• Mashable, Thursday, June 19, 2008 11:16 AM

Digg-clone Reddit has decided to go completely open source, a move that allows third-party developers to see exactly how the social news site ticks. By opening up its source code, Reddit is encouraging developers to create and submit programs for improving the site. However, Mashable's Adam Ostrow points out that doing so could open the site up to "serious gaming," or fraud, as developers would understand how the voting site's algorithms determine the most popular stories that make it to the homepage.

Co-founder Steven Hoffman noted the move is a radical shift from how social news rivals like Digg operate. "Digg has struggled to stay transparent with their users," he said. "Social news in general has hid behind algorithms, which has caused some consternation amongst users. Users don't get why things aren't showing up on the front page." Indeed, Digg's algorithms are kept under wraps, so users don't always understand why some stories with lots of diggs and comments never make it to the homepage while other seemingly less important stories find themselves on the front.

By going open source, developers who use Reddit code have to make their changes available for everyone. As Ostrow says, it will be interesting to see how long it will take before developers start trying to "game" the site once the developers site goes live (which it should have done already).

Read the whole story at Mashable »