Raw Thought: And Now, The News

My company was acquired today.

Friends in Cambridge: we’ll be hanging out at Border Cafe tonight.

  • TechCrunch (reddit): “always played second fiddle to Digg”

  • Reddit Blog: “you all have made it everything that it is. A number of you even stuck with us after we switched away from Lisp.”

  • E-Consultancy.com: “suggest[s] that we’re in a serious period of inflation, though let’s stop short of calling this a bubble.”

  • Matthew Roche: “the Avis Rent-a-car of the content voting sites.”

  • David Weinberger: ” a very very smart move by CondeNet…if they let the Reddit folks heavily influence how the service is developed.”

  • Blake Killian: “Conde Nast, the unlikely Disruptor.”

  • Bivings Report: “just sort of scratched at the surface of what might be possible if traditional publishers embrace social technologies.”

  • Digg: “Reddit is where you go when you need someone to explain to you why North Korea is heaven on earth and America is the devil”

  • Wired News: Users can also append negative votes to stories that are of poor quality or that fail to capture their interest.”

  • Mark Pilgrim: “a new form of online scam in which you make all the content, and we keep all the money.”

  • Media Wire Daily: “a clear sign that Charles Townsend is making sure that Conde’s digital dick is solid enough to swing with the big boys.”

  • Matthew Ingram: “No word so far on whether the rumoured price of $65-million has any relationship to reality”

  • Gawker: “merging with the ickle kiddies … the Nasties decided they needed more of that Reddit magic.”

  • GigaOm: “Reddit received 16 percent of about 300 votes cast, following Boing Boing and Gawker.”

  • Valleywag: I went to their Boston pad, we played some video games.”

  • Webomatica: “digg gone through a Craigslist filter.”

  • Slashdot: “the great big Web 2.0 bubble continues to inflate towards the popping point”

  • The Register: “the price is many heaps smaller than the $150m that Kevin Rose reportedly wants for Digg”

  • Joey DeVilla: “I see that Aaron’s been keeping track of what they’ve written about the acquisition on his blog.”

  • ReadWriteWeb: “Reddit is another to have been extensively profiled by [us].

  • Press Release: “Reddit achieves our objectives on both counts, and we are confident that other companies will find Reddit to be a partner that can bring tremendous value to their Web efforts.”

  • Marketing Shift: “The obvious question to ask is if Conde Nast will allow Reddit’s rankings to remain neutral and not benefit the company’s properties.”

  • CNET / MEDIAWEEK

posted 2006-10-31T16:47:35 #

Letters to the editor

Great news - congratulations! I’ll miss your Cambridge/Somerville blog posts, but I’m sure SF will be an exciting change for you.

posted by Daniel Jalkut on 2006-10-31T17:33:11 #

Congratulations! Hopefully you wont lose interest in webapps now that that’s sorted - web.py has been an excellent side-effect of that venture.

posted by Tom Berger on 2006-10-31T17:36:48 #

Congratulations.

Is money falling from the sky yet? :-)

posted by Seth Finkelstein on 2006-10-31T18:11:15 #

Awesome! Many congrats to you and the rest of the team.

posted by Edward O'Connor on 2006-10-31T18:21:07 #

Congratulations! You guys earned it!

posted by Gabor Cselle on 2006-10-31T18:47:50 #

Congrats Aaron!!

posted by Jeremiah Rogers on 2006-10-31T18:54:00 #

What — you won’t be out trick-or-treating tonight? Congrats…

posted by Mike Sierra on 2006-10-31T19:10:05 #

Congratulations to the entire Not A Bug team

posted by Kenny Sanders on 2006-10-31T19:32:43 #

More proof that the only way for New Media to make money is by selling out to Old Media.

The revolution will not be monetized.

posted by Charles Eicher on 2006-10-31T19:59:11 #

congrats Aaron!

posted by Lee Bryant on 2006-10-31T21:24:11 #

Congratulations!

I wonder if and when Paul Graham will divulge whether this acquisition has turned Y combinator into a break-even or profitable company. It will be interesting to know. If true, that would mean you’re now a millionaire!

Thank you very much for making Reddit what it is, along with the others. I have found a lot of interesting things online that I never would have found if not for Reddit.

posted by Ben Atkin on 2006-10-31T23:59:59 #

Okay, so, what’s the real news? How do you expect your work to change?

posted by misuba on 2006-11-01T01:54:36 #

(Shucks, I’m going to be at Border Cafe on Thursday! ) Congratulations, indeed!

posted by Reg Aubry on 2006-11-01T03:47:06 #

Congrats! “second fiddle to digg” may be in terms of quantity, certainly not in quality.

posted by Olivier Ansaldi on 2006-11-02T10:48:08 #

Sweet! Congratulations to the entire crew. When do you guys head out to the Left Coast?

posted by greg on 2006-11-03T14:30:44 #

Hi Aaron, congratulations. Go forward. Peter

posted by Rechtsanwalt Strafrecht on 2007-04-18T22:18:04 #

My congrats too. it seems like another story “from the dishwasher to a millonaire” - the american dream :-). But i think it must be a greater pleasure for you that Mr. “Internet” - Tim Berners-Lee u know and mentioned it: http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/170

i would be ;-)

i wish you good luck for your future

posted by Johanna on 2007-05-12T19:37:52 #

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Aaron Swartz (me@aaronsw.com)