainstream media outlets.

It made headlines in the Telegraph and MediaBistro. And given all the smiley-face-to-Pepsi-logo juxtaposition, combined with all the advertising jargon, it's easy to see why this would get people talking/laughing.

I'd always dreamed of the day we'd be in the New York Post... I CAN'T HIDE HOW MUCH I LOVE THOSE ALL CAPS HEADLINES.

rofldna - a breadpig project to benefit science commons & protect the future of the internet

2009-02-19T15:05:00.004-05:00

It's called ROFLDNA and it's the result of the last ROFLThing event in New York. Ask for just some opening remarks and you'll get me cheek-swabbing all your Internet celebrities.

In said opening remarks, I had designated the New York Stem Cell Foundation as the recipient of the auction proceeds, but something happened between then and now. Namely, Science Commons appeared on the front page of reddit and I had a few beers with their VP of Science. A few drinks can go a long way.

We've also formed some great plans for reddit to partner with them in the coming months. The community responded so well to the idea that we couldn't help but form this allegiance.

iReddit launches, now #1 on paid news apps

2009-02-17T23:13:00.005-05:00

Not bad for the first workday since Apple approved it (on Valentine's Day). I take my metaphorical hat off to the 280North team, who did all the work to bring iReddit to life. Early reviews have been overwhelmingly positive and they've already got a revision in the Apple approval process to fix a few nagging bugs.

Of course, it didn't hurt that the sponsored link on reddit got so many upvotes it was even voted onto the front page. Guess folks really did want us to release an official iPhone app...

twitter proves itself useful

2009-02-16T22:32:00.001-05:00

This made me laugh. I think I may have found a use for twitter after all.