Good luck to him. He sounds like a good choice. So glad they didn't find some square-jawed empty suit. The fact that he heavily participates in online communities is a very good sign.
I do hope he has a delicate touch though. It's surprisingly easy to set off communities if you come in guns blazing. It would not be difficult to replicate the The Great Digg Rebelling of 2010.
Probably the best thing to do would be to win over the community by making very small and uncontroversial improvements. Nothing that is self-serving. UI improvements, better search, nicer notifications, etc.
Increasing revenue would be easy to do but very risky if it involves any new forms of advertising. I hope they can push that one off a bit or come up with something users don't find objectionable (which will be tough).
Reddit has grown so large with only very minor improvements over the years. It would be a shame to have someone "fix" what ain't broke.
I'd love to hear your ideas for improving search. IndexTank improved reddit's search greatly when they took it over, but IndexTank is shutting down in one month. At Searchify, we would love to power reddit's search, and are willing to spend a good amount of resources to make sure the results are good.
Yishan knows more than most people about (the importance of) community on discussion sites, has the experience of being a major participant on LJ, Quora, and Facebook, and the engineering/engineering management experience of PayPal, Facebook, and some startup consulting.
I really doubt there's anyone more qualified to lead Reddit. I predict Reddit will add stronger social networking features to try to leverage the existing community in new ways; there has to be a reason news sites with great engagement like Reddit, Digg, etc. sell for less than 1% of a social network with the same stats.
He also built a pretty interesting invite-only physical tech community (like a less-crappy version of a coworking space), but I'm somewhat biased.
(what I really want is a hacker news social network, but there are reasons that is unlikely)
I wonder if this technically makes Yishan CEO of a YC funded company...
One of the smartest people I've encountered, even if it is only on Quora. Great sense of humor, doesn't pretend to have answers on things he doesn't know about. Probably a great guy to work with and for. Congrats, Yishan.
As long as they don't become more like conventional CEO's and forget they were once writing code having lot of fun building applications and solving issues on day to day basis. Now that they are CEO's asking questions which makes you think..were they engineers before? I hope he doesn't turn to conventional.
I'm by no means a reddit fan, but Yishan comes across as an amazing guy (kind, bright, and insightful) on Quora, so I don't know if reddit could have chosen a better guy for the job.
It'll be interesting to see how visible he'll be inside and outside the site.
I hope he'll be able to do something about the declining quality of posts and comments, although I wonder if there really is a solution for such a thing.
"But as I continued the conversations, I came to understand that reddit wasn't looking for a conventional CEO candidate, because reddit is not a conventional company."
Kind of scary that despite years of being a redditor, he didn't know what kind of company it was?
Perhaps he could have written it a bit more neutrally:
"But as I continued the conversations, I came to appreciate that reddit was serious about tech and wasn't looking for a conventional CEO candidate because reddit is not a conventional company."
[+] [-] staunch|14 years ago|reply
I do hope he has a delicate touch though. It's surprisingly easy to set off communities if you come in guns blazing. It would not be difficult to replicate the The Great Digg Rebelling of 2010.
Probably the best thing to do would be to win over the community by making very small and uncontroversial improvements. Nothing that is self-serving. UI improvements, better search, nicer notifications, etc.
Increasing revenue would be easy to do but very risky if it involves any new forms of advertising. I hope they can push that one off a bit or come up with something users don't find objectionable (which will be tough).
Reddit has grown so large with only very minor improvements over the years. It would be a shame to have someone "fix" what ain't broke.
[+] [-] mthreat|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|14 years ago|reply
I really doubt there's anyone more qualified to lead Reddit. I predict Reddit will add stronger social networking features to try to leverage the existing community in new ways; there has to be a reason news sites with great engagement like Reddit, Digg, etc. sell for less than 1% of a social network with the same stats.
He also built a pretty interesting invite-only physical tech community (like a less-crappy version of a coworking space), but I'm somewhat biased.
(what I really want is a hacker news social network, but there are reasons that is unlikely)
I wonder if this technically makes Yishan CEO of a YC funded company...
[+] [-] earbitscom|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redthrowaway|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nthitz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jenius|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kn0thing|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrJokepu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tshauck|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjhackin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmfrk|14 years ago|reply
It'll be interesting to see how visible he'll be inside and outside the site.
[+] [-] stef25|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] willvarfar|14 years ago|reply
Kind of scary that despite years of being a redditor, he didn't know what kind of company it was?
Perhaps he could have written it a bit more neutrally:
"But as I continued the conversations, I came to appreciate that reddit was serious about tech and wasn't looking for a conventional CEO candidate because reddit is not a conventional company."
[+] [-] freehunter|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_should|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koko775|14 years ago|reply
[edit: Okay, apparently pointing out struggles Reddit will have in maturing is not welcome here. Rest of post deleted.]
[+] [-] zackattack|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alind|14 years ago|reply
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