Graduated from UVA in 2005 and put my history major to work co-founding reddit.com. Sold it to Condé Nast in 2006 and continued doodle the reddit alien for another three years until retiring for a Kiva Fellowship in Armenia. Founded Breadpig, Inc., an uncorporation that's responsible for bringing geeky things into the world like LOLmagnetz and xkcd: volume 0 -- and donating all the profits (over $100,000 given away so far!). Thanks to a whale, I gave a TED talk in 2009. [Joy!] My dad and I are also professional downtrodden Skins fans.
Thanks to all of you for the great comments and congratulations from this recent announcement.
I'm excited to join the fund that first gave Steve and me a chance back in 2005. And if you've got a promising startup east of the Valley, I'm looking forward to chatting with you!
This Brushes app on the iPad might be the thing that finally exposes how little artistic ability I have. Oh well, it's fun!
Sent from my iPad
Oh, reddit - the great content never stops coming, does it?
Adorable. Want.
Thanks, Joe! Don't forget the milk. Oh, and #4, that one looks the most important :)
I have already posted this once in a similar thread, but thought I would post it again as it quite relevant to the article and others who have not seen it before may appreciate it:"Instantes" by Jorge Luis Borges:
If I were able to live my life anew, In the next I would try to commit more errors. I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more. I would be more foolish than I've been, In fact, I would take few things seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would run more risks, take more vacations, contemplate more sunsets, climb more mountains, swim more rivers. I would go to more places where I've never been, I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans, I would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.
I was one of those people that lived sensibly and prolifically each minute of his life; Of course I had moments of happiness. If I could go back I would try to have only good moments. Because if you didn't know, of that is life made: only of moments; Don't lose the now.
I was one of those that never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, an umbrella, and a parachute; If I could live again, I would travel lighter. If I could live again, I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends. I would take more cart rides, contemplate more dawns, and play with more children, If I had another life ahead of me.
But already you see, I am 85, and I know that I am dying.
Great quote, F_J_H.
I believe that Reddit is one of the best communities I have seen on the Internet. I also believe that Reddit would benefit from more resources and less corporate interference. We can offer all of the above. And we’d love to buy Reddit and all those pesky troublesome users that we love so much.
You may've heard this news about Ben Huh offering to buy reddit from Conde Nast. I've been getting a lot of questions about my thoughts on the matter.
Frankly, this isn't the first offer to buy reddit I've heard, but it's the first public one. In fact, the way I learned about the blog entry describing the team's difficult financial situation was from an SMS offering me the chance to buy reddit back.
Team reddit needs help, but I wouldn't expect anyone to call you, Ben. In fact, I'd be very surprised if reddit were sold.
That said, a site that gets almost 300,000,000 impressions a month should be monetizable in a way that doesn't ruin the user experience. Steve and I didn't even run ads on reddit until at least 6 months in and even then only ran a single skyscraper on the comments pages (as long as it conformed to our guidelines of not expanding, autoplaying, or otherwise being annoying).
To this day, those guidelines stand. The skyscraper has become a single 300x250 ad unit (now on every page) and we added self-serve sponsored headlines as a great, non-invasive way to do advertising right. I can't think of many(any?) similar sites with such little irritating ad space.
It's something our community really appreciates, but setting this precedent means reddit can't get away with things other sites wouldn't mind doing to their users. Maybe that's why the community is one of the best online, I don't know, but it does pose a difficult monetization problem that hasn't yet been solved.
Considering all that you've done with the Cheezburger empire, Ben, I think it's at least worth dropping a note to Chris Slowe & the team to chat over some... uh... cheeseburgers?
If you made it this far still expecting LOLcats, I'm sorry. I lied.
Updated with LOL-TL;DR, so I'm not a liar.
Click here to download:
ben-huh-can-has-reddit-i-respond-entirely-in-lolcat-photos-jGshFfDpkwInowuqFsge.zip (516 KB)
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