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Reddit: A Pre-Facebook Community in a Post-Facebook World

By Ethan Zuckerman

08 Jul 2013 · 4 min read

Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, co-founder of Internet community site Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, shared a joke that's popular on his site: "Facebook makes me hate the people I know, and Reddit makes me love the people I don't."

Given Facebook's $60 billion market capitalization and unchallenged position as the world's most-visited website, Ohanian's quip sounds like sour grapes. (Ohanian and his parters sold Reddit to Conde Nast in 2006 for an undisclosed sum, likely orders of magnitude smaller than Facebook's valuation.) But there's reason for Ohanian to imply a competition between a site used by 6 percent of American Internet users and one used by 67 percent, according to recent statistics by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

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