What happened
On August 23, 2011, Reddit acquired RedditGifts, the fan-made Secret Santa exchange that had grown out of the community two years earlier. It was Reddit's first-ever acquisition, and rather than buying an outside competitor, the company absorbed a project its own users had built. The two-person RedditGifts team could no longer sustain the rapidly growing service alongside their day jobs, so the deal turned their volunteer effort into full-time work.
As part of the acquisition, founder Dan McComas joined Reddit as the gift-exchange project manager and Jessica Moreno came on as a community manager, both becoming influential figures in the company's later trust-and-safety work. The purchase signaled Reddit's evolution from a lean link aggregator into an operating company willing to invest in adjacent products and bring community builders onto staff. It also deepened the integration of the record-setting gift exchange into Reddit's brand, where it remained a marquee annual event until the program was wound down a decade later.