Reddit, a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website, that allows registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images, and videos, has in an announcement this week said plans are in the offing to spend $1 million to fund various projects on the platform, as part of its expansion of its Community Funds program.
“We will invite communities to submit ideas for projects, events, contests, giving, almost anything you can think of to bring people together for inspiration and delight,” the company said in its announcement. Projects can ask for between $1,000 and $50,000, and Reddit will start issuing grants in June.
Reddit, the 19th most visited website in the world in a ranking by web traffic analysis company, Alexa Internet, is also the 7th most-visited website in the United States, and the San Francisco based website hopes to use this version of the creator funds that big-media companies like Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, and, others has been offering to people using their platforms.
Meta-owned Facebook had at a point pledged a whopping $1b on creator-related funding, with Snap also at a point throwing $1 million a day at the things people were making on the platform, but Reddit cannot be to possess the same leverage as these two platforms for example as it is not a creator-focused platform in the same way but the company has over the last few months experimented with the Community Funds idea, as it paid for two billboards that displayed art from the winners of a BTS subreddit contest, ponied up the prize money for a couple of other competitions, helped the Random Acts of Amazon crew buy kids Christmas presents, while funding several other projects.
Reddit had in 2019 claimed it had approximately 430 million monthly users known as “redditors”. With the site’s content divided into categories or communities known on-site as “subreddits”, the website boasts of having more than 138,000 active communities, and the funding will go a long way to elevate interest in those projects, in the process get more people using the platform but in a slightly more circuitous way than the average “thanks for going viral, here’s some money!” creator fund.
It would be a worthy ask to know the kind of projects Reddit funds, though the first announcement of the company intimating the public about the Community Funds test last fall, examples of what it was looking for was given: “online conferences, outdoor festivals, workshops, books, magazines, cultural or heritage programs, short films or musical productions.”
More is expected from the company in the next few months, with the public eagerly waiting how the company will spend the $ 1 million earmarked by the renowned brand.
Ayoola Faseyi, an Abuja based Journalist with interest in Technology and Politics. He is a versatile writer with articles in many renowned News Journals. He is the Co-Founder of media brand, The Vent Republic.
