We’d been hearing that Steve Huffman, a co-founder of Reddit who also co-founded flight and hotel search startup Hipmunk, was being considered for the CEO job at Reddit. Now that move is confirmed.
Huffman’s appointment follows turmoil at Reddit following the firing of Victoria Taylor, a community manager that the Reddit community relied on, last week. Y Combinator’s Sam Altman also confirmed the move on Reddit.
“We’re very happy to have Steve back. Product and community are the two legs of reddit, and the board was very focused on finding a candidate who excels at both (truthfully, community is harder), which Steve does,” he wrote. “He has the added bonus of being a founder with ten years of reddit history in his head. Steve is rejoining Alexis, who will work alongside Steve with the new title of “cofounder”.”
Ellen Pao posted an apology to the community earlier this week saying “we screwed up.” Disarray followed the Taylor’s firing, with multiple moderators shutting down popular Reddit communities like its Ask Me Anything section.
Reddit was part of the inaugural Y Combinator class and recently raised $50 million at a reported $500 million valuation. The site is one of the most-trafficked on the Internet, with north of 100 million visitors coming to Reddit every month and generating billions of page views.
