Social media network Reddit Inc said on Monday its market valuation is 3 bln after raising $300 million in the latest funding led by Tencent Holding Ltd. The California-based company raised more than $250 in three other funding rounds, and its last funding was on August 1 totaling $1.8 billion.
Reddit said it is going to use the money for international expansion. With major competitors like Facebook and Google, the company is trying to enhance its digital ad platform.
Reddit Chief Executive Officer Steve Huffman told CNBC that they are the only company at that scale that is still private. The CEO said they had a lot of investor attention in the last year.
The news that Tencent is the leading investor in the popular social news website raised concerns. The fact is that Tencent is banned in China which prompted concerns that the platform may be exposed to censorship in China.
Reddit users protested and started posting pictures known to be banned in China, such as a cartoon character “Winnie the Pooh”. The image of this cartoon character was reportedly banned online in China because it was used by some bloggers to represent President Xi Jinping. Users made posts bearing this caption: “Since Reddit took a $150 million investment from Chinese Censorship company Tencent, please welcome our leader President Xi.”
Reddit Has 542 Million Monthly Visitors
Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian who were roommates at the University of Virginia. It is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. The users post links, tests, and images which are rated up or down by the members on various subject matters such as news, science, movies, video games and more.
Reddit ranks among the most visited US websites and has more than 138,000 discussion “communities”. The network is also famous for its ask-me-anything (AMA) sessions that are hosted by well-known people such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former US president Barack Obama.
As of February 2018, it had 542 million monthly visitors. Reddit users are mainly young people of the age of 18 to 24. The site is ranked as number three most visited website in the US and number 6 in the world.
