How to turn web being into reae and get pots policy makers atte. If you look at your screen you see the aja massachusetts anm. Its the self proclaimed front page of the internet. Reta. Com boasts 80 million users. The readers vote up or down on articles. Its known for making things go viral and i tracting World Leaders to answer questions from a global audjennings. Audiences. How did they become the start up. How the 21st century will be made and not managed. Alexus is behind red pig and the travel mug site. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. You just released a book and you are 30 years old and it means we have weafted ou wasted our live. You were once a geek and husky and healthy like me. Talk to us how your geeky childhood in234r50u7bsz influenh to success. I was lucky that neither of my parents had nick i anything e way of a tech background. They had resources to buy a powerful computer a pc that they gave me total freedom with. As long as you can put it back together and take it apart and do what you want with it. They didnt fully understand what it would do but they had an e amunchahunch it would be impo. I played way too much video games and soon i wanted to build my observe. My own. Learning how to build became a hobby. My friends and i spent too muche messing around with nothing. It gave us an outlet and we could build web sites and have people all over the word like 50 people looking at the thing we had made. And it made what filete what fee insignificant living significant. We were dorky High School Kids but on the internet w we were people with ideas and we could be resuspecte respected as such. Now everyone is talking about new media. Mill lemillmilnew media is the e for the new generation. Now your book is entitled without their permission how the 21st century will be made and not managed. Do you think new media candice resulcandisrupt the power struc. It already has. Ihere is the best part. Im not sure what wher where iti i also wanted to tell stories about friends of mines who were using the net to be entrepreneurial and go outside of traditional gate keepers to get their ideas to the world they are doing it and living it these are people that five years ago couldnt have had that kind of impact or influence. Debbie guardino who was an age o raise 15 million by using social media. She is not a technologist. She has a fulltime job as a tee teacher but with the internet she had so many more impact than she would have had tent years ten years ago. Speaking about new media. We arwe have tweets. And an and think what is the phy behind read it. Steve ho hoffman and i just graduated from college we weamentded twantedto live like e opportunities as as long as possible. We wanted to make it so anybody could find something new online 24hoursaday days 7 days a w. We dent sit down at the mitt cry table and draft an idea. It was like hey lots solve a problem we have. And it was a process. And we knew above all that we we needed to create a place where users were interested in submitting content and have an open platform for the online community. And there was no grand us visio. The one thing i wanted to do on the book tour is that world changing stuff happened in a dramatic way with special people that are different from everyone else its two recent College Graduates and we just started a company like roa read it and we started it. There is no difference between me and anyone of you we are all carbon based life forms that can build stuff. As a carbon based life form i have not created my social media giant. I wear makeup and ask you questions. You have influence here. We do have influence. This is a janky website that has 80 million users what is the appeal . Its content. If you look at craigs list and we have wikipedia and we have piers that are the top 50 website that are not going to win beauty contests. But as long as you prio priorite content and if someone hits the front page and see something valuable. Even kraition craigs list can be force it is. And wikipedia can be the force it is because its providing content. I hop have a lot of starred d it would be really hard to see our first page of red it. Read it. You can find inspiration easier than you could back in 05. We have geeks at home that wt are they saying. There is a question im curious about. In your book you talk about the sesecret to start up success. I wonder if you could share something that is particularly important. Sure the one thing that probably hoped u helped us the s that understanding that we were not necessarily going to know what we are doing at all times but we are going to do what is boast fobest for the users. Think about how all of these other sites grew. We didnt want to flood our users inboxes we wanted to make sure that the content was easily accessible and shareable. There are things that Large Companies can no longer do. Because they have grown so big and people dont dar care anymo. Its giving so many dams about users experience and Customer Support and building a product is that people genuinely love. When you are a up start you are going up against incoupl incou. You are glad that one person liked the photo you took. Lets do 80s pop culture. A delorean what will social media look like and what low read it be. The site ras has doubled every r now. It will be a Truly International platform 230 for online communs to share links. Peer report came out saying that read it is the most popular among hispanics across the state. Its most popular among hispanics and we started to dig into this and reeled liese reale thousands of communities not just geographical around language that we have not tapped into. In my travels i meet so many people that use old school news form and even janker than read it software. Twitter has been great to get ephemeral news to the world. Read it can bring out the big discussions. I think it will be a big push. Hopefully well drop the social off social media. And anyone of us with a smart phone is it kindabl capable is n a situation. And that is going to continue to grow and what is coming with it is news organizations that are doing the job of sif sifting thh the joyce fo noise for is for tt until there. Signal. Even read it has its critics. What do you think . Keep tweeting at us. Aajam stream. Im a tech and culture blogger and im in the stream. 3450 uz r , wil hewelcome back we are spg about the founder of the social media read it. They got a lot of heat for banning gawker. How can read it be an open preglobal playground while excluding contributors. Aalexus. We had sub read it mote moderate othermoderatorsdeciding they die tweets. Its a decision made by the creator of the sub read it. Its a decision of someone that wanted to create that sub. One of the mechanisms that wee biwebuilt into this because thee are 6000 sub ree read its if you dont agree with how they are running a sub read it you can go out and create another one. Last april during the boss tobosstonbostonbombing a lo lots identified innocent people. Investigating these bombings is just not a job for the crowd even if Technology Makes it possible. Omar we have a lot of twice aboutwooetstweetsabout is this. The whole issue with read it and the Boston Marathon bomber was irresponsible. And in a event like the Boston Marathon bombing people trust the old school journalism. Canadiacredibility is what mattd it unfortunately creates an incentive for people to help in is a way that twitter doesnt. What do you think about the idea that read it is contric contribo the trend . I would say all of social media. Read it is a part of it. The New York Times did a great job of what happened that day. And it was a few twitter accounts from professional journalists that paid attention to that thread and spun it out of control. We are in the age this is a gift or a curse anyone can be a reporter. And they can be used it foregood and sometimes for bad. Im happy with the way that read it responded. We are going to do our best to quelquelch those threads. As long as humans are involved whether they are professionals or amateurs there wer there areo be hi mistakes. We have to concede at some level this is a part of a new world we live in. And that is why i said, its so much more important to have responsible news organizations who are the ones that are sistinswiftsthrough the noise. There has been a criticism of programming culture in the social media. A lot of ma sewinwe have a videm lorne who essentially kind of agrees with your point of view more or less. Saying ma sewing on knee i always feel safe there. On the or hand we have hillary who takes a different view. I want you to tell me what you think about this. Read it has a problem that magnifies in society. And women that love read it and hide their gender so they dont receive obscene messages. I know people that avoid it entirely. What do you say to hillary . Well i think laura was the one that first commented, right. Laura is right. Read it is what we make of it. The subscriptions favour six fix thousand are a reflex o reflectf what you seek out online. Amazing communities within read it welcome back th within withi. The sub read its tend to show these signs. If you go to a popular Youtube Channel or blog comments section you will see a lot of hateful unfortunate stuff. Read it is what we make of it. The site has grown and doubled every year for the last six years and has grown so much internationally and is an indication of the fact it i it s what we make of it. When i hear comments like that im intrigued. That is not part of my read it experience because the suburb read its dont have that problem. Not enough people who use the site understand. Follow and su subscribe to the b read its you want to be a part of. Alexus we have a google hangout that will ask you questions av the break. Av after the break. What does it take to make it in the tech start up world. Inquiring minds want to know tweet us at ajan stream. [[voiceover]] no doubt about it, [[voiceover]] no doubt about it, innovation changes our lives. But rather the effect you have on the world around you. One life changed today, is one life less that needs to be changed tomorrow. Welcome back we are talking about an olde old rest dit entrepreneur. You saw aelection sus back in 2001. Look we all start small with a dream and its now time to bring in three Community Members who are trying to turn their dreams into reality. Its the first type yo time youe watching our show. We use skype and twitter and google hang ho hangout. Take it away. Your question for alexus. What do you tell people that want to be successful o amount d 2k0eu79doentdontwant to be a d. I usually tell them about a trip to the waffle house. And i walked in and realized i didnt want to be a lawyer. At the end of the day especially if you can make this decision before you have anyone you have to be responsible for. You are most free and lyn liberd when you have very little and being aut a recent college studi didnt have much to lose. When you look at the career paths you could take its not that dangerous. There are more courageous things to do with your life than that. I find people, if you want do go down this path you can find so much inspiration online with a Google Search and then surround yourself with people in your life. Surround yourself with people that motivate you and in spire you and push i. You and make sure everyone gets out of your way. Sandra i they you want to jump in, go for it. You talk about the gate keepers in the business world. Do you feel like the current Education System with the rare l and economic bias serve as a similar gate keeper to entrepreneur ship an ship and s . Yes. And im not an expert on this by any means. But its clear. But we hope, we know that technology can deliver world class amazing education anyone with a tec connection that doest solve it alone. There are 234re7 plenty of kidst dont have access to it or have the people in their lives to make it possible, et cetera, et cetera. We are going to see a huge shift, a disruption if you will, in education that started with an informan innocent youtube vid hopefully wont end any time soon and in the process will bring a lot more high Quality Knowledge to all of the people that need it most. I go a step furtherer one of the reasons that i promote stem ieducation so much it needs t te a part of a well rounded education. If you look at the success we are going to have in this century the success in this century is in a lot of ways hinged on the ability to succeed in this area. If if yo you are the facebook y or others. The ability to do something as straightforward as writing code is going to allow more Wealth Creation for those that can do it in a much shorter period of time than the world has seen before. And what its going to mean for those that cant is a bigger wealth inequality. You cant say everyone go, stem, stem, stem. There are bigger problems in the Education System, but its a big part. There is black girls code and there are organizations around the country that are taking it upon themselves to bring the kind of education that all of our americans deserve into classrooms and as well as outside of classrooms. I dont have an answer for this, but yes, i hope it will change it has to. James you want to jump into the conversation as well. Hey alexus im in new york as well. Are you in brooklyn. No in manhattan. James th your question . A lot of bcs and accelerators have a preference for tec technl cofunders yourself as a nontechnical cofounder what is it that you would use to sell yourself to fund your venture. You have 45 seconds. I was lucky my best friend and cofounder Steve Huffman was the technical founder. He was the bill yea bill yeah bi roarode his coat tails. I would be a better founder today if i could code. I wish we had more time. Thank you to all of your google hangout guests. Until next time well see you online. Hello and welcome to al jazeera america. Im jonathan betz. John