Barack Obama is a Bulls (basketball) guy. He said so. There will be a sequel to Twins. Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced. Larry King has seen Sam Gyson (American political commentator on radio) naked, eating a banana and making chimpanzee noises. The Larry King Now (shown on the online portal Hulu) host has confessed.

Barack or Arnie or Larry didn’t shout it out on television. They silently keyed in their confessions for millions and millions of Redditors –– they who set trends, make news go viral, ensure protests are heard and give Netizens enough bytes to chomp.

Reddit is where youngsters live. Reddit is where the next generation of social media is being defined. Reddit is what is becoming the “front page of the Internet”.

What is it?

This is not another news aggregator. Reddit (based in San Francisco) is where users, who remain anonymous, submit content and fellow users vote submissions, which then go “up” or “down”. More ups would mean better chances of making it to the front page. By the way, most Redditors (who have an alien as mascot) happen to be men.

just like Digg or Quora?

Consider Reddit to be Digg’s distant cousin. It took two years for the co-founder of Digg (Kevin Rose) to appear on the cover of Business Week in 2006 and a couple more years to see his creation lose value, for two reasons. The design made it hard to spot or share information. More importantly, users weren’t happy how content was “digged” or “buried”, for the number of people who could vote on Digg was small, offending the majority. As for Quora (co-founded by former Facebook guys Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever), lack of anonymity is an issue because you have to log in with a Twitter/ Facebook/ Google account.

Why is Reddit better?

Besides the anonymity factor, it’s the philosophy running it. The Internet was created to democratise how information is shared –– a world without censorship; a world where you can speak your mind; a world where advertisers take a backseat. Reddit has remained true to its objective. Users are free to criticise people, happenings, institutions, etc. but unjust criticism will not be promoted by fellow users who would “down” bogus comments and force it into a corner. It has stood against US anti-piracy bills Pipa and Sopa and it has spoken up against all kinds of online censorship, though at times it can go to extremes –– a case in point would be the way it shares links to copyrighted content because Reddit feels that sharing links equals free speech.

Celebrity zone

“Let’s go muthaphukkas give me something interesting to say!!!!” Samuel L. Jackson posted on Reddit last week. He was taking in requests to submit 300-word monologues, which he read out later on his Prizeo (crowd-funding website) page. Funds raised through Prizeo will go towards Alzheimer’s Association. And how did he select monologues? Let’s hear it from the man “who knocks” (that’s his introduction line on Reddit): “To clarify how I chose the winner, this feed was a muthafukkin mess, it was easier to tell which ones got the most death threats rather than the most up votes, so out of the top ones I chose the one I felt was the most badass!”

Was it really Obama?

Yes, it was really Obama who answered the questions at Ask Me Anything (AMA; a Reddit zone where celebrities can be asked anything) last year. He posted a picture of himself working at his laptop (picture right) and then he went on Twitter to announce he would be at Reddit’s AMA. Celebrities who decide to take on questions have to post pictures and confirmations to prove it’s not a sham.

What about spammers?

Spammers and product peddlers are strictly not welcome. Questions that are survey-related (can be answered with a simple yes, no, maybe) are automatically deleted. Posts that publicly insult a person are removed. And posts that promote personal agenda are unacceptable.

Reddit got it wrong

Violentacrez: This was Reddit’s messy-messy period. Anonymous user Violentacrez had a steady following and he was one of the people who actually brought a lot of traffic to the site. But he was also the man behind posting sexually exploitative material. An article (last year) in the Gawker revealed his identity to be Michael Brutsch, who was subsequently fired from his job (because of the content he used to post). Simultaneously, all Gawker articles were removed because the founders didn’t want anybody messing around with the content on the site. This was the only occasion when Reddit’s “freedom of speech” stance was criticised.

Boston Marathon bombings: Since Reddit doesn’t censor posts, some users tried to be “forensic experts” during the Boston bombings and started analysing material (culled from other sites) about the “bombers”. They wrongly implicated Indian-American student Sunil Tripathi, 22, who was already missing (and later found dead). Boo.

In the news now

Zynga is a company most video game companies want to hate. The creators of FarmVille recently fired many of its employees and that has opened up a can of worms. A former Zynga employee has decided to bare it all. He has blown the lid off Zynga’s business model, “unlimited vacation days” that sometimes means no vacation, etc.

Ask Me Anything zone

Dave Grohl (musician): “I went decaf for one month, and then went back to regular coffee in moderation, and I’ve now developed a tolerance to caffeine so that I can drink even more fresh pots.”

Bill Gates:

“I love playing tennis. I am an avid bridge player. I like to tour interesting things with my kids like power plants, garbage dumps, the Large Hadron Collider, the Antarctica, missile Silos (Arizona)...

I read a lot and watch courses (the Learning Company).”

Ethan Hawke: “I’m kind of obsessed with Nic (Nicolas) Cage. … He’s the only actor since Marlon Brando that’s actually done anything new with the art of acting. … If I could erase his bottom half bad movies, and only keep his top half movies, he would blow everyone else out of the water.”

Zach Braff: (Did he have sex with Sarah Chalke?) “Not vaginally.”

Gerard Butler: “Recently, my favourite meal has been Thai — a good Pad Thai, or some Thai noodle dish.”

Anthony Bourdain: (What would his last drink be?) “I’d like to have a beer and a meat pie with Keith Richards.”

Psy: (On piracy) “Money-wise it’s not good but exposure-wise not bad.”

Why are/ aren’t you a Redditor? Tell t2@abp.in