Reddit Is Redesigning To Look More Like Facebook After Securing $200 Million Funding

Reddit has announced it wants to redesign to look more like Facebook after raising $200 million in new venture funding.

The news aggregation and discussion site is now worth $1.8 billion after receiving funding from investment firms Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, as well as Fidelity Investments, Y Combinator President Sam Altman, angel investor Ron Conway, and other investors.

Reddit according to report is channelling some of that money into a redesign.

The look and feel of Reddit hasn’t changed much since it first launched in 2005. This dedication to the original design is one of the main reasons that Reddit has retained its core community and user trust.

But now it seems Reddit is ready to retool the site so it can appeal to a wider, mainstream audience. Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit said: “Reddit feels old. We don’t want to be associated with old. 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.”

Additionally, Reddit is working on a new feature that will allow users to upload videos. The funding is also helping Reddit grow its team. The company began 2017 with 140 employees and has since grown to 230. Huffman said he plans to hire 70 more by the end of the year.

Huffman co-founded Reddit with Alexis Ohanian and sold the site to the Condé Nast media empire in 2007, about a year after launching.

While Reddit’s design might be old and outdated, it seems to work and its core users are familiar with the overall layout.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.