As an HN user I realize my opinion is biased, but when I look at reddit I don't think minimalist. In fact it seems somewhat cluttered.

It's minimalist if you consider "minimalism" to mean minimal decoration. Instead of, you know, minimalism.

I kept telling Steve we needed more padding between those links ;) check out how it used to look... http://reddit.blogspot.com/2006/12/time-machine.html

Is there some generally agreed upon definition for that?

Yes.

Semi-agreed. Reddit is minimal in that it is pretty simple and straightforward to use. Not minimal in the designed-to-be minimalist sense.

The best example of this is Google and Apple. Both are minimalist. But Apple (arguably, of course) has a much better sense of design. Reddit is like Google.

I'm not in the Apple boat, but I do know what you mean about the Google-iness of Reddit, and more generally the Google-iness of Google. Aside from google.com itself, there's something about everything they design that is very off-putting in a way that's hard to describe.

Lack of whitespace? Google Mail, YouTube, even their help pages are crammed full of content.

To my eye anyway it always looks like Google got the developers to do the design as well (even though that's probably not the case), whereas Apples' designs have a little bit more of an "artistic" feel to them

turn on compressed link display in your preferences. it's what reddit originally looked like, and it's much more minimal than the current design

Time lapse video of Making of Hipmunk.com Hotel Chipmunk Bellhop by Alexis Ohanian http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYEQpwduyPU

Thanks for posting. I got some great feedback on that one (my first) and I'll do my best to keep the camera rolling for future art.

How did you make it?

It's funny that he warns against describing your startup at "The X of Y"

and then Harj said this the other day:

http://twitter.com/Harjeet/status/49007424711049216

I consider that extraordinarily bad advice.

If you think about the elevator pitch or even the 5-10 seconds of someone's attention you may get, "the X of Y" is a pretty efficient means of communicating what you do and how you do it.

Sure it can also get overused and there is always the trap of thinking that there has to be an X for every Y ("the Priceline of Dating anyone?").

> "the Priceline of Dating anyone?"

Does (YC W11 startup) Grubwith.us count? :)

Though the design may be minimalist (though arguably, hipmunk is just well designed, minimalist or not), I seriously doubt that is their formula.

The success and buzz around hipmunk is that they have provided a better way to search for flights. That they've done it with a cute logo and minimalist design is maybe a small part of the success, but their ability to create buzz and to create great products can't be overlooked.

reddit is not about minimalism, it's all about community, respect and "treating users well".

(it took me awhile to realize that OP was probably joking. sorry)

Curious, after Alexis's discussion of Digg, does anyone still use Digg these days? How?