Reddit, one of the most popular social media community, has launched its own standalone website for news – called Upvoted. It intends to capitalise on the popular content posted to Reddit, which is often picked up by online media organisations.
It is reported that the news site has been in works since about an year. As far as the design is concerned, the website looks pretty much similar to any other news website. It consists stories, infographics, illustrations, videos, and podcasts.
Upvoted will be covering news in a wide range of categories, including sports, animals, lifestyle issues, among others. It will also have a dedicated editorial team who will be responsible for creating original content.
The editorial team is being led by former Myspace editorial director Vickie Chang. The team, consisting of around ten people, will find stories on Reddit, verify the details, interview the original posters, and then write articles for Upvoted.
Initially, there will be around 10 to 20 stories a day, but eventually the number of daily articles will be close to 40. The website will be a part of Reddit but unlike Reddit, the new news website will not allow users to comment or vote on the website at all.
All stories will link back to Reddit, and will credit the original source of the material. A dedicated subreddit, r/upvoted, has also been established to house the content chosen for Upvoted and also allows users to comment on Reddit itself.
This new website – Upvoted, seems to be the company’s attempt to recapture users and attention that it lost amid big changes in top leadership roles, introducing new restrictions which were confusing to users.
Upvoted is also being considered as Reddit’s experiment to figure out how it can continue to grow. It is also an opportunity for the company to test out new ways of bringing in ad revenue. But, it won’t serve traditional banner ads or pop-ups. It will post sponsored content paid for and approved by advertising partners, and written by the editorial team.
