Flush with $50 million in capital, the social media site finds a novel way to give back
Reddit announced new details of a lottery fund that will siphon off one-tenth of the company’s share value and randomly distribute it to roughly 950,000 lucky users, in a bid to encourage contributions to the media-sharing website.
“To celebrate all of you and your contributions, we plan to give away reddit notes in a random lottery,” the company announced in an official blog post on Friday. Reddit relies on users to cull the web for interesting content and submit it to the wider community for an “up” or “down” vote, thereby driving stories of general interest to the top of the site.
Reddit first announced the lottery payout idea in September 2014, shortly after it closed a $50 million round of fundraising. Starting in fall of 2015, Reddit plans to notify the winning users to set up an online wallet, into which the company will deposit a “Reddit Note,” which users will be able to trade on an open exchange.