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Founded in 2005 by University of Virginia graduates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, Reddit was designed as a social sharing and aggregation site to which users submit links to interesting stories and content from around the Web, which are then “upvoted” or “downvoted” by the site’s community of users. The more upvotes a story gets, the higher it ranks on the site, and the more likely it is to be seen by other users.

Reddit was acquired by publishing giant Conde Nast — the same company that owns Wired, GQ and other magazines — in October of 2006, but last year the site was spun off as a wholly owned subsidiary of Conde Nast’s parent company, Advance Publications.

Now, it’s up to Mr. Martin — and newly appointed chief executive Yishan Wong, a former director of engineering at Facebook Inc. — to help Reddit evolve its business model and generate new advertising revenue, while at the same time applying a deft touch to the site’s dedicated user base.

“In general, the vast majority of really good ideas or things that happen on Reddit happen without our involvement,” Mr. Martin said.

“We definitely see ourselves as groundskeepers or plumbers or janitors — take your pick of someone working behind the scenes … We try to be agnostic with the content and say, here’s an area where you can go.”

Links are generally submitted to categories known as “subreddits,” which tend to focus on specific areas of interest, such as “gaming,” “politics” or “science.” But in actuality there are nearly 70,000 subreddits, including one for almost every city in the world, every professional sports team and every U.S. college.