Reddit AKA the front page of the internet for cat gifs and atheist rage comics just earned a Guinness World Record for largest online Secret Santa game. Over the last three years, RedditGifts facilitated anonymous gift exchanges between 30,025 participants (including Stephen Colbert) in 115 countries. Only the Reddit team gets the award and they’re not sharing it with all the users although I’m sure if asked, one of the team members would do a IAMA about how their life changed thanks to a piece of paper.
Just like how RedditGifts was started, it was a random Reddit user named someguyfromcanada (pictured) who got the ball rolling with the stat nerds at Guinness.
In March 2011 (I think) we started getting PMs and emails from the reddit user someguyfromcanada. He was saying that he wanted to make it his personal mission to get reddit and redditgifts into the record books. He started with tweets and emails directed at Guinness, took the campaign to the reddit community and eventually, months later, Guinness decided that they were going to create a new world’s record category for us! So everyone, please, take a moment and thank someguyfromcanada. Without him, this would have never happened.
RedditGifts was started by a Redditor (Dan “kickme444″ McComas ) back in 2009 and Condé Nast purchased the site itself in 2011. As Greg explained at the time, this acquisition gave the little pet project the proper support it needed to grow and better serve its users.
In each gift exchange, participants are paired with another Redditor who is tasked with finding and giving an awesome gift. But this isn’t just for Christmas time. The giving goes on year-round, with categories for teachers, pets, comic books, dorm rooms. So get at it: Join the movement by making someone’s day and earn a little bit of real life karma.
Launched in 2005, Reddit is a social news website that displays news based on your personal preferences and what the community likes. Your preferences are determined based on your history of voting stories up or down. The company was started by two University of Virginia grads, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman in the Y Combinator program. Two others, Christopher Slowe and Aaron Swartz, later joined the team. Conde Nast, owner of Wired and other magazines/websites, acquired Reddit in October of 2006....
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