Media, Social Networks, Technology, Web 2.0
Oct 31, 2006
Todd Zeigler
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Condé Nast Buys Reddit: One Small Step for Social News

redditlogo.jpgTechrunch is reporting that magazine publisher Condé Nast has purchased the social news site Reddit. Condé Nast is the owner of a number of popular magazines suchs as Wired, Vogue, GQ, Glamour, Bon Appétit and the New Yorker.

I think this is a fascinating and smart acquisition by Condé Nast. We’ve already seen Reddit partner with media companies like Slate to create “Reddit” views of their data. The Slate experiment just sort of scratched at the surface of what might be possible if traditional publishers embrace social technologies.

For a publisher like Condé Nast the potential uses of Reddit technology are staggering. The publisher could create a single destination site where all the articles from its various publications are aggregated and voted on using Reddit technologies. Alternatively, Condé Nast could add Reddit views to the websites of all the magazines they own in order to provide a “social” view of the magazine’s content in addition to an “editor” controlled view.

I think this is a great move by Condé Nast. Look for Wired.com to serve as the testing ground for how the publishing giant incorporates Reddit into their other offerings.

Update: Check out the links below for more on this:

  • http://www.thebloggingtimes.com/content/index.php/2006/10/31/wired-bags-reddit/ The Blogging Times » Wired bags Reddit

    [...] From the blogosphere: Download Squad, Mathew Ingram, CyberNet Technology News, The Bivings Report, Bloggers Blog, Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim, digg A dvance Publications, Advance.net, Conde Nast, CondeNet, Reddit, Steve Newhouse, Wired Digital [...]

  • http://www.deepjiveinterests.com/2006/10/31/hungry-hungry-hippos-reddit-gobbled-up-by-conde-nast/ Deep Jive Interests » Hungry Hungry Hippos! Reddit Gobbled Up By Conde Nast

    [...] Look for this acquisition to cause more rumours to swirl about Digg’s acquisition, which, quite frankly, has died down over the past few days — and possibly bump up any asking prices (since the competition for social network sites just fell by about 1/3). Much like how Digg could be plugged into MySpace and used as a strange “oracle” device, Todd Zeigler from Bivings, has an excellent point about Reddit – and how it has uses for more than the traffic it brings. The publisher could create a single destination site where all the articles from its various publications are aggregated and voted on using Reddit technologies. Alternatively, Condé Nast could add Reddit views to the websites of all the magazines they own in order to provide a “social” view of the magazine’s content in addition to an “editor” controlled view. [...]

  • http://www.webomatica.com/wordpress/2006/11/02/reddit-acquired-a-personal-view/ Webomatica

    Reddit Acquired: A Personal View…

    Here’s a neat little trick of the interweb. I get a link to my Reddit post from a blog I’ve never heard of before (Raw Thought by Aaron Swartz), and it turns out Swartz is a Reddit employee (well, technically now Wired employee). He has a p…

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com/2006/chris-andersons-calls-for-radical-transparency-in-media/ Chris Anderson Calls for “Radical Transparency” in Media » The Bivings Report

    [...] (5) “Let readers decide what’s best. We own Reddit, which (among other things) is a terrific way of measuring popularity. Why should we guess at which stories will be most popular and give those preferential treatment?” Absolutely. This is exactly what I was hoping for when they bought Reddit. I would just say that there is a sweet spot between a popularity-based news view and an editor-controlled view that hasn’t really been hit on yet (I know Netscape is trying). How about giving the user the ability to switch between the popular and editor views of the site?  This was what we tried in our redesign of USA Today. [...]

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