For the second blog post, I chose to analyze the blog-esque website, Reddit. Reddit functions as a platform for communication between users on ‘subreddits’ which are themed blogs that have a singular theme or focus. They range from being extremely vague, Gaming, to being focused around specific subjects. The excellent thing about Reddit, there is a subreddit for just about everything you’ll want to find. There is are subreddits for animals, World News, funny pictures and movies. What these subreddits are, small communities of Redditors within the overarching community of Reddit. Posters can view threads within the subreddits, like our own blog posts, written by members of the community. They can read these posts and make replies to these posts to expand the conversation. They can up-vote or down-vote posts based on how they feel.
This is the homepage of Reddit, dubbed by redditors as ‘the front page’. Reaching the front page with a post is a great accomplishment, almost like a challenge
The page itself is extremely basic. Almost as though the designers are trying to emphasize the basic-ness of the site and they aren’t trying to do anything fancy. The focus of the site is and should be the content the posters are providing. It feels as though the website is attempting to feel like a search engine. A list of subreddits, based on your Reddit history (or if new, you are shown the popular subreddits at the moment), are listed at the top of the webpage, feeling like a bookmark or favorite bar in your browser. If someone should decide to create a Reddit account, they can subscribe to the subreddits of their choice. These subscriptions allow the users front page to be filled with the top posts from their subscribed subreddits. Additionally, the ‘favorites’ bar mentioned above, prioritizes your subscribed subreddit and it attempts to show the user new subreddits based on what they might like.
The site does an excellent job as being a gathering place for conversation, a source of news, or just a place to waste time. If you haven’t tried or given Reddit a look, I would highly recommend checking it out. It has something for just about everyone.
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