People really underestimate
how much time they spent
searching for
the right information.
Even more so, how much time they
actually continue search for
whether this is
the right information.
This is where natural
language understanding,
machine reading comprehension is
just going to be so important.
And it's doing the work for you.
And there's another thing that's
really important is that you
also want to know that as
people talk about this kind of
information, where's the the
composition into add some
credibility to all this
kind of interesting copies.
So gone are the days of
those endless pro links but
today's searches really about
the real answers in a real
perspectives and
the real conversations.
That's why I'm so
excited to announce today a new
partnership with Redditt.
We are working together to bring
relevant Redditt conversations
to answers in Bing and bringing
Bing entities to Redditt.
So talk about those unique
applications of AI, and
is an intersection of social
news and the conversations and
the search, let me welcome
up Alexis Ohanian,
co-founder of Redditt.
Alexis.
>> Thank you so much Harry.
How are you doing?
Very happy to be here.
Hello everyone.
Good day.
This is pretty exciting,
if you can believe it.
Before Redditt was the front
page of the Internet.
It was a fun little project
that my college buddy and
I were starting in a small
little apartment in
Medford Massachusetts.
This was back in 2005,
we just graduated,
we had no idea what
we were doing.
But we knew enough,
and had people who believed in
us enough, to take a chance.
And Redditt today, now has
hundreds of millions of users,
340 million monthly
active users.
And about two years ago,
my co-founder and our CEO Steve,
came back and it was really
instrumental in bringing
him back to get
the company reset and
to start doing a lot of the
things that basically we wished
we had done maybe a decade ago.
Redditt was sold in
2006 to Conde Nast,
it's now independence.
And for the last two years have
been shipping a ton of code,
building some really
amazing partnerships and
building up a team.
Including a very
formidable BD team.
A couple of whom are here.
Who basically took a chance on
us a couple years ago because
there was no BD process.
And said we want to be a part of
this, we see the potential and
what you are seeing here today
with this partnership with
Microsoft is actually a really
good example of just how far
we've come in actually
a pretty short time.
So while Redditt the website
is 12 years old, Redditt Inc,
the new entity is really only
about 2, 3 years old and
we are so proud to be announcing
this partnership here with
Microsoft and Bing today.
So giving you a little
bit of the back story.
I told you a bit about myself.
I'm co-founder of Redditt.
And I've never really understood
the scale of Redditt,
which I know sounds crazy.
I'm a co-founder,
one of the original users.
But I never really understood
the scale of Redditt until this
partnership.
Because when you're in
the middle of it all it's
kind of hard to
really understand
the numbers behind just
how many conversations and
just how many communities
exist on the Redditt platform.
And look if I can't
navigate it or
grock it [LAUGH] then
heaven help everybody else.
And so the last two and a half
or three years have really been
a cause for us to make Redditt
more accessible to the masses.
If you haven't used the Redditt
app, I encourage you to do so.
It's only a year old,
if you can believe it.
And my wife takes credit for
having sparked it,
because one of our first
conversations was her confessing
to me she had no idea
what Redditt was.
Immediately doing a search on
her phone, not finding an app.
And thinking I was a liar.
But that's the world
we live in today. Right?
We very quickly look, app first.
Redditt didn't have a mobile
presence to speak of,
didn't even have
a mobile website.
Now we do.
It's beautiful.
The desktop, as you may have
seen Steve unveil at Web Summit,
is also getting a redesign.
It will look beautiful.
It will look modern.
But every one of these are steps
toward getting this great
content in front of as
many people as possible,
as accessibly as possible.
And this partnership with
Bing is helping us do
that on a whole nother level.
And just some of the numbers.
Like I said, 330 million
active users on Redditt,
10.7 million post
submissions per month.
It's a very active user base.
2.8 million comments per day.
Redditt is the one social
network that is not antisocial.
It's the one place where you'll
actually read the comments
first, before looking at the
content, because they provide so
much value.
The reason those comments
provide so much value,
is because the hundreds
of millions of users,
like, probably many of you all,
upvote the good ones,
downvote the bad ones.
And a really brilliant algorithm
that Steve came up with,
as a 21 year old,
sorts the good from the bad.
And this is a pretty
remarkable thing.
And actually by
a quick show of hands,
how many of you in
the room are Redditters.
It's okay if you're
using Redditt right now.
I won't take it personally.
Okay, upvotes to all of you.
And also thank you for being so
brave that you're willing to out
yourselves as the least
productive people in this room.
>> [LAUGH]
>> That is, that is impressive.
Over 138,000 active
communities for
whatever your passion,
whatever your love.
Whether it is
the Seattle Seahawks or
whether it is sneakers.
Hopefully there a few of you
sneakerheads here, who can
appreciate the off-whites
that I'm wearing right now.
But these are the communities
whose opinions
we actually care about.
I don't care what my friends
from college think about shoes,
because they have
terrible taste.
I care about what this
community of people,
this peer group that
I care about thinks.
And isn't that how we humans
have worked all along? Right?
People come to Redditt
to see this breadth of different
communities to get advice,
to get feedback, to get a better
understanding of their world and
the things they care about.
Whether they're shopping for
beard care products.
Yes, there are a number of
beard care communities,
r/Beards being one
of my favorites.
If you don't like beards,
that's fine.
They'll grow on you.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Okay, all right, that's fine.
Or maybe you're a new
parent like I was and
really really worried because
every photo, every parent
I know puts on the Internet
is perfect and pristine.
Because that's the image that
we wanna show to the world,
but when your kid's screaming
at 4 AM you're not thinking
let me take a selfie,
you're thinking I need
someone to commiserate with.
And that Daddits community on
Redditt was the place for me.
And for so many more, whether
they need skin care advice,
r/skincareaddiction could've
saved my teen years.
I would've found
Accutane a lot faster.
But it didn't exist.
There was no place to go to talk
about this stuff because these
are the conversations people can
really only have on a platform
like Redditt with that scale.
And so all this amazing
content is sitting there.
It's sitting there.
So much content, so engaging,
we average about 12 minutes
per session, right?
This is stuff that is highly
engaging, but as long as it
is just on Redditt, we know
that we're still missing out
on a much broader audience that
we know can benefit from it.
And so, when we're thinking how
do we find partners who can get
us to a massive audience and a
massive mainstream reach, Bing.
There you go.
This partnership with Microsoft
is just the beginning, and
we've got three big things
around the intelligent
search experience that
we're unveiling today.
But as I've told everyone here
in the little conversations
leading up to this,
this is just the start.
So like I said, three big things
that are gonna integrate,
Redditt content more directly,
more beautifully, more helpfully
into being search results.
The first of which,
ask me any things.
This brand is probably as well
known as Redditt itself, many
platforms have tried to copy the
model, but they've all failed.
The magic is in the context.
A crowdsourced Q&A on its
surface doesn't seem really
interesting until you put it
in the context of a community.
And until you can see what
happens when the science
community gets a chance to talk
to an expert like Jane Goodall
and asks their very best and
very smartest questions.
And they don't have to
be celebrities, right?
One of those popular AMA's of
all time was a vacuum repairman.
It's true he actually
came back on recently,
he is now a vacuum
repair manager.
He got a promotion in
the last few years.
That's not a joke I'm serious.
And it maybe in no small part
thanks to the Reddit AMA.
He spend 24 hours answering
literally every question someone
could post about a vacuum.
And believe me,
there are a lot of fascinating
questions about vacuums.
From what's the weirdest thing
you've found in a vacuum,
to I have this
particular model and
it makes this whir whir whir
noise every 30 seconds, right?
These are conversations you
won't find anywhere else, but
it turns out are actually really
valuable and really nuanced and
really special.
And we know that there are
people whether they know it or
not, who are searching for
this every day on Bing.
But now we're providing
them a world-class
experience to find it.
Secondly, Reddit content itself
as well as the responses around
it being user's questions.
Now, this is fun, right?
We're seeing more and more
queries now phrased as questions
and part of that's
the rise of voice.
And part of that is just
the fact that we're just getting
used to talking the robot and
expecting a good answer.
The challenge here is there's
a lot of nuance when you're
asking these kind of
open ended questions.
And Reddit is the largest data
set in the English speaking
world of vetted
nuanced responses.
The greatest NFL play is a very
different answer depending on
whether you're asking it in New
England, or in Seattle [LAUGH].
The NFL fans know what
I'm talking about.
So what is so, so important here
is that we have this data set.
We've had it, actually,
for a very long time.
And it gets bigger and
bigger every day.
But we ourselves are still
building a data team within
Reddit just to understand
all the myriad
of things we have
to worry about.
We needed some partners who
could bring in the heavy lifting
around artificial intelligence.
Who were really comfortable
dealing with a massive data set.
And again,
it came back to Microsoft.
And then finally,
the third thing,
making Reddit communities and
their top content.
These are also known as
sub-Reddits, more accessible to
an user, who runs that Bing
enquiry, finds that results.
And whether they're looking for
cute animal photos,
which is a great reason, or
looking for cooking advice.
They find a rich arresting
visual look into that community.
We have so many people who visit
Reddit who may not even be fully
aware of how much is there
beneath the surface.
And having these search results
be obvious, and beautiful, and
visual is one more step to
getting them aware of it.
So we wanted to help people find
the great content on Reddit,
Bing has been such a great
partner in doing this.
And like I said, AMAs are such,
they are such
low-hanging fruits.
One of the things that's never
been done before that we're
thrilled to be announcing
here is actually now for
the first time in
Bing search results.
You will see upcoming AMAs.
Now this seems sort of obvious,
but
it's actually something that
we've never done before.
And so a very common complaint
we hear from people is
my goodness, how did I miss fill
in the blank was doing this AMA?
It's tough, right, cuz if
you don't know in advance,
then maybe you find out about
it while it's going on.
Or maybe you read about
it a day later on your
friend's Facebook page.
Or maybe you read about it
a week later on BuzzFeed.
But one way or another, you
wish you had known in advance.
And so it's really exciting.
We now actually can have this as
a part of these search results.
So Leah Remini has done
a couple of AMA's now around
her documentary series on
A&E around scientology.
And so here's an example as
you'll see on the right rail,
Q&A with Leah Remini,
upcoming date, time,
and this is all being
pulled from Reddit.
And so
when someone runs that query,
cuz they heard something about
her or her documentary series.
They know this
event is happening,
they can set their alarm.
[LAUGH] They can do
what they need to do to
make sure they're
a part of this moment.
And this is, I mean,
a transformative thing for us.
We have so many people who
find their gateways to Reddit
through these AMAs.
Because if you haven't
necessarily heard of Reddit.
You've heard of that celebrity,
or that influencer, or
that maybe you
also own a vacuum.
And that you wanna learn
from and hear from and
this becomes a great gateway.
And so this using an example of
a past AMAs results or upcoming.
In case you're trying to
set your calendars for
it, that's, it's not gonna work.
Cuz it was November 29th, but
you'll see that's
how it's gonna look.
But then there's also
the leveling up of how past
AMAs are appearing and
search results Jane Goodall.
I wasn't lying she did an
amazing job with AMA on Reddit,
asking, getting asked
questions that are the best
of an audience that are very
interested in science.
Now you can cut this in
a bunch of different ways.
We see AMAs happening across
all the different communities
on Reddit.
So the questions she'll get
there are a little different,
a little more nuanced in
the questions she gets from
the environment community.
Which are a little different
from questions she might get
from the two x
chromosomes community.
Which are a little different
from the questions she might
get from the etcetera
etcetera communities.
Bing can handle all of this.
And through robots that
I don't understand and
certainly would not challenge
in the game of chess.
Figured out what the best
result should be and present
them in a way that's digestible
and accessible for users.
You can see the Q&A with
Jane Goodall, the top comments,
the top response.
Believe me, I've heard a few
times that the current desktop
version of Reddit is little
hard to grok at first glance.
These beautiful results
let someone who's
running a big inquiry
find this great content.
Dive into it instantly, and
see the very best of what the
Reddit community has to offer.
And really what the best
that Jane Goodall and
others have to offer.
You'll start seeing top
AMAs in the search results.
Here are the best
AMAs of all time.
I have to admit I
didn't even know,
I had missed about
half of these.
And it's been a busy year, but
now they exist here with
beautiful thumbnails.
Right at the top for
anyone to come and see.
Now there is more accessibility
into the rick wealth of Reddit
content that we know is there,
but isn't always the most
accessible and this is part of
a much bigger roll out for us.
That carousel will
continue to update and
we'll continue to see the very
best of these Q&A results,
these Reddit conversations,
that bubble up to the top.
And so perspectives from
Reddit conversations
are interesting, right?
Because like I said, Reddit is
the one place where conversation
actually happens online.
And where the best stuff as
determined by our community
bubbles up.
This has been fun for
me, because I've revisited
moments and times in my life
that I didn't think I would
ever again thanks to Reddit.
We have millions of users across
100,000 plus communities.
And they understand nuance,
because it's a human
asking the question.
And a bunch of
humans answering it.
And the best stuff
being voted up.
This is great data for
the Bing team to start to learn,
what really the best
answers are for
questions, that might not
be the easiest for a robot.
For instance, how accurate
is HBO's, Band of Brothers?
Now this was totally
serendipitous.
When the Microsoft Team
presented this to me,
I got really excited.
Band of Brothers was
the show that Steven and
I would binge on while
we were building Reddit.
And we at the end of a long
workday would get on top of
the roof in Summerville and
crack open a couple of beers and
watch Band of Brothers.
We obsessed over this series.
It's a really,
really well done series.
And I was a history
major believe it or not.
And with that history degree
I studied European history.
I still had questions
watching this and
when I dive onto the Ask
Historians community on Reddit.
I actually have a window into
the very best Historians,
history students, maybe
armchair historians imaginable.
Because this community
actually self curates,
they require citation for posts.
And they can provide
a really valuable insight on
a subject matter that has
shades of nuance, right?
A question like how accurate
is HBO's Band of Brothers,
is not a simple binary, yes.
[LAUGH] Right, well yeah,
in a lot of ways it is.
Here's what they got right,
here's what they got wrong,
here's a thing that's
pretty disputed, and
here are two different
points of view.
Now as humans, we love this,
especially if you like history.
This is what we relish,
we get to dig into this,
because there are different
perspectives.
Robots don't work so
well with the nuance unless
they have this data.
And so now we're seeing results
that are actually helpful and
valuable and you see
trending comments and look.
It's like I am transported back
to those history classes in
school with the very best
ideas being voted up.
And we're seeing the same thing
in results even around things
that may seem pretty obvious,
like why my pot isn't
boiling with water?
Now look, I know,
if you watch it,
technically it's
not supposed to.
Turns out,
that is not scientific fact.
But if you've tried, I have,
to boil one of those huge, huge,
I was doing a crawfish boil.
You ever tried a, I mean you
fill that thing with water and
put it on high, and
you will find that it actually
takes a really long time.
There's a whole community
of people frustrated,
[LAUGH] wondering and asking
Bing for an answer to this.
[LAUGH] And now they can
actually get really helpful
results.
They can get an understanding
from a chemist's point of view,
from a science community.
They can also get
an understanding from a chef's
point of view.
And maybe some tricks to help
solve that little boiling
problem.
This is all about presenting
that Mac grade content in a much
more accessible way to
Bing users who may or
may not be even aware of Reddit
when they're running the query,
because we know this
content is valuable.
And this is special because
we see this as a window into
frankly help people discover new
communities they didn't even
know they wanted to
be a part of it.
They didn't know were into.
130,000 communities means
a ton of opportunities for
you to find something
that you love on Reddit.
And it's about cute
animals sometimes.
This is a window into the AWW
community, one of our largest,
featuring lots of photos and
cats and dogs and other animals.
And now with this wonderful
first class treatment, when you
see these results, you actually
see a window in, you see
the votes, you see the comments,
you see beautiful thumbnails.
You are invited into a community
now in a way that it is
probably new to a lot of
Internet users because we're so
used to a one-way conversation.
Now we're exposing
them to the magic
of real conversation on Reddit.
And maybe you would have
gotten confused otherwise.
Data is beautiful.
On the surface, seems like
a community all about saying how
attractive the android
from Star Trek is.
And, you grammar aficionados,
obviously know that technically
it should say data
are beautiful,
but we're not going to nitpick.
The Data is Beautiful community
is actually the largest
community of data visualization
fans, of stats fans.
All they do is share data sets
and visualizations all the time.
It's a fabulous community.
Now it's showing up in context
in a beautiful way to see what
the trending aspects and
trending discussions are on that
community and
directly link to Reddit posts.
And like I said,
this is mutually beneficial.
It's helping us bring a whole
new even broader swath of
Internet users onto Reddit in
a really useful, accessible,
beautiful way.
And then it's also going to
power Bing search results as
those continue to get better and
better over time,
using data that only Reddit has.
And that's actually
thanks to a lot of you,
thanks to your comments and
your upvotes.
We know this, and
now we can share it.
We can make both of our
platforms better as a result.
And like I said from Jump,
this is just the start.
Reddit may be 12 years
old on the internet, but
it's really only a few
years old as a business.
And the growth, and the great,
great success we've had in
the last few years is
just the beginning.
This partnership is like
a crown jewel for us, but
we're not complacent.
We know we still have
a lot of work to do.
And we have very big ambitions.
And this just scratches
the surface on our relationship
with Microsoft AI and
Reddit data.
We're also launching
today here a Power BI.
So I've had to talk
to CMOs all over,
Fortune 100 companies who have
been asking for a crystal ball.
Wouldn't we all like that to
be able to get in front of
the water cooler where
the conversations,
the real conversations, are
happening among the people who
we care the most about, about
the things we care most about.
And Reddit is the place.
Whether you wanna know what
the trending sneakers are before
anyone else, or I mean,
I've had countless people come
up to me and just thank me.
And I've asked them why,
and they said r/Bitcoin.
And I can only imagine it's
because six years ago they
were on that community,
seeing all the inertia,
seeing all the traction,
buying an ample share of
Bitcoin at a way cheaper
price than it is today, and
have benefited very
generously from it.
But whether you want
to know the trends for
the latest cryptocurrency that's
gonna pop, whether you wanna
know what makeup people
are really hot for,
you will find out
on Reddit first.
But historically,
it's been really hard.
You've had to actually spend
lots of time being on those
communities, being
on the platform.
And now thanks to this,
with PowerBI, we now have these
business intelligence modules
to do the work for you.
The robots are doing
the hard stuff.
And so the trends that you wanna
track, the key words that you
wanna follow, any of the brand
insights you wanna monitor,
we're letting the robots
do that work now.
And so we want all of these
people to get this data so
that we can give them
the crystal ball.
Turns out it's been on
Reddit for a while.
We're just really grateful now
to have Microsoft to help us
actually bring it to life,
to actually help us
build that crystal ball.
And we're really lucky, too.
Alex Riccomini,
who is our director of
business development, and
Norm Cadori, who is our head of
data partnerships, are here.
We've got a cool little booth
just around the corner, so
you can talk to them.
You can ask them anything
regarding Power BI or
any of the stuff that
we've announced today.
But again, I can't stress
enough, this is just the start.
And this has been
an exciting two,
three years now
since coming back.
But the next two or three
are gonna be even more amazing.
And I'm grateful
to Microsoft for
helping be such wonderful
partners in this journey.
So thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> It's really
an exciting partnership.
I just couldn't really think
about it any better win-win
partnerships, imagine what
we can do together with 330
million Reddit users, and 450
million Bing users worldwide.
It's just amazing that we can
really do to use AI to transform
not only that search experience,
but
also what this Web community
can all work together.
So I hope you will have a chance
to really try this new Bing
experience whose all these
intelligent answers and
whose perspectives and
conversations.
This is a new norm,
as you think about there's
a new user search experience
