This project began with a broad question. “Can you measure the effects of fifteen minutes of fame?” We will attempt to survey the impact of crowds and popularity on smaller communities. Reddit will be used as a source of data. 

Reddit seemed a natural choice to observe popularity in action. Wikipedia calls Reddit “an online bulletin board system”. According to Mashable.com, Reddit is an online message board where users post information and submit links. These posts are then up voted if they are liked or down voted if they are disliked. The intention being popular posts rise to the more visible top, while unpopular posts sink to the less noticed bottom. Reddit also employs various calculations to weight posts by time. The resulting effect being that the longer a post exists the more difficulty it will have in remaining high in the popularity rankings. This weighting of posts, prevents old posts that were once popular from perpetually hanging around.

Reddit has a diverse following. According to Reddit’s own statistics over two hundred million people visit the sight monthly from around the world. However, Google found the average user to be a United States male ranging in age from 18 to 29. The users of Reddit have intentions that are just as diverse minded as its followers, with uses ranging from entertainment, access to news, and of course the collection or proliferation of adult content. 

The most popular twenty-five current posts are displayed on Reddit’s homepage, producing an up-to-the-minute hierarchy of what’s hot. These posts are collected from their respective subreddits. These subreddits are themed posting areas. In these subreddits users can view posts, create their own posts or if desired subscribe to these subreddits. Each subreddit displays its number of subscribers and its current active viewer number. 

Due to their post handling strategies and user tracking statistics, Reddit produces a real-time fame calculator. By tracking chosen subreddits over time the effects of fame can be observed. For our purposes, there are two measures of popularity on Reddit.

1) Subscribers Counts

The first is the number of subscribers to a subreddit. This number provides an idea of how many users follow this subreddit on a regular basis. The larger the number of followers the more popular a subreddit is. A subreddit’s subscriber amount provides a clear indication of the number of long term fans.

2) Active user counts 

The number of Active users tells how many users are presently viewing a subreddit. These current viewers can be subscribers or not. The number of present viewers tells the popularity of the subreddit at that very moment.

By comparing these two values we can quantify the effects of fame. When a subreddit appears on the main page it will suddenly become highly visible. This will likely produce a flood of new active users into the subreddit. By tracking the number of subscribers and number of active users before during and after a subreddit appears on the main page any resulting affects can be recorded.