Merger with Aaron Swartz's Infogami

In November 2005, Reddit merged with Infogami, a content-management and wiki startup founded by Aaron Swartz, a fellow member of Y Combinator's first class. When Infogami struggled to raise further funding, Y Combinator's organizers suggested combining the two teams under a new parent company called Not A Bug, devoted to promoting both products. Paul Graham had recommended Swartz to Huffman and Ohanian as a talented programmer who could help scale Reddit, and the arrangement made Swartz an equal owner of the combined firm.

As a result of the merger, Swartz was given the title of Reddit co-founder, and he helped rewrite the site's software using web.py, a Python web framework he had developed. In practice, Infogami languished as the faster-growing Reddit became Not A Bug's priority, a shift that reportedly left Swartz dispirited. The combined company remained small but the technical contributions were significant, and the structure held together only briefly before Reddit was acquired by Condé Nast Publications in October 2006. Swartz went on to become a prominent open-internet activist; he died in January 2013.