Reddit, a website which bills itself as the frontpage of the internet certainly looks like it might have been designed by Microsoft FrontPage. It is a functional design but compared to today’s more modern websites, it does feel kind of old and outdated. However that is expected to change in the future as the website is undergoing a redesign.
According to a report from Recode, Reddit is working on changing the way its website looks and feels. This is according to the company’s CEO Steve Huffman who was quoted as saying, “We have a lot of perception debt. Reddit feels old. We don’t want to be associated with old.” While the final design has yet to be unveiled, Recode notes that based on what they have seen so far, it feels similar to what Facebook and Twitter are offering in terms of content being displayed in a timeline format.
Huffman adds, “We want Reddit to be more visually appealing, so when new users come to Reddit they have a better sense of what’s there, what it’s for.” Whether or not this redesign will be successful remains to be seen. A report from MIT Review published several years ago had suggested that one of the reasons Digg, one of Reddit’s main rivals back in the day, had failed was because of the site’s redesigns that eventually made it harder for its users to find and share information.
While Reddit’s design might be old and outdated, it seems to work and its core users are familiar with the overall layout. In any case only time will tell if Reddit’s redesign will be the evolution it needs, but so far there has not been any set date for when this redesigned Reddit will launch.