Reddit CEO Wong Exits, Pao Serves In Interim

Yishan Wong is stepping down as CEO of Reddit, the company announced Thursday.

The move comes after two-and-a-half years on the job, during which time Wong oversaw Reddit’s rise from a niche message board to one of the Web’s premier social-sharing destinations.

In Wong’s place, Ellen Pao, Reddit’s head of business and partnerships, will serve as CEO on an interim basis.

Sam Altman -- president of Y Combinator, the incubator that originally helped launch Reddit -- attributed Wong’s resignation to a seemingly trivial dispute over new office space. “The reason was a disagreement with the board about a new office (location and amount of money to spend on a lease),” Altman claimed in a Thursday blog post. “To be clear, though, we didn’t ask or suggest that he resign -- he decided to when we didn’t approve the new office plan.”

To shore up confidence among investors, the company is also bringing back co-founder Alexis Ohanian to serve as executive chairman on a full-time basis. “Founders are able to set the vision for their companies with an authority no one else can,” Altman said of Ohanian. “He will be responsible for marketing, communications, strategy, and community.”

In another management change, Dan McComas has been named senior vice president, product. An existing member of the Reddit team, McComas formerly founded redditgifts.

Wong’s exit comes just over a month after Reddit raised $50 million from stars such as rapper Snoop Dogg and actor Jared Leto. The funding was led by Altman.

In October, the 9-year-old social news service said it planned to use the funding to expand its staff of about 60, expand partnerships with third-party developers and develop news products.

While Reddit’s homepage design might look like a relic from the early '90s, the company does invest in new products and services. This summer, for instance, Reddit launched its Live tool for breaking news, which is essentially a live-blogging tool.

Reddit is not Facebook, but its fortunes do appear to be rising. Of particular note, the share of teens who report using Reddit rose from 4% in the spring to 7% in the fall of this year, according to recent findings from Piper Jaffray.

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