With Reddit Raising Funds, Should Users Worry?

Reddit is rumored to be raising money from investors at a valuation of $400 million, double its estimated value a year ago.

In 2012, the site logged 400 million unique viewers and 47 billion pageviews, a huge increase from 2011. High-wattage “Ask Me Anything” posts with President Obama and the Mars Curiosity Rover team helped the social site go more mainstream, and the popularity explosion may be leading it to seek new revenue to expand staff and servers.

Installed last March, new CEO Yishan Wong has sought to give Reddit more control of its finances. The company is owned by Condé Nast.

Any mention of outside capital flowing to Reddit is sure to be controversial. Unlike many other social Web giants, the Reddit community prizes anonymity, and more intrusive advertising efforts are almost certain to be rebuffed.