One-third of Americans use Reddit every single month. How do you build, grow, and manage a community of this size and scale? Reddit’s founder Alexis Ohanian took the CMX Summit stage in order to explain the complications and joys of running a community that has this kind of impact. He specifically talked about how we should come to view our members’ identities within online spaces.
When Reddit got started in 2005, they opted for the most simple form of identity: just come up with a username and you can join the site. Alexis hadn’t thought much of it then, but now the question has preoccupied him for months: “What is our identity?” Who are we online?
Most social platforms allow people to skim the surface of their identity but never give them
a place to express their complex selves. This
is not the case with Reddit, since it allows its users to use pseudonyms.
With pseudonyms, Alexis argues, communities allow people to fluidly express their whole selves. “Social media and communities are still largely at this ‘cocktail-level’,” he says. And he admits that pseudonymity has its own complex issues, but he challenges community builders to create spaces where people feel that they can express their full selves.
Learn more about Alexis’s view of our fluid online identities in his CMX Summit talk. Be ready to change your mind about how you build community.
Watch more talks at http://cmxhub.com/videos