Reddit, the site that bills itself as “the front page of the internet,” is unfathomably popular – with millions upon millions of users trawling its sub-reddits every day. It is also – to those on the outside – one of the most confusing, ugly, and user-unfriendly sites to be found.
That’s going to be changing. According to CEO Steve Huffman, Reddit has raised $200 million in new venture funding – and will be using some of that money to give the site a slick, modern redesign.
“We have a lot of perception debt,” Huffman told Recode. “Reddit feels old. We don’t want to be associated with old.”
While the design has yet to be unveiled, Recode reports that it appears to be a timeline based redesign, which means that Reddit is going to a little more like Facebook and Twitter in terms of usability, accentuated with rich data cards for a slightly more visual experience.
“We want Reddit to be more visually appealing, so when new users come to Reddit they have a better sense of what’s there, what it’s for.”
While the redesign will make the site better to use on mobile, the company is still focusing on its desktop users. Huffman says that 80 percent of the site’s 300 million users use the site on desktop. Whether that’s because of the nature of the site, or the fact that it’s too painful to use on a mobile is up for debate.
“We will have, probably relative to our peers, a longer desktop life because of text and keyboards,” Huffman said. “It’s easier to create text from a keyboard. And I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, it’s just a thing.”
I have a feeling this will go down like a lead balloon with the site’s communities – which include both overtly negative and resoundingly positive ones. Change is hard to deal with, but radically changing a beloved site that’s fundamentally been the same since 2005? That’s brave.
Last Updated: August 1, 2017
Gavin Mannion
August 1, 2017 at 07:41
I am definitely not a fan of the current Reddit UI but that community is so loud that this could really cripple reddit if done badly
Geoffrey Tim
August 1, 2017 at 09:27
The same sort of thing happened to Digg. And well, yeah.
Matthew Figueira
August 1, 2017 at 13:44
The community didn’t Digg it? 🙁
Geoffrey Tim
August 1, 2017 at 13:53
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a2337b2600628cc1b6eb6187aa653058687442ec6659ef828fe0a589aaf50257.gif
BakedBagel
August 1, 2017 at 16:31
This level of pun should be labeled hate speech
Ottokie
August 1, 2017 at 09:17
Reddit always felt like the forums for League of Legends players.
brafester
August 1, 2017 at 14:42
Because it truly is!
Magoo
August 1, 2017 at 10:05
You know what they say about that which ain’t broke.
RinceThis
August 1, 2017 at 21:20
Screw reddit and their pseudo elite users
Allykhat
August 2, 2017 at 09:06
Screw you too buddeh <3
Allykhat
August 2, 2017 at 09:06
Reddit is Fun on android and Narwhal on iOS work perfectly fine on mobile…
I must admit, I don’t really like the idea of going along the UI lines of FB and Twitter.