Upvoted Dot Com: Reddit’s Latest Publication Platform

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reddit-upvoted-publication

Here is another playground for Reddit lovers.

Reddit (an entertainment-based social networking site that has 202 million monthly users) has announced that it was launching “a hub to give the stories of Reddit the creative space to expand, breathe, and grow.” The new publication is called Upvoted dot com.

Reddit has been expanding their original content creation. In January, Reddit launched a podcast called Upvoted “to give voice to the Redditors whose stories grace our tens of thousands of frontpages.” The podcasts got more than 1.6 million downloads. In April, Reddit began a curated weekly newsletter called Upvoted Weekly that included Reddit’s “favorite posts you probably missed during the week.” Upvoted Weekly has over 212,000 subscribers, an average open-rate of 32% and click-through rate of 35%.

“With such positive data trends, we took it a step further and recently began writing articles we directly posted to r/upvoted,” writes Ohanian. “And you enjoyed those, too.”

What do people think so far? In the works for the past year, the site looks and feels much like any other news site out there. It will have stories, infographics, illustrations, videos, and podcasts. It will include articles on news, sports, animals, and lifestyle issues. It will have its own website and a dedicated editorial team creating original stories. However, unlike other news sites, it will be a part of Reddit. Moreover, very much unlike Reddit, it won’t allow comments on the site at all nor will it have any kind of upvoting system.

Upvoted’s stories are culled, curated, and written by a small editorial team. The team of about ten people is lead by former Myspace editorial director Vickie Chang. Their editorial process is that they find stories on Reddit, verify the details, interview the original posters, and then write articles for Upvoted.

Some experts said Reddit’s decision to launch an editorial site is an experiment to figure out how it can continue to grow. However, it also seems to be, in part, about Reddit’s frustration with other news sites that find story ideas on Reddit. They’ll later repost the stories on their own sites, and, in essence, profit from Reddit’s community when the stories go viral.