Reddit is where internet discussions happen. It's the front page of the internet. But since its creation, Reddit that has always been a network of communities, never give significant value to its users, more than it values the subreddits they contribute to.
Known as the popular social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website, Reddit is joining other giants like Twitter and Facebook with the addition of user profiles.
Rudimentary profile pages exist on Reddit. They show user’s post history, but are rarely a destination where users checks regularity. it was rather dull too. This is why it's doing a makeover, and the change is aimed for boosting engagement on the highly popular service.
With the feature, Redditors can can start threads directly from their profile, which they themselves are the moderator. And by having their own profiles pages, other users can follow the profiles as they usually would follow a subreddit.
Reddit is already popular even without a profile feature, and most of its users are already satisfied without it. So here the response from users has been mixed. Some expressed the feature to undermines the strength and importance of communities on the site. Other sees it as overtly social features that encroaches the site’s core functions, comparing it to Digg v4, a aggregation site that had an overhaul which caused much of its users to flee.
Others went with positive reviews such as saying: "It gives people a place to post their stuff without breaking all of the self-promotion rules that Reddit has."
The feature finally being released on March 21st, 2017, is debuted on three high-profile moderators, with one of them is Alexis Ohanian's.
As shown above, some of the features include a larger avatar photo, a Twitter-like banner photo, and a great big Follow button. Additionally, there’s an "active in these communities" that encourages community discovery. The design is improved from how it is for the majority of users, including Reddit CEO Steve Huffman.
While the forums attract vast audiences, users have struggled to share personal content due to rules banning self-promotion, said Ohanian. This is a change because up until the moment the feature profile is introduced, Reddit had a strict rules against self-promotion. Previously, the only way to promote a content directly was by creating a subreddit under the Reddit users' own name.
"We think this will allow some of the best content creators on reddit to stay on reddit and grow," said a Reddit admin that goes with the name HideHideHidden
Reddit has went to several changes since Alexis Ohanian and co-founder Steve Huffman returned to the company in 2015. Reddit in adding new features stopped briefly when the site has created a new team to fight spam and harassment, it addition to hiring more than 100 new employees.
"We're now in a position where we can start doing product improvements that are admittedly overdue but represent a real level up for Reddit," said Ohanian.
The feature is rolling out to more users in the coming months, Reddit said.