(Mirror Daily, United States) – Reddit’s harassment problems are far from over – even for the most loyal of users. Hostility and negativity seem to be thriving on the entertainment website in spite of the administrators’ attempts of changing that.
Those uninitiated have a hard time understanding the appeal, and marketers usually stay away from being associated with the website. The reputation of being dark, unruly and a hotbed for potential lawsuits definitely hurts Reddit’s business side of things.
So, Reddit decided to try something new in the form of Upvoted, a standalone news site dedicate to do what the website does best: surfacing interesting stuff from the underbelly of the Internet. Having been developed over the past year, Upvoted follows the standard pattern of any other news site out there.
Get ready for infographics, stories, videos and podcasts. With its own website – upvoted.com – users will have yet another website to scroll for news on sports, lifestyle and animals. Upvoted also has a dedicated editorial team whose purpose is to create original stories. One difference, however, will be that comments are completely banned from the site.
Moreover, the name has nothing to do with an upvoting system, as the website doesn’t feature one. What it does have to do is being an experiment for Reddit, representing a business move after failing to take over and reduce the site’s more offensive content.
Upvoted could be a key business move designed to recapture some of the attention – and by attention we mean traffic – that Reddit loses due to other news organizations coping their stories. It’s basically a way to bait non-users, but also a testing ground where advertisers could see what it’s like to deal with a world administered by unpaid volunteers.
If proven successful, Upvoted might be a peek into Reddit’s future. According to Vickie Chang, Myspace’s former editorial director currently in charge of Upvoted, the format of the new website is simple. The ten people on the editorial team will go through Reddit stories, check details and write articles for Upvoted.
Starting with around 10 to 20 stories a day, Chang hopes that soon will have enough real news to post close to 40. In order to promote Reddit – the main reason why Upvoted exists – the editors made sure to include a direct link to the original website in every story, indicating the original poster and the Reddit thread.
More than anything else, Upvoted hopes to test a new opportunity for ad revenue, but not in the form of the annoying banner ads or pop-ups. Think more in terms of sponsored content paid for by advertising partners, “just as interesting as actual content,” Chang says.
Image Source: trendblog.net