iSMOblog

Reddit, pronounced as ‘read it’ or short form of ‘I have read it’ is a social bookmarking site. But, this social bookmarking site offers its users a variety of new features and facilities. This is the fact due to which it is able to give its competitors, specially, Digg an extremely tough competition. Though Digg is one of the most popular social bookmarking sites, but even Reddit is not far behind. Its popularity is surely increasing by the day and I decided to find out why.

The war of legends

Digg and Reddit offer more or less similar features to their users; however, there are some slight noticeable differences among them.

First of all, both Reddit and Digg allows its users to rate or vote for a story and then accordingly they are displayed on the respective homepages. The story on Digg just keeps moving downward and finally gets disappeared if it has not been voted enough. With Reddit, the voting counts but even the time of submission of the story is also taken care of while moving the story downwards or when removing it.

Secondly, both Reddit and Digg have advertisements on their sites. Reddit, however, allows you to rate the ad or vote it up or down according to your liking for the same. Digg does not support this feature.

Thirdly, Reddit lets you find out who are the people whose stories have been voted for the maximum number of times in the day and in the week. They are known as the karma gainers. In the case of Digg, you can get to know of the people whose stories have appeared on the homepage.

Fourthly, Reddit has a feature by the name of ‘Recommended’. It observes the kind of stories which you upvote for and then on this basis recommends you stories which Reddit thinks will might interest you.

What’s new?

Reddit has a number of new features, which tends to attract more users. For instance, on June 17, 2008 Reddit announced its out-sourcing i.e. people can now download the code behind Reddit and can also submit their own codes, to make Reddit even better, and send it across to the Reddit staff.

One of the most loved and new features of Reddit is allowing its users to create their own Reddits. You can now customize the feel and the style of your own Reddit page and you can also change the CNAME to host your Reddit at your own URL.

Reddit has always seemed to do the trick by involving the users in its main action process or plan. Users can make this site better by writing their own codes, they can customize the page and the Reddits and they can also help Reddit go global by offering to translate Reddit for them. Presently, Reddit offers translation support in English and in German.

Many a people are extremely fond of Digg but Reddit is bound to give it a tough time. With so many options, so much of variety, with so much support from its users…this social bookmarking website has surely a long way to go!