According to a report by the Wired, Reddit will launch a news site called Upvoted that will focus on what Reddit is known for: Being the bulletin board for the Internet.
On the regular Reddit page, redditors (Reddit users) post content to the site on the various subreddits on the site where other redditors can post comments, upvote (like) or downvote (dislike) the post. On Upvoted however, it will act like a typical news site which apparently has a “dedicated editorial team” of ten people that will come up with about 10 to 20 stories per day. The editorial team will look for stories on Reddit, verify the details , determine the original poster and go ahead and write the articles for Upvoted.
Since this is a Reddit experiment, Upvoted will have a link back to its parent company. Posts on Upvoted will be added to a subreddit /r/upvoted on Reddit where now people will be able to comment, upvote or downvote the article.
This is an interesting move by Reddit from a number of standpoints:
- The first one being the fact that it has bucked the trend where modern social media sites lie on user generated content. Upvoted is acting as the traditional media where they post content they generate themselves.
- The second being the fact that this has come at a time where Reddit underwent a tumultuous time after a meltdown when the AMA moderator was fired. Reddit also closed some subreddits for violating their terms against harassment and went ahead and updated their terms in consequence.
- Another angle is that it can be seen as a strategy to make it easy for first time users to get information from Reddit ecosystem because at first glance, Reddit seems confusing at first and by starting Upvote, this will make it easier for them to read news.
- Since Reddit is regarded as the “Front page of the Internet”, it might leverage on this by making Upvoted a potential revenue stream if it finally picks up.
