The nature of the Reddit beast

What actually is Reddit?, asks Samantha Allen, writing for The Daily Beast:

Reddit is not so much the generic front page of the Internet as it is its spacious, tricked-out man cave: a lot of people can fit inside, but only some people feel comfortable hanging out there.

And she provides some figures to back that up:

Seventy-four percent of Reddit users are men, the highest of any social networking website. Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube all come much closer to gender parity. Describing Reddit without making reference to its gender asymmetry is akin to reporting on Pinterest, which is 72 percent female, without noting that the site caters to women.

John Gruber is even more brutal:

Reddit: a terrible, childish community posting on a site owned by a terrible, dumbass company. Good luck to the next CEO.

Reddit has been a huge focus for a lot of journalism businesses in recent years – both because of the traffic potential of a link from the site, and the rich seam of content that you can mine from there.

But what’s the real balance of the community in there? Have we actually looked closely enough at that?