Publishing giant Conde Nast is spinning off social news website Reddit into a new independent entity, Reddit Inc.
Under the restructuring, Condé Nast parent company Advance Publications will maintain ownership of Reddit Inc. while simultaneously relieving the community-based website from the day-to-day influence of Condé Nast.
This change is all about setting up reddit so that it can better handle future growth and opportunities. When reddit was acquired in October 2006 by Condé Nast, it was receiving about 700k page views per day. Now, reddit routinely gets that much traffic in 15 minutes. This explosion in traffic created technical, cultural, and organizational growing pains. reddit now has the kind of resources it needs to continue improving and supporting the community's experience far into the future.
Overall, the move will grant reddit greater operational freedom without forcing Advance Publication to relinquish its equity in the website, a spokesman for Advance told All Things D.
Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who will serve on the new company's board of directors, told VentureBeat that, "Condé Nast felt like it was not adding enough value to let Reddit achieve its full potential.”
“We don’t want Redditors to think that anything has changed from their perspective, other than that the company has the ability to just go do things,” Ohanian said in a separate statement to All Things D.
In addition to taking on greater challenges in "journalism, civic engagement, fundraising, product development, and learning," -- a mission which the Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal praised for being "as lofty as it is good" -- Reddit now has its sights set on hiring a new chief executive. And make no mistake, that person will be in touch with what has made reddit so successful.
As Martin wrote in the announcement, "We wouldn't seriously consider any individuals for the CEO position unless they understood the community and were passionate about serving its needs."