 Subreddit logo | |
Type of site | Subreddit |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| URL | r/IAmA |
| Users | 22.5 million members |
| Launched | May 27, 2009 |
r/IAmA is a subreddit for question-and-answer interactive interviews termed "AMA" (short for "Ask Me Anything"). AMA interviewees have ranged from various celebrities to everyday people in several lines of work. Founded in May 2009, the subreddit has gone on to become one of Reddit's most popular communities.
IAmA is based on posting "AMAs" (for "Ask Me Anything"), or similarly "AMAAs" (Ask Me Almost/Absolutely Anything) – prompts for others to ask questions about any topic. AMAs are open to all Reddit users, but interviewees require proof that they are who/what they claim to be. They use the site's comment system for both questions and answers; this process has been equated to an online press conference. [1] Like the rest of Reddit, users can also upvote and downvote potential candidates, with the most favoured being more likely to receive an answer.
According to The Atlantic , this concept is new to the digital age. They deemed the closest equivalents to be game shows, and radio call-in shows, which placed a heavy focus on the interviewees. [1] Contrastingly, r/IAmA places more emphasis on users answering the questions.
The concept's genesis on the internet began in the 1990s; Slashdot launched similar interviews in 1999, but only 10 questions per person were allowed. Participants included free software advocate Bruce Perens and Linux developer Alan Cox. This was followed by Something Awful's Ask/Tell forums, which was more focused on interviews with everyday people.
Reddit built on this idea with video interviews with site staff Alexis Ohanian and Erik Martin. The following demand for AMAs led to the creation of the current r/IAmA subreddit in May 2009. Unlike its precursors, it requires proof of identity. Since its founding, similar features have appeared in other social media sites, like Tumblr and Ask.fm. [1]
Initially, AMAs focused more on ordinary citizens; these interviews still make up some of the subreddit's content today. [1] As Reddit expanded, its staff attempted to bring in celebrity guests—early examples include businesswoman Caterina Fake. Since then, a number of individuals have been interviewed in the IAmA subreddit, some of whom have appeared multiple times. Notable participants include then-United States President Barack Obama (while campaigning for the 2012 election), [2] Bill Gates (multiple times), [3] Bernie Sanders (amidst the 2018 midterm elections), [4] and Holocaust survivor Alex Hershaft. [5] Other people, including Donald Trump, have conducted AMAs in a similar fashion on other parts of Reddit. [6]
The increased traffic for Obama's AMA brought down many parts of the website when it occurred on August 29, 2012. [7]
Celebrities participating in AMAs have seen both positive and negative responses. In 2012, Woody Harrelson's AMA was criticized after Harrelson declined to answer questions that were unrelated to the movie he was then promoting, apparently unaware of the AMA's purpose. [8] [9] By contrast, rapper Snoop Dogg's 2012 AMA attracted 1.6 million page views [10] after he provided several candid responses to the community's questions. [11]
From 2013 to 2015, Victoria Taylor assisted Reddit's volunteer community in presenting interviews. [12] [13] She primarily transcribed spoken celebrity responses, but also helped organize timing, affirmed best practices, and assisted in preparation. [14] On July 2, 2015, hundreds of subreddits, including several with over a million subscribers, were set to private by their respective volunteer moderators after Taylor was dismissed. [15] [16] [17] These moderators stated that a primary factor for the shutdown was a lack of warning for Reddit's decision; Reddit provided no immediate replacement for Taylor's services. Sources closer to Reddit users cited an increased focus on commercializing AMAs as the most likely reason. [14]
Woodrow Tracy Harrelson is an American actor. He is the recipient of various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. Harrelson first became known for his role as bartender Woody Boyd on the NBC sitcom Cheers (1985–1993), for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series from five nominations. He reprised his role in the acclaimed spinoff series Frasier in 1999 for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series nomination.
Reddit is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and forum social network. Registered users submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images, and videos, which are then voted up or down by other members. Posts are organized by subject into user-created boards called "subreddits". Submissions with more upvotes appear towards the top of their subreddit and, if they receive enough upvotes, ultimately on the site's front page. Reddit administrators moderate the communities. Moderation is also conducted by community-specific moderators, who are unpaid volunteers. It is operated by Reddit, Inc., based in San Francisco.
Ask Me Anything may refer to:
Steve Huffman, also known by his Reddit username spez, is an American web developer and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Reddit, a social news and discussion website, which ranks in the top 20 websites in the world. He also co-founded the airfare search engine website Hipmunk, which shut down in 2020.
Rampart is a 2011 American crime drama film. Directed by Oren Moverman and co-written by Moverman and James Ellroy, the film stars Woody Harrelson, Ned Beatty, Ben Foster, Anne Heche, Brie Larson, Ice Cube, Cynthia Nixon, Sigourney Weaver, Robin Wright, and Steve Buscemi. It is set in the midst of the fallout from the Rampart scandal of the late 1990s, when corrupt Los Angeles Police Department Officer Dave Brown (Harrelson) is forced to face the consequences of his wayward career.
An online interview is an online research method conducted using computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as instant messaging, email, or video. Online interviews require different ethical considerations, sampling and rapport than practices found in traditional face-to-face (F2F) interviews. Online interviews are separated into synchronous online interviews, for example via online chat which happen in 'real time' online and asynchronous online interviews, for example via email conducted in non-real time. Some authors discuss online interviews in relation to online focus groups whereas others look at online interviews as separate research methods. This article will only discuss online interviews.
Alexis Kerry Ohanian is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the co-founder and former executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz. He also co-founded the early-stage venture capital firm Initialized Capital, helped launch the travel search website Hipmunk, and started the social enterprise Breadpig. He was also a partner at Y Combinator.
Ellen Kangru Pao is an American investor and former interim CEO of social media company Reddit.
Barack Obama won the 2008 United States presidential election on November 4, 2008. During his campaign, he became the first presidential candidate of a major party to utilize social networking sites to expand and engage his audience of supporters and donors.
Some communities on the social news site Reddit are devoted to explicit, violent, propagandist, or hateful material, and have been the topic of controversy, at times receiving significant media coverage. The founders of Reddit did not claim they intended the platform to be a "bastion of free speech", yet for a period of time allowed such communities to operate largely unrestricted. Eventually usage rules were instituted to allow for the ban of groups and members who promoted illegal activity, violence, personal information or image theft and exposure, shaming, racial or gender hatred, harassment, and extremist speech.
Hector Richard Janse van Rensburg, better known by his pseudonym Shitty Watercolour, is a British painter and cartoonist who started posting watercolour paintings on the social media website Reddit in February 2012, and later expanded to publishing his work on his own website, on Tumblr and on Twitter. He graduated from the University of York with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics.
Ben Eisenkop, better known by his Reddit pseudonym Unidan, is an American ecologist. He became popular on the social media website Reddit as the "excited biologist" who answered questions and explained concepts related to biology and ecology before being banned. He was banned from the website for vote fraud – using multiple secret accounts to increase the popularity of his own posts and decrease the popularity of competitors' posts.
Kyle Edward Craven, commonly known by his Internet nickname "Bad Luck Brian", is an American Internet celebrity known for his ubiquitous photo posted on Reddit in 2012, which quickly became a popular Internet meme. Bad Luck Brian is an image macro style of meme. His captions describe a variety of unlucky, embarrassing and tragic events.
This is a timeline of Reddit, an entertainment, social networking, and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links, making it essentially an online bulletin board system.
A user revolt is a social conflict in which users of a website collectively and openly protest a website host's or administrator's instructions for using the website. Sometimes it happens that the website hosts can control a website's use in certain ways, but the hosts also depend on the users to comply with voluntary social rules in order for the website to operate as the hosts would like. A user revolt occurs when the website users protest against the voluntary social rules of a website, and use the website in a way that is in conflict with the wishes of the website host or administrators.
r/The_Donald was a subreddit where participants created discussions and Internet memes in support of U.S. president Donald Trump. Initially created in June 2015 following the announcement of Trump's presidential campaign, the community grew to over 790,000 subscribers who described themselves as "Patriots". The community was banned in June 2020 for violating Reddit rules on harassment and targeting. It was ranked as one of the most active communities on Reddit.
Sir Mir Saeed Zahedi, is a British-Iranian biomedical engineer and innovator who is the Technical Director at Chas A Blatchford & Sons. He was named Royal Designer for Industry in 2014, and in 2016 he appeared on Debrett's 500 List, which recognises Britain's 500 most influential individuals. He was knighted "for services to Engineering and Innovation" in 2017.
r/AskHistorians is a subreddit on Reddit where users may ask questions about history. It is one of the internet's largest history forums.
AskReddit, sometimes stylized as Ask Reddit or Ask Reddit..., is a subreddit on the website Reddit, where users can submit open-ended questions to which other users can then reply. The subreddit describes its focus as "to ask and answer questions that elicit thought-provoking discussions". As of July 2015, AskReddit was the most popular subreddit on all of Reddit, and as of September 2021, it has 33.5 million members. In November 2018, Kevin Wong of Complex wrote:
Reddit bills itself as the front page of the Internet. If one were to extend this metaphor, then AskReddit would be the headline splashed across the top of that front page, because there is nothing as consistently exciting, absorbing, and cringe-worthy as the posts on AskReddit.
In April 2023, the discussion and news aggregation website Reddit announced its intentions to charge for its application programming interface (API), a feature which had been free since 2008, causing a dispute. The move forced multiple third-party applications to shut down and threatened accessibility applications and moderation tools.
Gates participated in an "ask me anything" feature on Reddit that allows notable people to answer questions from users. This is the fifth time Gates has participated.
| History | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subreddits | |||||||
| People |
| ||||||
| Acquisitions | |||||||
| Other | |||||||
