Slashdot is an aggregator of news about science and technology related stories. They call themselves “News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters”.
Slashdot started as a blog in 1997 by the computer science student Rob Malda. It became a site a year later.
The name definitely shows a sense of humor. When asked about the origin Malda said the name was chosen to confuse those who tried to pronounce the URL of the site (“h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slashdot-dot-org”) over the phone.
Users provide suggestions of new articles and links and Slashdot editors select the stories that will appear on the home page that day. They provide a one-paragraph summary and a link to an external site where the story originated. Each story can become a topic of conversation and a thread for comments and discussion. Those discussions can get up to 10,000 posts per day.
Slashdot traffic is estimated to be over 5.5 million visitors per month, and the site has won many awards. A term “Slashdot Effect” was coined after a story was posted on the site which sent much traffic to the source. Statistics shows that about 50% of the users check in to see the news of the day, while the other half stays and takes part in the conversations.
Slashdot Japan was launched in 2001 and carries the US stories as well as the local ones.
As of June 2010, Slashdot rank is 1,323, with the average user spending 3.7 minutes per day on the site and 45,393 sites linking back to it.
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