If you happened to read the Reddit blog today, or if your particularly observant, you might have noticed a few changes on Reddit.
“We added a handful of new features last night. Among them is the ability for users to create their own reddits.”
This is an interesting addition, similar to what Mixx introduced, and adds some exciting opportunities to spice up the way users enjoy Reddit.
There will be three different types of subreddits that you can make, allowing a large range of options.
Public Subreddits:
Public subreddits will be just like the current Reddit subreddits. Any user will be able to view them and submit articles into them. You may use this option if you believe Reddit is missing a major group that is should have, like a Ron Paul Subreddit.
Restricted Subreddits:
Restricted subreddits will allow all users to read the submissions but will only allow invited members to be able to comment, vote, and submit articles.
Private Subreddits:
Private subreddits are just as they sound… private. Only invited members can participate or even view a private subreddits.
To see the new area, click the “more” button, under the “other reddits” section on the top right of Reddit.
Initially you will see a list of subreddits that you can choose to subscribe to, down the left hand side of the page. You will start in the “popular” section of subreddits where each is displayed in order based on the number of subscribers they have.
Once you have subscribed to a few subreddits, you will see them appear as quick links in the top right corner of your Reddit pages.
To view your selected subreddits, and the level of your membership, click on the “my reddits” tab in the subreddits section. You will be shown the subreddits you are a subscriber, contributor, or moderator for.
Moderators have the ability to remove posts and ban members from the subreddit they are moderating.
Submitting to subreddits is pretty much the same, except you can only choose a subreddit you are a member of to submit to.
In addition to this beta release, Reddit has also done away with subdomains. If you recall the friends or sports subreddits would be located at friends.reddit.com or sports.reddit.com but are now located in an “/r/” folder, which stands for Reddit. So the friends section is not located at http://reddit.com/r/friends/.
I talked to some Reddit folks asking why they decided to get rid of the subdomains and they had this to say:
“Network Solutions is squatting on all our subdomains. That, and it was just simpler than having users fight over precious subdomains like RonPaul.reddit, Haskell.reddit, and WakeUpSheeple.reddit” — Steve Huffman
“Subdomains are sooooo Web 1.0.” — Chris Slowe
Lastly, if you were to click on an actual story link, you will notice that stories open in a Reddit browser. This allows you to vote for the story or click a link to comment while you are actually viewing the article.
