Ben Huh, founder and CEO of the Cheezburger Network and meme mastermind, has offered to buy link-sharing site Reddit for an undisclosed sum.
After approaching a few Reddit staffers privately about his desire to acquire the struggling site, he made the offer publicly via The Daily What and then tweeted his intentions for all the world to read.
Reddit is currently owned by Condé Nast, publishers of print publications from tech-focused Wired to fashion rag Vogue. The site went freemium just last month after its staffers found themselves in financially dire straits -- an odd circumstance given the stature of the parent company. At that time, Reddit's admins had been given a fixed budget for the site, and their Condé Nast-imposed bottom line was not being met. After around 6,000 Reddit members donated, the site was deemed "saved."
It's that sense of community that's inspired Huh to make a bid for the site. "I've tried before," he wrote to us in a private Twitter exchange, "and been told a flat out 'not for sale,' hence the public version."
In Huh's public offer, he wrote:
I believe that Reddit is one of the best communities I have seen on the Internet. I also believe that Reddit would benefit from more resources and less corporate interference. We can offer all of the above. And we’d love to buy Reddit and all those pesky, troublesome users that we love so much.
Condé, we’ll be waiting for a call.
Reddit's traffic profile and meme-surfacing abilities fit beautifully with the Cheezburger family, we have to admit. And if anyone knows about printing paper, financially speaking, based on memes and critical masses of web traffic, it's Huh.