In this interview segment, Reddit co‑founder and CEO Steve Huffman reflects on pivotal moments in Reddit’s development, illustrated through a “Museum of Reddit” timeline. He discusses the 2009 creation of Imgur and Reddit’s initial reluctance to host images due to legal liability, later shifting to self‑hosting with a robust trust‑and‑safety infrastructure. Huffman recounts the informal yet massive Reddit Secret Santa gift exchange, highlighting its global community impact. User‑generated moments such as a child’s LEGO tutorial and the 2012 Grumpy Cat phenomenon are cited as examples of Reddit’s capacity to amplify niche content and spawn businesses. The conversation moves to Reddit’s monetization journey—early ad placements around 2005‑2006 and a more effective ad strategy emerging in 2015—along with the unique, conversational advertising approach that requires brand strategists to tailor messages to individual communities. Overall, the segment showcases how Reddit balances community goodwill, content virality, and evolving business models.
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I think that part is very important.
Yep. And then, so speaking of the things, the good and the bad that Reddit has done, I actually went on to the Museum of Reddit. And there are some moments that I wanted to go through with you, and then we'll go, we'll open up for questions. So it's kind of a little history timeline of Reddit. It's gonna be bright, yeah. So the first one was in February of 2005. On August 23rd, 2009, a user created Imgur because they were sick of seeing Photobucket links on Reddit. And now Reddit does its own imaging service, correct?
Yes. Imgur's still there.
Yeah?
Yeah, we host the majority of our images now ourselves.
Where were you when—
2009?
When this user created Imgur?
I remember seeing that post. I left Reddit at the end of 2009, so I probably just probabilistically was employed at Reddit when Imgur was announced. But I remember actually my feeling at the time. Actually, I do remember now. I was at Reddit and I was happy they existed. I did not want to host images. I did not want to have the liability of hosting images. Because at that time, Reddit, we didn't have to deal with copyright or child porn or any of that stuff because everything was external. And I knew that was a big burden on a lot of these companies.
Yeah.
Now I was a little naive. And now my change, my thought has changed on that sort of stuff in terms of you shouldn't let the fear of difficult challenges prevent you from doing what's correct for the business. And so now we host our own MGOs and we just deal with that stuff. a big community team, big trust and safety team, and legal team that just kind of deals with it. And as a result, or in exchange, we get to host our own images, which is very valuable. But I remember being a big fan of Imgur when they launched, because I felt like they were doing us a favor. They were doing us a favor.
Yeah. And some of these you probably weren't CEO during. Actually, majority of them you probably weren't.
Probably not, yeah.
We'll see. So, Secret Santa, Reddit Secret Santa was created November 10th, 2009. Have you ever participated in Reddit Secret Santa?
I have. I have.
You wanna explain what Reddit Secret Santa is?
Yeah, so Reddit Secret Santa, it's not something that we do officially. It started off as a project from this fella. It's the largest, it's the world's largest gift exchange. So the biggest one we do is over Christmas, but we actually do a number over the course of the year. And you basically sign up, you get paired with a stranger somewhere in the world, and you send them a gift. Well, not paired necessarily, but basically you get an address and you send them a gift, and then you receive a gift from a stranger. It's very cool. We've had a lot of people participate, pretty much every country in the world. It's a really kind of fun, I think globally uniting event we do.
And when you participated, do you remember what gift you got or gave?
I got most recently a Westworld-themed cutting board.
A lot of giggles in the audience.
Which was cool.
It was cool.
I said I was into Westworld and I got this wood-burned cutting board. It was sweet. I use it. And the most recent one I gave, I gave somebody in the Bay Area Warriors tickets.
Oh, nice. Probably very appreciative of that.
Yeah, he was.
Hi, today I'm gonna show you how to make A Lego, um, Snowtrooper guy. Okay, first you get his pants. They should look like this. Then you get this body. It has like stuff on it, and then this back you don't really need, but then you just put that on. You get this. You put that on the guy so it looks like Then you get a head. I don't care if it's two-sided or not. It's like that, then like that. Then you put it on the guy. Next you get one of these weird-looking helmets. They have like a cross on top. You put it on him. You get gray glasses. Actually, I don't really care what color they are, but you get gray glasses. You get any kind of gun. I'm going to use this gun. And then that's the LEGO Snowtrooper. Thanks for watching.
So this was a video that a user just submitted saying that his son makes these LEGO videos and that he doesn't get any views and he's constantly refreshing looking for views. And it was kind of a great example of how the good nature of Reddit, people just went on and started watching this kid's Lego video. I don't know if you remember this video or even watched it.
I don't remember this specific one. I'm sure I saw it at the time. But this is actually a common thing. This just happened like a week or two ago. Somebody found a YouTube channel for this guy who does like wholesome movie reviews or something, or video game reviews. And he just had like tens of views. And like, this guy is awesome. We should like watch his stuff. And now he's got like a huge following. And this is what I mean by like 99% of people are good, right? They just want to like spread a little joy.
Help their kid with a couple views on his Lego tutorial. Next one is the world is greeted with Grumpy Cat on 2012 of September 23rd. I think everyone can get behind Grumpy Cat.
Grumpy Cat's famous now too. This is a business.
Yeah. Reddit actually has helped create a lot of businesses.
It's true.
Or saved some, or created them.
Many, including probably Amazon. We send Amazon a lot of traffic.
And speaking of the business of Reddit, when did you guys go from not monetizing to monetizing?
We actually started— okay, so there's maybe— I'll answer 2 questions. When did we start monetizing? That was actually probably— it was early, 2005, 2006. When did we start monetizing well? That was 2015. We've had ads on the site since almost the beginning. But we've gotten a lot better at it the last couple of years. And we haven't had to add any new placements. It's just the ads have gotten better and more relevant to users.
Do you have tools to help advertisers create better ads?
We have a team for that actually of brand strategists that— 'cause advertising on Reddit is so different. When you're advertising in many other places online or in the real world, the strategy is often you're basically yelling your message at the customer. And you have to do that enough times that they remember your company or your brand or whatever. And on Reddit, it's much more conversational. But you can't, if you come in yelling, and if you come in not sensitive to what community you're talking to, you'll just get killed. When we get brands signed up for this experience and like, hey, this is your customer. This is real valuable opportunity for you. We'll actually help them craft the message and the campaigns. And that's worked out really well for both of us.
