Here’s news that may strike fear into the hearts of local employers: Austin users of Reddit – the news and entertainment website where anyone can create a “subreddit” on a topic of their choosing – rack up the most pageviews per capita of any city in the world.
And in an unweighted, raw count of total visits by city worldwide, Austin comes in tenth.
That may not be too surprising to Austin’s Reddit users -- or redditors. The Austin subreddit counts (as of this writing) 22,841 subscribers. The State of Texas subreddit, by contrast, has some 10,000 fewer subscribers.
While the freeform nature of Reddit undoubtedly has its darker corners, the site as a whole functions as an important part of the web’s ecosystem – a place where memes are born and internet trends are made. And local news can come out of local subreddits: this breathtaking marriage proposal was caught by an Austin photographer, who posted it to r/austin to congratulate the couple.
The folks behind Reddit shared their analytics data as a part of Global Reddit Meetup Day, where redditors can meet and pal around offline.
The Austin meetup is Saturday, June 15, 7p.m., at the Texas State Capitol.