Every time I talk to the guys at Reddit, they are mentioning yet another change, feature, or addition to their site. I really don’t know how they find the time to do it all, with having only 5 people (6 now actually since they hired Erik the “Manager of Community”).

A lot of it has to do with the huge success they have had in making their site code open source.

Clearly I don’t have the same time management skills that they do, as I am about to talk about three separate things they have launched or changed all in one post. However, I have been traveling a lot and just finished the redesign and relaunch of Weird Asia News (Check it out if you have not seen it).

The most noticeable difference when visiting Reddit.com is that they have changed the way the reddits are displayed on the site.

Before today, when visiting Reddit.com you would have seen a square on the right hand side displaying a list of reddits.

If you were not logged in then you would have the current top 10 most popular reddits. If you were logged in then you would see the reddits you were subscribed to.

Now when you visit the site, you will see a new bar added to the very top of the site, which displays reddits in a new way.

If you are not logged in then you will see the top reddits with the most popular one starting on the left and spreading across to the right in order of their popularity.

If you are logged in then your subscribed reddits will be shown in a similar manner, with the most popular one on the left and going to the right by level of popularity.

However, after some discussion with Alexis on the way this new bar will work, it appears the reddit’s order “will change over time based on your actions. You will see reddits that you have liked stories in more often, with a bit of chance thrown in for some spice. The goal is really to have a bar of subreddits that you have recently visited and liked.”

Of course the stats that reorganize your reddit bar are cookie stored, so they will reset or change based on if you clear your cookies or change computers.

All users, logged in or out, can click the “My Reddits” menu in the top left to see what reddit subscriptions are making up your front page.

The function to be able to hide a specific reddit by unselecting it is no longer available, but apparently it was rarely used by any users after selecting the reddits for the first time.

Edit: As of Sunday, November 9, 2008, the color of the new reddits bar was changed to a lighter gray scale in an effort to blend in more.

“We got a call from the folks at Style.com, who informed us that #336699 was bad choice for this year’s fall.  Apparently gray scale is very in,” says co-founder of Reddit Alexis Ohanian.

If you visit the subreddits section, you will notice a nice visual redesign there as well.

Edit: Also as of November 9, 2008, Reddit.com has made some additional adjustments to the site by moving the search box out of the navigational bar and into the side column.

Reddit.com fans who wanted to use their widgets and buttons, but found they were just too limited, will be happy to know that Reddit.com has launched a bunch of new buttons, as well as a fully functional widget to embed on your site.

Here is a live example of the widget, which has many different options including the ability to grab it un-styled and change it up completely.

Redditor chromakode, taking advantage of the open source nature of Reddit.com, created a FireFox extension called Socialite, which allows many options for Reddit.com users right in their personal browser.

Edit: Initially we called user generated reddits “subreddits”, but as they continue to evolve I have been asked to refer to them as simply “reddits” as Alexis has concerns that certain penguins might find it offensive to think they can only be popular on a “subreddit”.

“Subreddits implies their subordinate to reddit, when in fact they’re independent verticals within the greater reddit network. Take TheCuteList for instance, are you really going to tell these penguins that they’re only popular on a subreddit? I think not.”

Even the long standing “reddit.com” reddit will someday be remaned to be more appropriate to the ever evolving community that is Reddit.com.

Of course you can expect more changes in the near future. I wish I could share more with you but I can only say there are many fun and exciting things on the horizon for Reddit.com.

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