First impressions - Reddit

Since the announcement of the closure of Google+ for consumers I've been looking at options to re-home the bulk of my social media activity.

It turns out there isn't any one platform capable of stepping up but the one I've looked closely at that comes closest, surprisingly turned out to be Reddit.

Wikipedia describes Reddit as

"a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website."

Reddit describes themselves as

"home to thousands of communities, endless conversation, and authentic human connection."

Reddit is basically a whole bunch of topical forums, or subreddits. The structure of the site puts more focus on WHAT than WHO. The culture isn't one of wholly representing oneself, rather ones opinions.

Coming from a social standpoint where I have always championed the viewpoint where WHO is always more important contextually than WHAT made for an interesting induction.

When I made this tweet for example I was wondering if anyone would mention ever having seen anyone say "Follow me on Reddit" for example?

What is the least common thing you hear or read after this phrase? pic.twitter.com/KkwA4aUZKZ

— Robert Wallis (@qwallis) March 11, 2019

You can follow users on Reddit. Follow ME! 

There are a couple of obvious reasons why following (people) is not the culture on Reddit.

Firstly follower numbers are a vanity metric: on Reddit there is no public follower count. Follower numbers are visible to logged in Reddit users, but you cannot see WHO is following a user.

There is no reciprocity pressure on Reddit, no "follow back" indicators, nothing.

User spez has 12k followers, around the same number I had on Google+ before it was killed off, but he's the Reddit co founder and CEO!

It's only really worth following people who post to their profile which doesn't seem to be the culture, at least not currently.

Once you get over the lack of follower pressure commonly experienced on other networks it feels quite positive to not have that to worry about.

Karma, which you accumulate by interacting positively with the Reddit community, along with "Cake day", your the user account age are generally better metrics for user value.

As mentioned it's only worth following a user if they post to their profile: if they only post to communities (subreddits) then you would not see those posts in your home stream. Unless they are posting in communities you subscribe to.

Reddit Profile Layout

I've pinned a couple of profile posts, added my real name as an optional "display name", a short bio, opted not to hide communities I moderate, added my Twitter and a few other tweaks.

There are a lot of profile settings you can play with but it's important to get a proper handle about how the platform works before fiddling too much with that stuff, it can get geeky pretty quick.

It's all about communities

Subreddits are communities which focus on certain topics. You subscribe to subreddits to see posts from that community in your home stream.

One thing I think Reddit does well is prevents new accounts from being able to create communities (subreddits) until the account is at least 30 days old and has a certain, unspecified amount of "Karma".

Once my newbie restrictions were lifted I made a couple of communities as new homes for some of the communities I had created on Google+ which were on their final days on death row.

I one community for my project "Happening London" and one for "SingAtSix".

r/HappeningLondon

I chose Reddit as a new home for building communities for a couple of reasons, but mainly because it's important that a community space is publicly visible for logged out users. If that is important to you Reddit is about your only choice.

Also Reddit has a functioning business model. It's a freemium model, meaning it is advertiser funded but offers users the option to remove adverts and have a few other perks for a small subscription fee.

This makes Reddit safer as a community building option. Safer, but nothing is guaranteed.

There are quite a few customisation options for making your community stand out, though some of those: like link menus for example only show to logged un users.

I've only dabbled with public open communities so far, but you can restrict membership and also create non-visible communities.

 
I'm still getting up to speed with Reddit. It's early days, but it already has a secure place in my social media toolbox.

How about you? Are you a short or long time Redditor? 

Follow @qwallis