What is Reddit Announcing Tomorrow? And Why Is A Penguin Involved?

Social news website Reddit will be making an announcement at its invite-only party tomorrow in San Francisco. Invites include the image above, prominently featuring a mysterious penguin alongside the company’s logo (the alien thing). So what are they getting at?

Penguins have long been associated with the open-source OS Linux, stemming from Linus Torvalds’s decision to use one as Linux’s mascot (he’s named Tux, and you can see him here). Could Linux somehow be involved in Reddit’s announcement?

Earlier this year Reddit launched a feature that let users customize their own “Reddits” by topic, allowing them to selectively filter stories. It’s possible that Reddit is going one (big) step further and introducing an open source version of Reddit that will allow users to create their own hosted social news service.

Is that a stretch? Yep. We actually have no idea what they’re announcing. That penguin might just be there to indicate that the beer is free… or cold.

Think you know what they’ll announce? Give us your best guess in the comments. Whoever guesses right first gets a free TechCrunch t-shirt.

Update: Brent Csutoras may have gotten a peek at one of Reddit’s new features, which appears to be tagging. This doesn’t have anything to do with the penguin though, so Reddit may have a few more things up their sleeves.

Update 2: Yup, they are open sourcing the Reddit code. Here’s the announcement. And here’s our update.