Is the future of social news distributed? That certainly seems to be the thinking at a number of leading names in the space, with Reddit today announcing that their feature for creating your own version of the site is being extended to let you host it under your own domain and fully customize the look and feel. The move follows news last week that Ma.gnolia was going open source, and [img src="http://sale-online.click/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/create-reddit.gif" caption="" credit="" alt=""] word earlier this summer that Digg is working on their own offering to let users create their own custom social news sites.
While Reddit has offered an installable open source version (akin to Ma.gnolia’s offering) of its software since June, the create-your-own Reddit offering - originally launched in January - is a hosted solution. You setup your site by simply filling out a form and determining if your Reddit will be public, private, or restricted. Mashable’s Mark Hopkins and Steven Hodson are active participants in a custom Reddit that you can find here.
With today’s additions, you can now use CSS to edit the stylesheet for your site, and setup a custom CNAME through your domain registrar to host your Reddit at a URL of your choice. Essentially, this gives you some of the flexibility of the open source solution, but without the complexity or technical know-how required to set it up.