Reddit's social news search goes from "sucked" to "works"

Social news site Reddit has graciously decided to share its end of year growth numbers in a company blog post. While the company may have grown from 250 million to more than 829 million pageviews, possibly the most interesting inclusion was that their search feature went from “sucked” to “works.”

Once might say that search is one of Reddit’s most important features, giving users the ability to find the various pieces of content posted by users and share it with their social networks. According to a post in July, Reddit fixed its search issues by using IndexTank, a website search tool.

While fixing search may have helped with growth numbers, many speculate that a major factor was the ongoing struggle by competitor Digg.com. The company appears to have had a competitive advantage in the beginning, but changes and unsatisfied users may have added to Reddit’s success. Just a few months ago, Reddit reported seeing an uptick in page views as well as other numbers.

Growth may also have been seen from a successful “secret santa” campaign the company recently launched for the holidays. Created by a user, redditgifts.com matches anyone interested in giving gifts with a random Reddit user. More than 17,000 Reddit users from 90 countries were exchanging gifts as of Christmas Day.

Reddit, which is owned by media company Conde Nast, has about 10 employees. It has staff in San Francisco, New York, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

  • LouFr

    Unfortunately, the site still loses money, and has for all five years of its operation. Conde Nast plans to shut down the site the year. Those users who came from Digg will be going right back.

  • facehammer

    There you go again, Lou, bearing false witness against your neighbor. How can you call yourself a man of faith? And how do you expect anyone to take your claims seriously when you fail to back them up with a shred of evidence?

  • facehammer

    Go reddit!

  • boece

    Explain to the cheap seats how 829 million pageviews = 829M “users?” There is simply no way they have almost a billion users.

  • http://twitter.com/CodyBarbierri Cody Barbierri

    Thanks for the catch, boece. It is pageviews and was just a slip on my part.

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