Steve Huffman founded Reddit with Alexis Ohanian in 2005. Visit the company blog here.

What is Reddit, and what distinguishes it from other social news services?

Reddit is a source for new and interesting online content. At any given moment, reddit's front page is list of links to what reddit users think is the most interesting content online. This list is generated by reddit users who submit links and vote on them.

Every link on the site has a set of arrows associated with it that allow users to vote whether they like or dislike that link. As a story receives more and more positive votes, the story bubbles up reddit's front page. Unlike other social news sites where front-page stories only appear at the top and descend, reddit's front page is a living list of what are the most popular links. The amount of time a story spends on the front page is a direct result of how many votes it receives.

In addition to the fundamental differences of how reddit's front page is generated, there are some other differences between reddit and other social news sites. For example, reddit does not attempt to constrain its content in any way (except for the unfortunate case of spam). Reddit's content is a reflection of its user-base and what's interesting to them at the moment. Also, we have a recommendation system that sends users links that users with similar voting patterns have liked.

What is the story behind how Reddit got started, and what are the backgrounds of your team?

Reddit began with a college roommate, Alexis Ohanian, and myself. Alexis and I were both recent graduates from the University of Virginia. We received our initial funding and guidance from Y Combinator. Over the summer of 2005 we made the first version of reddit with the simple goal of building a website where people, ourselves included, could find new and interesting content. In November of 2005 we joined forces with two other Y Combinator alums: Chris Slowe and Aaron Swartz.

What is the hardware and software behind Reddit, and why were they chosen?

Reddit is mostly written in Python, but there is a little C as well. Python is an OK choice because it has a reasonable compromise between flexibility, speed, and community support. We use lighttpd as our web server, and postgresql as our database as well. The hardware is fairly vanilla: six Pentium 4 Intel boxes do the actual serving. In general, we try to keep our hardware and software choices fairly standard so that when we need help, we know it's there.