Reddit has never been about the individual like Twitter or Facebook, It was created for communities. Whether it’s broad and popular like gaming, or weird and niche like this one dedicated to little green toy soldiers.
So you can understand the confusion users are feeling towards the announcement of individual profile pages on the site.
A post in the subreddit for community moderators, /r/modnews, said the feature is currently being opened to alpha testers.
“Testers will have a new profile page design, the ability to make posts directly to their profile (not just to communities), and logged-in redditors will be able to follow them… We’re making this change because content creators tell us they have a hard time finding the right place to post their content.We also want to support them in being able to grow their own followers.”
It’s a pretty big change for the page and one many users won’t be happy about. The restriction of only being able to post to subreddits not only kept the site unique, it allowed only for relevant conversation about the topic of that particular subreddit.
In other words, it cut out the personal bullshit.
Others are probably stoked on the idea. Some weirdos already make subreddits about themselves to give people a place to post to and a primitive profile page exists for every user that shows their post history, but it was never a focus of the site’s functionality.
The aim is to eventually roll the feature out to all Reddit users.
Why would they bother? One theory could be around advertising.
You see, Reddit communities can be pretty gnarly, making advertisers weary of having their brand displayed around potentially sensitive material.
Profiles give them a chance to associate their brand with a community or high profile user without the volatility that comes with a standard subreddit.
Whatever the motivation, it’s going to be interesting to watch this one play out.
Source: Gizmodo.
Photo: Reddit.
