The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet’s Culture Laboratory
We Are the Nerds by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin tells the inspiring story of how two guys founded Reddit, the self-proclaimed "front page of the internet". It explores the ups and downs, highs and lows of startup life, with key takeaways on entrepreneurship and community-building.
Reddit’s story begins at the University of Virginia in 2001. Roommates Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman were pretty normal freshmen, albeit with a pronounced geeky streak. They ate pizza, drank beer, tinkered with their computers and played video games. Both were fascinated by the emerging startup scene, but they were still waiting for their killer idea.
In fact, it was only four years later that the seeds of what would become one of the internet’s most popular websites were planted. In 2005, the duo attended a talk by Paul Graham, a well-known computer programmer and entrepreneur, as well as the mind behind the business incubator Y Combinator. Graham was offering $6,000 to potential founders to develop their ideas over the summer.
That sounded like a pretty good deal to Ohanian and Huffman – after all, they needed to pay for pizza and beer! They pitched an idea for a company that would use mobile technology to order food from gas stations. Graham wasn’t exactly blown away, but he was impressed by the pair’s can-do attitude. He gave them $12,000 and tasked them with coming up with a way to aggregate the best of the web’s endless supply of content. By the end of that summer, Reddit was born. Graham retained a stake in the project and continued to advise Ohanian and Huffman.
Reddit didn’t come out of the blue – in fact, the concept itself was already fairly established. What was new, though, were the site’s features. Take upvotes and downvotes, for example. These let users give a virtual thumbs up – or down – to content posted to the site. That’s the system that puts frequently upvoted links, pictures and text posts on the Reddit homepage, where it’s guaranteed to be seen. It’s a neat way of effectively outsourcing editorial decisions and allowing users to define what matters to them and their communities.
Another novel feature was subreddits, separate pages where users could delve into niche topics and interests. Today, there are millions of these Reddits within Reddits for everything from political discussions, on the r/Politics subreddit, to mutual appreciation, like on r/EarthPorn – a page devoted to sharing stunning pictures of our planet.
We Are the Nerds (2018) chronicles the turbulent rise of Reddit, one of the internet’s most popular and controversial websites. The product of careful research into the content aggregator’s history and in-depth interviews with leading staffers, Lagorio-Chafkin whisks us from its birth among beer bottles and pizza boxes to executive infighting and billions of clicks a month – with controversy-laden pit stops along the way.
The first hundred or so Reddit users were video-game characters or pieces of furniture in our apartment. Lampshade was a big user. – Steve Huffman
Ich bin begeistert. Ich liebe Bücher aber durch zwei kleine Kinder komme ich einfach nicht zum Lesen. Und ja, viele Bücher haben viel bla bla und die Quintessenz ist eigentlich ein Bruchteil.
Genau dafür ist Blinkist total genial! Es wird auf das Wesentliche reduziert, die Blinks sind gut verständlich, gut zusammengefasst und auch hörbar! Das ist super. 80 Euro für ein ganzes Jahr klingt viel, aber dafür unbegrenzt Zugriff auf 3000 Bücher. Und dieses Wissen und die Zeitersparnis ist unbezahlbar.
Extrem empfehlenswert. Statt sinnlos im Facebook zu scrollen höre ich jetzt täglich zwischen 3-4 "Bücher". Bei manchen wird schnelle klar, dass der Kauf unnötig ist, da schon das wichtigste zusammen gefasst wurde..bei anderen macht es Lust doch das Buch selbständig zu lesen. Wirklich toll
Einer der besten, bequemsten und sinnvollsten Apps die auf ein Handy gehören. Jeden morgen 15-20 Minuten für die eigene Weiterbildung/Entwicklung oder Wissen.
Viele tolle Bücher, auf deren Kernaussagen reduziert- präzise und ansprechend zusammengefasst. Endlich habe ich das Gefühl, Zeit für Bücher zu finden, für die ich sonst keine Zeit habe.
Hol dir mit Blinkist die besten Erkenntnisse aus mehr als 7.000 Sachbüchern und Podcasts. In 15 Minuten lesen oder anhören!
Jetzt kostenlos testen
Blink 3 von 12 - Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschheit
von Yuval Noah Harari
