Perennially in second place in the social voting race, Reddit still drives substantial amounts of traffic (see Figure 6-9). And, as opposed to the all-or-nothing nature of Digg, Reddit sends some traffic to stories that don't quite go pop. Reddit's front page works more like a leader board than Digg's chronological list system. Stories can move up or down on it as they are voted on, meaning that a story can stay in a prominent position on Reddit for longer than it can on Digg.
Reddit has very little social networking functionality, so the power accounts aren't as important on Reddit as they are on other sites. Redditors are similar to Diggers (twentysomething geeks), albeit the former are slightly more educated and gender neutral.
Down-voting on Reddit is done by way of a down arrow that is placed directly under the corresponding up arrow. A story's score is the number of positive votes it has received minus the number of negative votes, and both numbers are displayed clearly, making Reddit the most transparent site in this regard. Content that gets a lot of up and down votes can appear on a separate "controversial" section of the site, meaning that a few down votes isn't the worst thing that can happen.
Figure 6-10. Here is a typical example of a popular story on Reddit.
Reddit seems to place a lot of weight on the speed of voting; stories that get tens of votes in the first hour ...
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