A couple of minutes ago Reddit made the interesting decision to open source their algorithm.
Not many people have looked at it yet, in fact I was the 4th to join the group as you can see from the screenshot below.
This afternoon I will be spending some time to try and understand the algorithm and see what steps marketers can take to improve the amount of content that hits the front page.
We’ve always strived to be as open and transparent with our users as possible, and this is the next logical step. When we say ‘open-source’ we mean specifically that the code behind reddit is available to the public for download, and we’re inviting the public to submit code to help improve the site.
Reddit is unique in the social news scene in that we have a huge community of developers. It seems only natural that we give you all in that community a chance to contribute back to reddit and make it a better place for everyone. We know reddit’s success has less to do with our technology than it does with you, our community, and now we want to let our community improve our technology.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
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Interesting move by Reddit. I wonder if we will see standardised ranking algorithms emerge in the near future for use in other OSS like Pligg.
The open-source AI community could really get their teeth into this if Reddit would release a (sanitised) subset of their database too.
They said that they didn’t make the voting stuff available
reddit is just going to abused now by spammers and the such, what a shame
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