Need a Party? Check out Harvard's Latest Subreddit

Wish there was a better way to find out about parties and events going on at Harvard? Want something more concrete than hearing "Oh yeah, there's something going on in Quad"? Tired of the crushing loneliness that comes with a night in? Yasha S. Iravantchi '13 and Ryan A. Neff '13 have heard your cries for help, and they have the solution: a subreddit specifically about Harvard events, called HarvardTonight.

For those not in the know, or just for people that actually pay attention in class, Reddit is a social news website, comprised entirely of user-generated content. It is essentially a platform for users all over the internet to submit content, which can be anything from world news to silly pictures of cats. The Reddit community can then either "upvote" or "downvote" the content, with "upvotes" counting as positive votes and "downvotes" counting as negative votes. The most popular content is then pushed to the front page.

A "subreddit" is a specific sub-community on Reddit with its own page on Reddit to share content that is related to a specific topic. "HarvardTonight" was created by Iravantchi and Neff to serve as an aggregator for events at Harvard that. "We wanted to make a quick tool where people could post and find out about parties. You don't need a student group or organization to post about an event; it's very organic. You can just go on the site and tell people about a party in your room," Iravantchi said.

Iravantchi and Neff hope that the HarvardTonight subreddit will address with some of the problems other event calendars suffer from. "On other event pages, the events aren't sorted in a useful manner. This subreddit makes it a lot easier to see which events are the most popular," Neff said. The "upvote" system provides a simple sorting system for events based on user interest. The Reddit platform also allows for open discussion in the comments section of each event, something most other calendars do not offer.

So, the next time you're wondering what's going on at Harvard tonight, check out HarvardTonight.