Reddit Going Open Source
posted by: Vlad Akilov
As you probably know, Reddit is a news voting service that ranks only behind Digg in this particular niche. That being said, the company is looking for a way to take their name and presence to the next level. The latest move made by those at Reddit is the decision to make the site’s code open source. What does this mean? Well, in simple terms it means that anybody can now make their own site that will perform and operate in an identical manner to Reddit and other voting services. That being said, clones of these services have been around since day one; it did not take an open source project to make this imitation a popular one.
It is safe to say that a lot of webmasters and online entrepreneurs will be using what they find in the Reddit code for upcoming projects; some which may appear to be an identical clone. Unfortunately, it has never been about the technology when it comes to news voting services. Instead, the success or failure of a site like this has more to do with users. Simply put, the more people who begin to use a news voting site the more popular it will become. And when a site like this becomes popular, it also becomes more useful to the online world.
Although Reddit is holding steady, it is apparent that they have yet to dent Digg’s market share. Last month, Digg had approximately 20 times as many pageviews and United States based visitors than Reddit. Although these stats are totaled by comScore, it is safe to say that they are semi-accurate.
If you are interested in starting a news voting service you now have the platform for doing so. But don’t get caught thinking that your service will take off like Digg, or even Reddit for that matter. It takes a lot of users to be successful in this niche!
