Reddit Embraces A Freemium Business Model

Social bookmarking service Reddit.com recently asked their users if they could help out the company by making donations. Even though their parent company Conde Nast is a multi-billion dollar publication agency, they have a limited budget themselves and have only 4 employees.

Reddit asked for donations to increase server capacity and to hire additional engineers. About 6,000 Reddit users ended up donating in an effort to “save” the social bookmarking service. Reddit gave a “gold” status to users who donated and will give them additional benefits besides a virtual trophy. Reddit will be grown into a subscription service and the donors will be given access to premium content.

“As soon as possible, we’re going to start giving our gold supporters something more than just a trophy. Now that the pilot has succeeded so well, we’re going to grow reddit gold into a bona fide subscription service a la TotalFark or Ars Technica. … As always, we’re taking suggestions for which cool things we should work on first. Our aim is to get something out to you by this time next week.”

[Mashable]

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