SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 20, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- As reddit grows with remarkable speed, achieving 46.4 million unique visitors and 3.7 billion page views last month, so grows its popular "Secret Santa" initiative.  Last year the program captured the Guinness Book of World Records title for "Largest Online Secret Santa Game."  Today reddit announced that their passionate community of "redditors" took Secret Santa to new levels of festivity and easily smashed their own world record. 

For the record, the number of participants this year nearly doubled to 58,502 redditors across 126 countries.  Collectively, Secret Santa participants spent a total of $1,813,197 on gifts and shipping to date.

"This is the time of year where people from all over the world come together on reddit to do something nice for each other, and breaking our own record is icing on the cake," said Erik Martin, general manager of reddit.  "It's also a great way to showcase the positive power of the internet by helping to facilitate acts of kindness all over the world."

The Secret Santa process is simple:  Sign up, get matched with another redditor, review their posting history for clues on what they might want, and then send them something cool for the holidays.  More than 50,800 gifts have already been shipped across the globe already.  Recipients can post photos and write-ups about their gifts at: redditgifts.com/gallery/secret-santa-2012/?page=2

Gift-givers have displayed an amazing array of quirkiness, ingenuity, creativity and generosity.  Some notable gifts to date include: 

• Four-day cruise to the Bahamas.
• 22 pounds of potatoes from Idaho.
• A stunning portrait of the receiver.
• Post-Apocalypse care package.
• Smoked King Salmon and Caviar.
• Assortment of treats for neighborhood squirrels.
• Homemade art, scarves, pillows, socks, quilts, ornaments, frames, hats and more.
• UNICEF Survival Package for two children in Angola.
• MacBook Air.

About reddit

reddit is an online community where users submit, vote, and comment on which stories and discussions are important.  The hottest stories rise to the top, while cooler stories sink.  Anyone can create a community (called "subreddits"), with each subreddit is independent and moderated by a team of volunteers.  reddit is open source, and community members are constantly tinkering and contributing features, bug fixes, and translations back to the site. reddit was originally founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005.  In December 2012, reddit received more than 3.8 Billion page views. For more information visit http://www.reddit.com/about

SOURCE reddit