Social media platform reddit has officially filed to go public, more than 16 years since the company was founded.
In many ways, modern day reddit looks a lot like the internet forums of the early 2000s, with communities built around different interests, ideas or identities. There's a subreddit for movies, music, Melbourne, minecraft, machine learning, male fashion advice, things that you find mildly interesting (only mildly), motorcycles and more.
Then there is r/wallstreetbets — the 11 million strong community of investors / traders / gamblers that turned wall street on its head earlier this year during the GameStop saga.
Those 11 million traders have pioneered the idea of a "meme stock" — a company whose shares suddenly see an enormous wave of buying demand for the sole reason of, well, "it's funny". Given the impending IPO, reddit itself is now presumably a candidate for being the next meme stock... although the r/wallstreetbets folks have been taking it easier in the second half of this year.
