Reddit Is Free of Corporate Overlords, Spins Off from Conde Nast

Reddit has announced that it's becoming an independent company, spinning off from Conde Nast, but remaining under the same ownership. Reddit will become Reddit Inc., an independent company which will make its own decisions, under the guidance of a board of directors that's been set up.

Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian will be on the board, along with a few people from Conde Nast and a VP from Advance, the company that owns Conde Nast publishing and, now, Reddit directly.

The newly independent company is looking for a CEO to lead the company.

"Today reddit, a division of Condé Nast, becomes reddit Inc," a post on the Reddit blog by General Manager Erik Martin reads.

"This change is all about setting up reddit so that it can better handle future growth and opportunities," he said.

"When reddit was acquired in October 2006 by Condé Nast, it was receiving about 700k page views per day. Now, reddit routinely gets that much traffic in 15 minutes," Martin said.

"This explosion in traffic created technical, cultural, and organizational growing pains. reddit now has the kind of resources it needs to continue improving and supporting the community's experience far into the future," he explained the need for independence.

Reddit has been a success story of late. Especially after Digg unveiled the hated v4 update, Reddit really started to grow. Its unique culture and communities allowed it to become a force to be reckoned.

But its growth has sometimes been hindered by Conde Nast. The two cultures clashed on more than one occasion and Reddit has had a rough time securing the resources it needed to fuel the growth.

Reddit believes that, on its own, it will be much easier to address its growth needs and it will be able to focus on exactly what it thinks needs to be done to cater to the community.