• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, July 3, 2013

With its stripped-down design and anti-establishment ethos, social news site Reddit is a throwback to the bulletin board services of the Web’s early days. But its influence is such that it’s sometimes called “the front page of the Internet,” while its “Ask Me Anything” series has attracted President Obama.

The Pew Research Center’s Project on the Internet & American Life has taken a closer look at the Reddit audience, finding it equates to 6% of U.S. online adults. For comparison’s sake, a Pew survey at the end of 2012 found 16% of people online used Twitter, and 67% used popular social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Reddit's user base skews male and younger. Some 15% of male Internet users aged 18-29 say that they use Reddit, compared with 5% of women in the same age bracket, and 8% of men aged 30-49, according to the Pew study, based on a survey of 2,252 people 18 and over from April 17 to May 19.

Overall, men are twice as likely as women to be Reddit users, and those under 50 are significantly more likely to use Reddit than those above. It’s also more common among urban and suburban dwellers.

While a hub for journalists and news junkies, Reddit lets all registered users, or “Redditors,” participate by voting posts and comments “up” or “down” to determine their rank and position on the site’s main page and other sections. Sub-communities, called Subreddits, focus on a wide range of topics, from atheism to gaming to “WTF,” a round-up of weird images from around the Web.

“Sites like Reddit are part of a larger digital ecosystem that is changing the process of news and information discovery,” said Maeve Duggan, a co-author of the report. “Content on Reddit is created, edited and shared in an informal process that is user-driven.

Consistent with its independent-minded approach, advertising on Reddit is fairly sparse and takes the form of sponsored links similar to other posts on the front page and on Subreddit pages. Campaigns using the native ad format can be launched for as little as $20. "When I think about Reddit, I don't necessarily think it's anti-advertising -- it's anti-stupid advertising, it's anti-bad advertising,” said the site’s founder, Alexis Ohanian, at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week.