The power of the users
News.com.au reports:
ELLEN Pao, who made headlines with a high-profile Silicon Valley gender discrimination lawsuit, was ousted Friday after a brief but stormy tenure at the helm of online bulletin board Reddit.
Pao took over earlier this year as Reddit CEO after being fired from the prominent venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, prompting a highly publicised lawsuit.
But she quickly ruffled feathers and provoked anger with the unexplained firing of a Reddit employee, leading to an online petition calling for her departure.
Reddit, which has more than 163 million users and describes itself as a forum for real-time journalism, said in a statement that Pao resigned “by mutual agreement” and would be replaced by founder and original CEO Steve Huffman.
It wasn’t the petition that did her in, but that many of the moderators of subreddits went on strike, did blackouts etc. Basically they got the message across that they were collectively more important to Reddit than the CEO.