Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars
"Steve Newhouse, the chairman of Advance.net, decided very early on that his company would not be the blob that ate Reddit, and for the most part, left well enough alone. “We had some ideas about what would be good, but it might not have worked,” Mr. Newhouse said. “We paid attention to the community instead.”"<p>I may be remembering stuff wrong, but wasn't there more tension + conflict during the period right after the acquisition? Didn't Reddit struggle to pay for basic infrastructure stuff due to their new parent company's skepticism about its viability and perception of its value?<p><a href="http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.reddit.com/2010/07/reddit-needs-help.html</a><p>And it was a long while until it got spun out. (<a href="http://venturebeat.com/2011/09/06/reddit-break-conde-nast/" rel="nofollow">http://venturebeat.com/2011/09/06/reddit-break-conde-nast/</a>)<p>Not that there's anything crazy in any of this. Just that the NYT story paints it like right away they 1) knew Reddit's worth and 2) knew to have a hands-off approach.<p>I'm far from a Reddit power user, happy to hear other perspectives.