Photo: Christopher Michel, Flickr
Ellen Pao’s time as interim Reddit CEO has come to an end. Reddit board member Sam Altman formally announced Pao’s resignation yesterday via Reddit post:
Ellen Pao resigned from reddit today by mutual agreement. I’m delighted to announce that Steve Huffman, founder and the original reddit CEO, is returning as CEO.
We are thankful for Ellen’s many contributions to reddit and the technology industry generally. She brought focus to chaos, recruited a world-class team of executives, and drove growth. She brought a face to reddit that changed perceptions, and is a pioneer for women in the tech industry. She will remain as an advisor to the board through the end of 2015. I look forward to seeing the great things she does beyond that.
Pao’s resignation comes after last week’s massive user and moderator revolt. Moderators locked down reddit threads due to the termination of employee Victoria Taylor.
Taylor was a moderator and coordinator of Reddit’s popular “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) sub. The poorly communicated (and still unexplained termination) was seen as the final straw for some users who have been displeased with the direction of the site for several months.
With Pao’s resignation, Reddit hopes to get the community back on track by announcing one of Reddit’s founding-fathers Steve Huffman as new CEO.
As a daily reader (lurker) of reddit, I was on the site as the lock out went down. As the situation unfolded, it became clear that the company is incapable of managing the community or leveraging their own (well developed) communication channel.
I spent the next 24 hours thinking about my browsing habits and how I have become very attached to Reddit. I decided to dust off my RSS reader and update the news sources. I don’t plan on abandoning Reddit, but I feel that it is important to nurture other viable news and information sources and never (again) rely on once source too heavily.
