Reddit to experiment with proper profiles, users predictably freak out
A small group of content creators on Reddit have been chosen to test an early version of a new feature. Basically, these users now have public profiles for other Redditors to subscribe to. These users can post things directly to this profile, making it possible for individual profile posts to appear on the home page instead of through a particular community. According to Reddit, this test is all about courting content creators.
These profiles look an awful lot like profiles you see on just about every social network. There's a profile photo, a background banner photo, a list of posts from that user with individual comment threads, and a list of communities this user is active in. It's fairly generic right now, because it's an early test and changes are expected to be made based on feedback, but that hasn't stopped Redditors from calling this the end of days.
While many Redditors have a long and storied history of hating any form of change, there's plenty of positive responses to this idea. This isn't fundamentally changing how interacting in a SubReddit works, but it does offer an alternative to creating a personal SubReddit and still maintain the ability to publish whatever you want.
While it's clear both sets of opinions have merit, the most important thing here is recognizing how early on this change is. This is not rolling out to everyone, because the folks at Reddit know it's nowhere near a complete thought yet. The people who have this feature now will be able to participate in the feedback process, and that's going to grow out from here with some extra tools added when necessary.
Is Reddit becoming Facebook? Probably not, no. Will this give content creators a unique space to broadcast their ideas? That's less clear. And, like any new thing on Reddit, this will need to be carefully monitored for abuse. I'm looking forward to seeing this grow, even though as a daily lurker I don't think I'll personally have a reason to use this feature anytime soon.
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Russell is a Contributing Editor at iMore. He's a passionate futurist whose trusty iPad mini is never far from reach. You can usually find him chasing the next tech trend, much to the pain of his wallet. Reach out on Twitter!