Reddit to revamp profile page to make it like Facebook and Twitter

PanARMENIAN.Net - Reddit has been trying to make its site more accessible to a wider pool of users, and the company is planning to show off one of the ways it plans to do that: by making the service a little bit more like Facebook and Twitter, TechCrunch reports.

From March 21, Reddit is going to start offering users a new profile page design that will let them make posts directly to the pages themselves (not just communities), and Reddit users who are logged in will be able to follow the profile for new posts.

The news was made public in a post in Reddit itself, which noted that the new profile view will be tested out first with a “few redditors” starting Tuesday the 21st. It was further confirmed in smaller detail with a short item on Reuters quoting Alexis Ohanian, the company’s co-founder.

First of all, the redditors getting the new feature will be able to post to their own profiles, which is a change from existing rules that require you to post to communities. The posts, Reddit says, will combine what the profile holders make both to their own page as well as to communities.

The pages sound like they will be more dynamic: a more prominent avatar, a description about themselves, along with the posts.

You will have to be logged in to follow the new profile pages, and when you do, their posts will appear in your own “home page” (“front page” in Reddit’s terminology).

You will be able to comment on these profile posts but not create new posts on someone else’s profile page. The pages will be moderated by those who create them and whoever they authorize to administrate them.

Last week during SXSW, co-founder Alexis Ohanian admitted that Reddit hasn’t done the greatest of jobs to make the site more accessible to newer users, who are often flummoxed by the onboarding process that requires you to register before commenting, find and follow subreddits that you might like around specific content themes, and go through a process of upvoting to help content surface for other users, in and amongst a lot of noise.

Talking about how his significant other (Serena Williams) had to be ushered through the process by Ohanian himself was one specific wake-up call, he noted. “We have to get smart about showing you stuff you’re going to like,” he said.

The changes, Reddit says, are indeed being made to help point users to specific content that they might want to see, in this case coalescing around a specific personality, much as you see in Twitter or Facebook.