As of 2020, there are almost 350 plus million users on this media network, which is almost ten percent of the subscribers of the entire internet. However, Reddit has done this within only fifteen years from its commencement. Now the question comes to your mind is, how? Well, the answer to this question maybe not that difficult. However, Subreddit is perhaps one of the major reasons behind this enormous success of Reddit. At the beginning, you might find this network a little trivial and you also might get perplexed by the complexity of the user interface, but later on, you will definitely find something useful as per your need and taste, since the Subreddits will shape the home page of every user as per their taste and it will help user to confront only those contents from myriad news of Reddit.
Although the concept of Reddit is not unique, and there are a plethora of other social networks of this kind. However, the presentation and the sole purpose may be different from each other, but at the outset, they are almost the same. Like, Facebook, Instagram or even Google Plus, they all are social content aggregation, however, the primary focus of their content is personal information or media content. There are some other popular social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. and in their case, the target content is again little different, but the concept of networking behind each of the software is almost similar.
Reddit has successfully been established a vibe among the users of it that this network is for social news only, and there is no room for any type of privet content. Perhaps, this has helped most to establish Reddit a separate existence among all the prevalent social networks of its time. Notwithstanding, we are not going to explore the Reddit further, rather we are about to bring forth some other prevalent social news networks and we are also going to discuss the pros and cons they have.
Top Ten Alternatives of Reddit
Beneath, we have mentioned the top ten Reddit alternatives, albeit none of them are as popular as Reddit. Almost all of them have the potential to become the Next Reddit or even a bigger news network on the internet.
1. Quora
This United States-based website is founded in June of 2009 by two Facebook employees. Quora is basically a question and answer forum and available across the globe. Quora is one of the most popular question-answer forum on the internet and the simplicity of this website is perhaps the main architect of its immense success. The ardent community of knowledge lovers loves to spend their time on this network, because of their skeptical view towards any new thing.
The primary media of communication in Quora is text; however, it also allows attaching relevant image content along with any text content to make its posts more engaging. This website has also a provision of attaching other website’s links to the question you would like to bring up in front of the users of this community website. This website also offers the standard functionalities like voting answers, sharing any content, or even commenting under any answer.
This website is open and free of cost to all and allows its users to showcase their pertinent personal details on the profile segment. This website also offers users of having a separate fan base or followers, so that people could motivate themselves to take persistent participation in this forum. Furthermore, this website also offers its inquisitive users a dedicated chat option, so that they can ask direct questions to someone they admire or follow, though the chat window is perhaps the most trivial and basic chat box of the entire internet.
However, all the questions and answers on this website might not be accurate. Because the organization hasn’t established any specialized or dedicated back end team to review the entire answer database on this website yet, though that is almost next to impossible. Overall, this website is an excellent platform for those who love to learn throughout their life and curious about any new thing of this entire cosmos.
2. HackerNews
If you are into entrepreneurship, then this network is probably the most efficient website to loiter in. Any of the contents of this website is neither undue nor irrelevant, so users those who are conscious about allocating their valuable time on things depending upon the productivity. This website is absolutely relevant to that type of user. At the commencement, this network was called Startup News; thus, from the name, we can easily get a glimpse of the sole purpose of this website.
Initially, Paul Graham the founder of this website tried to make a news aggregator like Reddit; Paul started this just two years after Reddit and the approach of both the websites was almost the same. However, HackerNews dwindled the democracy of its users and made this platform restrictive, later on, the founders realized their mistake and revamped the website partially. Although, there are a plethora of segments where this website could really devote their intuition and modify as per the mental need of users of the present era.
Aesthetically, this website is one of the best and not over ornamented with unnecessary features or functionalities. On the header, you will get to see the logo, alongside all the options. This lucid user interface of this website helps its users to keep themselves on track which is a real plus of this website because most of the networks or even news aggregators often help to get digress their users. But, there is a long path yet to cross to become one real alternative of Reddit.
Additionally, HackerNews has its own kind of distribution and era of expertise, like news aggregation amenity for hackers or tech savvies. Where Reddit has no specific footprint yet. Further, they also accumulate and represent information regarding job openings in a very lucid manner, which is very useful and a real benefit of using HackerNews though. As per the overall representation and area of service, we can easily assume that the targeted audience or user group on this website is the ardent youth community of the contemporary world, and this might help this network to become one of the biggest internet giants at any point of time.
3. Digg
This news aggregator launched even before the Reddit and once it was even more popular than Reddit, but in 2010, the company decided to revamp the interface of the entire website and the architecture of this website, since then Reddit overlapped the success of Digg and became the most favorite news aggregator about internet.
The UI of this website is elegant and clean where it pounded the complex interface of Reddit without any doubt. However, still, now the area of the news coverage of Digg is confined within science and tech, political issue and internet viral news, thereby users of Reddit still now are getting wider news coverage, which could be a real reason to the existing user of Reddit for staying with it for some more time.
Moreover, Reddit is starkly a news aggregator and open to all as an active participant, whereas Digg doesn’t involve its users or subscribers directly to the website as a contributor. Digg also bifurcated its service expertise and offers an online product based store alongside, which might deter the brand identity of Digg to the users of it.
At the end, we can say that it is hard to intuit any organization’s actual pursuit, though Digg ever tries to beat the popularity of Reddit then they shall have more liberal vision regarding this web application and also have to add some more amenities to it so that people could engage themselves for some substantial reason with this website. However, by stopping the unauthorized and random user’s intervention and content contribution, Digg has successfully created a niche content library.
4 Mashable
In the beginning, the Mashable was a simple blogging platform with one primary blogger and that is the founder itself, Pete Cashmore. However, in 2010 the famous Time Magazine mentioned this Website’s name as one of the best blogs of 2009, thereby it got a fluke and within seven more years it got more than six million users and today it has more than 40 million page views on each month.
Likewise, all the previously mentioned websites this application is also a news aggregator, though the versatility along with conspicuous representation is a class apart, and also this quality of this website is something to admire. Unlike, all the previously mentioned news aggregators Mashable has one comprehensive header on the top of it in sky blue color. It also has all the needful guidance regarding this website.
Mashable has allowed the partial intervention of users, although it is an open-source news aggregator. Despite having extensive area news coverage like, entertainment, science, technology, culture, so on so forth, this venture successfully manages its content quality and a neat and clean user interface.
Except for this website, Mashable has some more product lines like a Mashable Job Board, Mashable Social Good Summit, and an indirect shop of goods. Mashable also announced an open Web Awards ceremony in 2007 to recognize all the top-notch online ventures and services; subsequently, in 2010, it renamed the Open Web Award ceremony to Annual Mashable Awards.
Overall, this online venture has been a very happening destination and doing so many things to grow as much as possible. This company so far has been diversifying its company in many different segments which actually helped it to become one apparent and stable news network.
5. 4Chan
In contradiction to, all the above-mentioned sites, this online imageboard network has the most primitive user interface design. Though, Christopher Poole, the founder launched this online imageboard as a counterpart of the Japanese imageboard web platform 2Chan. At the commencement this online imageboard ware confined to Japanese Anime only, subsequently, it developed a plethora of board topics or categories. Now, it has primarily seven major categories, however, under each category you will find almost more than ten different subcategories.
This Japanese board is way different than all the contemporary websites or competitors of it because this has enlisted an Adult category on the board. Furthermore, this website doesn’t require any user account to explore or even to contribute any comment under any image. Thus, the content relevant and quality is not balanced like other prevalent web platforms of this segment.
However, this 4Chan is one of the most popular and controversial social platforms of the internet because of the offensive content towards society. The famous news agency The Guardian once described this online imageboard web platform as a “lunatic, juvenile, … brilliant, ridiculous and alarming ” organization. Though, 4Chan is very much active in criticizing any kind of social stigma or governmental policy failure without thinking twice.
In terms of operational flexibility, this website performs well enough, but there could have some more ease of accessibility. Like, instead of a standard header, this website has footer where you will find all the sub-pages of this website. 4chan has a blog column, a press release, FAQ and last but not the least a news aggregator. The news portal of this website has a very confined zone of coverage and it brings froths mostly news on animations.
6. ProductHunt
This website is relatively new in comparison with all the previously mentioned news aggregators or web platforms. The idea of this website is also unique because this news channel only talks about newly released products on the market. This website skims through all the news of our globe and aggregates only that news on their website, which is directly or indirectly connected to any new or essential product of the market.
Furthermore, this website also talks about various services and soft skills on their website. Unlike, the previously mentioned web imageboard 4Chan, this website is only for those who are solely focused and interested in exploring news that is relevant and productive as per their need.
However, Producthunt also has a huge range of diversified sub-segments where they also provide other services like job alerts, best product or service deals, a product hunt radio, even a standard shipping service, and many more. Product hunt also does annual meetups in various countries to enhance their physical grasp throughout the global market.
Although this venture got immensely deviated from its very first model of business, they have successfully streamlined their business model. Furthermore, they are expanding their area of coverage or even physical service rapidly. Even though the present business model and service sector of Producthunt is way different from the concept of Reddit, still we have enlisted this name in today’s article just because of the uniqueness of their news aggregation and way of the overall presentation. \
7. Newsvine
Presently, this website is maybe inactive, however, in today’s list this social news site is definitely a strong contender, because of the clean and streamlined content library and aggregation of this website. Likewise, all the neat and clean looking collaborative journalism news platforms this website also was very decorated. As per content quality, this website was also eminent and has done an excellent job. Time magazine also enlisted this website as one of the Best 50 Websites in 2007.
Newsvine was one of the most popular and respected social news networks once, however, this news aggregator hasn’t published any other type of news, journal or editorial even. They have maintained their content preference in a strict manner throughout the entire journey. However, Newsvine had a voting mechanism for its users so that they can like or even dislike any content of this news podcast. As per vote the website used to set their preference of content.
However, at present, if you click on the link of that website then it will redirect you on a different news portal, although the reason behind this sudden shutdown and alteration is still sketchy. We can now only hope to see this beautiful and decorated social news network in no time. However, some sources of information declare that Newsvine has rebranded their news portal, along with the name in fact. As per those news sources, it has become NBCnews.com
8. Slashdot
This Social News Aggregator is actually the most ancient among all the ten online social news media websites. Founded in 1997, almost 22 years ago, by some ardent college students of Hope College in Holland. At the commencement, this news portal was dedicated to publishing science, technology or political issues along with an evaluation system. Furthermore, this website also accepts user comments under every social news of this website, to create a solid real interactive ambiance among the readers.
However, after a multitudinous number of alterations, this website presently looks way different than the initial look of it, and also it has a vast range of news coverage areas. Like, it covers entertainment news, open-source software news, YRO, tech device news, and so on. Also, it has provided some efficient filters, so that users could search their desired content without any major hassle.
This news aggregator, also accepts different contents from its users, though they verify all the news at the back end. However, Slashdot also offers its users some great deals, likewise other social news platforms. This website also has their registration and login mechanism through another prevalent social platform to ensure the credibility users and to maintain a standard of contributed content.
Being an older social news aggregator than Reddit, the Slashdot has yet not near to Reddit in terms of popularity. However, again we will say the same thing for this website also that this has all the qualities to touch or overlap the popularity of Reddit, and that is why in today’s list this is also an alternative.
Conclusion
All the above mentioned software news aggregators or online image boards have their iOS, Android and Google Chrome versions. However, these news networks already have established their reputation among the fraternity of internet surfers’ way before the commencement of iOS or Android versions of their applications. However, all the applications have similar kinds of representation, but the key idea is different and unique from each other, except for some products.
All the above-mentioned websites of today’s list perhaps are not that popular like Reddit, however, they all are worthy of exploring and spending some time on a regular basis because of the useful knowledge library of each of them. However, after going through the entire article we are quite sure that maybe Reddit has suppressed every news aggregators of contemporary world without any doubt and the overall popularity of it is way more superior than any of them, but still, each of the competitors has the stark potential to diversify their model and subdue the popularity of even Reddit.
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