at. >> i'm wajahat ali am you're in the stream. exchange can come from anyone, anywhere. game changers alex, ohanian and salman khan share theirs ideas with exciting game-changers. >> chances are you're one of the 80 million users of the social sharing site reddit or maybe you're one of the 10 million students brushing up on your learning skills on the online

site, khan academy. how did they come two of the most used are academies. we sat in as alex gives superhero origins, fronts page of the internet. >> talk to us about hour your geeky childhood flutd your path to reddit success. >> i was lucky in that neither one of my parents had a bunch of tech background. what was a very powerful computer, a pc that they gave me total freedom with. they just said, as long as you can put it back together, take it apart, put it back toan toge, by giving me that opportunity i just fell in love with technology. it started off with video games,

i played way too many of them. saved up money from anchors to build up my computer and learning how to build became a hobby. my friends and i spent way too much time messing around with technology. although we felt like geeky kids in high school, we could building geocities, and felt like insignificant lives felt significant. we were dorky high school kids but on the internet we were just people with ideas and we could be respected as such. >> the geeks shall inherit the earth alexis they poke, they plus one, they upload, they youtube. now your book is entitled

without their permission, how the 21st century will be made not managed. do you honestly think the new media can disrupt the new power structures? >> i think it already has, it has started to. here's the best part, i'm not sure where it is started. stories of friends of mine in other disciplines in activism, in the arts, go outside of traditional gatekeepers to get their ideas to the world and they're doing it, they're living it, and these are people even five years ago, who couldn't have that kind of impact. debbie gawr aring guardino, shea person who by our own admission is not a technologist, but as a

teacher she is able to have so much impact that even from ten years ago she wouldn't have had. she has a lot of passion and she made it happen. >> speaking of online media, omar, what is the rrnlings expo? >> in 2005, steve huff maw and i just graduated from college. we just thought we wanted to plif like college students for as long as possible. we wanted to make something where anyone could find something new and interesting, 24 hours a day, whatever they're interested to. there wasn't something very grand, we didn't sit out at this madey table an draft out

something wonderful, it looked really jankey. voting on it having discussions and all that and having it be as open a concept as possible. there was no grand vision. and i think one of the things i've tried to do on this book tour is disabuse people of the notion that world changing big stuff happens like in some dramatic way with a bunch of special people who are different from everyone else. no, it's two recent complej gradcollegegrads who had no rear starting reddit, there's no difference, you or me or any of you, carbon base life form. >> as a carbon based life form i have not why is started my own media group. i wear makeup and ask questions.

you said jankey. that's your exact word. reddit is a jankey website that has 80 million users. what's the appeal? >> well, it's content. if you look at craigslist, we have wikipedia, we have peers that are top 50 websites that aren't going to win beauty contests. that's evidence to the fact that steve and i didn't know what we were doing with the website back then. as long as you prioritize content, and someone hits the project page sees something valuable. even something wikipedia can continue to be the force that it is as long as it continues to be the force that it is. really hard for me to see our first version of reddit that we were able to pitch to investors and keep a straight face. because design has gotten so much better online, the bar has

been set so much higher, you can find designer talent or at least inspiration in five. >> we have geeks at home omar, what are they saying? gls a question i'm actually curious about. in your book you talk about the secrets to startup success. some ideas you think are particularly interesting or important. >> sure. i mean the one thing that probably helped us the most was in understanding that we were not necessarily -- we were not necessarily going to know what we were doing at all times but we were going to try to make the best possible decisions we could on behalf of users. on behalf of user experience. you know it's crazy, reddit had 5 billion page views last month and we don't send any single notification e-mail on anything. we wanted to just not flood our users' inboxes for instance.

we wanted to make sure content was easily usable and shareable. there are things that large companies can no longer do, because they've grown so big that users don't care anymore. it's giving so many damn bts user support, about building a product that people genuinely love, that makes all the difference. when you're an upstart, when you are launching whatever it is, you are going up against incumbents who can't possibly care as much as you do because they are a company of however many, they are so far from their users, you're greafe grateful te person liked what you did. >> you just heard alexis's story. what about alexis's view that

reddit is being uncaring and miss omison anymisomysogonistic? al jazeera america.

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>> welcome back. we're talking about innovators, people who turned simple ideas into internet successes. take a look and listen as alexis claims it's irresponsible and at times misogynistic. that video reddit got a lot of heat from banning the onld on ms

gawker. >> well it's a little bit of a misnomer, because anybody can 83th a subreddit, just like anybody can create a tumbler or, kim kardashian deciding she no longer wants to tweet from, whatever. it's an item from the particular subreddit. one of the mechanisms we built into this is because there are now i think 6,000 active subreddits, if enough people don't like the way a certain number of people are running a reddit, usurp it. >> you talked about civilian, we saw in april last year with the boston bombing there was a tragedy and during you know the

man hunt a lot of redditers identified, atlantic article enough moral weight of what they're doing, their article also says correcting -- investigatininvestigating bombii know we have had a lot of tweets about this. >> listen to this. >> i'm a boston based reporter. the whole incident about reddit and the boston bombing was completely irresponsible. peeft trust the old school values of adjournment. credibility is what matters. the pr rbltion media environment has this increasingly fast metabolism. to help in a way that maybe

twitter doesn't. >> what do you think of the idea that reddit is contributing to this trend of people wanting to be out on the first news and weighing in rather than waiting for credible news to come through? >> i think all social media, reddit is a part of it. it was a few twitter accounts from professional journalists that brought attention to that thread, and spun out of control. we are living in an age this is a gift and a curse. anyone could be a reporter, they could use that megaphone for good or benign, but i'm happy how reddit responded saying very publicly we're doing our best to squelch, the navy shooting, not long afterwards, there were no threads on reddit but sure enough some twitter accounts from two professional news organizations misidentified someone. they quickly deleted it, but as

long as humans are involved whether there are professionals or am chur amateurs, there are . we have to concede at some level this is a part of the world we live in and like i said it's so much more important to have responsible news organizations who are the ones sifting through all that noise for the signal. >> let's do '80s pop culture reference, let's take a de delorean. what will reddit's place be in the future of social media? >> it will be a truly international platform for sharing plirchtion an links and. reddit is the most popular social media platform among

hispanics in the world. we started to realize there are thousands of communities that are not just sort of geographical like people in mexico talking about sort of mexican news of the day or what have you but also around language that we haven't begun to tap into. and in all my travels i still meet so many people around the globe tend to use old school news forums, old school even jankeyer than reddit. as a sort of corollary i think can bring out the great discussions and i think it's going to be abig push. so hopefully we'll just drop the social off social media and incorporate it into the broader world of how we perceive media. anyone with a smartphone is cable of reporting on a situation. what i hope comes along with it are more news organizations doing the really important job

of sifting through that noise for the signal and that's going to be more important than ever because i think everyone is a reporter today. >> that was alexis ohanian, co-founder of reddit. alexis did share where us one of the things he did, coding. salman khan, co-founder of khan academy, believes an education should be available to anyone, any at no cost. anywhere at no cost. >> back in 2004 i was an analyst in a government investment firm, my cousin and her family were being, visiting from new orleans where i grew up. i was tutoring her with math.

i started working her every day after work for me, after school for her. it kind of worked out. she went to going better in math, getting caught up, i started working with her younger brothers. a couple of things happened, two years go by, word gets around, free tutoring going and, i found myself with 15 cousins i was trying to work with, i started to write credit gentleman why software for them, the first khan academy, where i got the fame there. i had shown this to a friend, we had moved out here to sloven, -- silicon valley. put up tutorial and put it on youtube. it's for dogs playing pianos,

and cats on roller skates. but i gave it a shot. and from those first new videos in november 2006, it became clear that people who were not my cousins were watching and by 2008-2009 i set it up as a not-for-profit. by that point there were about 100,000 using the site. at that point, my wife and i sat down and had enough savings that perhaps enough to set it up for a year. social return, obviously doing it as a not for profit is fairly lark large. it wasn't until about 2010 that we got our first real support from the gates foundation from ann and john doer. and we are an horgs of pushing 50, 55, 56 people. >> recent khan academy announced that it is partnering with an

internet company. any concern it's becoming too commercial, khan lets us know what he thinks, next. is.

>> welcome back. we're talking about those who have turned simple ideas to web sensations. salman talks to us about his online khan academy. >> one of the reasons i set this up as a not for profit, i didn't want this to be a silicon valley super hypergrowth, whatever might happen to it. my dream is in 50 years, 100 years, 500 years, people view khan academy as an institution for the world. one things we're always talking about with the board, how is this always, how is this paid for. right now it's philanthropically supported. large donors like the gates foundation.

i want to make sure it's always there and we never even have to think about commercializing. we never have to think in any way of putting gates for people to access this. we view this as a fundamental human right. that is why we set it up as a not for profit. >> so sal, this isn't the journey you set out on. what kind of advice do you bring to people to innovate in a really meaningful way? >> something i think a lot about. as you know my journey has somewhat happenne happenstance. when my cousins needed help, i kind of viewed that as the opportunity to understand the situation better. that's the first step, get steeped in the problem. there are definitely the examples of people don't think of the problem, just write up a business plan get punding and it works. but you definitely maximize your chances of getting your hands

dirty, digging in deep, and saying gee, as i face this in a very personal way, when i was looking with my cousins, i'd say, i wish they had better quizzes, i wish they could keep track of their issues, better, and you can't just be on the ground, you also have to think about how will this scale, how can this be funded how can this reach people. but i think it's that balance that's most important. >> ing being we are getting tweets in. will revolutionize the world, devon actually asks the question, give him a listen, sal. >> i'm interested on your thoughts on how the u.s. can stop the decline being trend in k-12 in terms of our competitiveness, to the rest of the world.

>> for me, people always look at the pisa results, the u.s. is in the middle, it spends more money on education looking on it as decline of the u.s., i don't view it that way. u.s. has always been in the middle in terms of math scores and other test scores. but the level of entrepreneurship and innovation, 20 years from where i am, if you look at the world's top 10 most innovative companies, they are proportionally getting more concentrated in the u.s. how can all americans participate in that wealth-creation because of that innovation? it's less looking at what other countries are doing, how to increase our pis ascores, that's one thing that matters, how do

we bring that inventiveness and that entrepreneur spirit, how do wablybury that into our classrooms. i'm i've seen delegations from finland and other countries come, they are not seeing the facebooks and the apples, to the degree the entrepreneurship is happening in the u.s. what's interesting and i hope khan academy can help here, can we make that investigation more creative, let students work at their own pace, have time to worship on froojt had they think projects that they think, that we can misled to all school districts whether it's finland or singh or wherever else. >> and sal speaking of entrepreneurs do you see any sort of trend with innovators that there's an increased importance to attach social value to what they're doing? >> i think so. you know, i think you know,

my -- you know i grew up in the '80s and we all watched wall street with gordon gekko and greed is good, and it's a movie but it's amazing how many people took that seriously. what i'm seeing is my generation and people younger than my generation, there's nothing wrong with making money. there's nothing wrong with starting a business. that's not what's going to make you happy, what's going ofill your soul. when you're 80 years old and looking back on your life, what's the impact it had? is the world better for me being on this planet, is it worst, or does it matter. you start caring a lot more about social impact. >> james on facebook has a question for you sal. what's the hardest subject to teach the way you do? >> the hardest subject is, i don't think there's any subject that you can completely do the way that i do.

even the mathematics. i think it's a starting point. it's starting to think about how do you think about mathematic. here are some problem sets. you should be thinking on proofs, working on projects, starting to create new things. i think that's true in any domains. i think writing is going to be very interesting. writing isn't necessarily taught, it is something that's much more explored, you work on it, get feedback, iterating, getting better and better, really anything in a creative domain, programming a computer, whatever it may be. our computer science platform in khan academy is not about videos, it's about people giving you feedback on that profile. so i think there will be many things on it's not so obvious how we do it today but we're going to at least attempt to do part of it and once again that will allow the physical classroom the go even deeper. >> as a lowly english major that would definitely helped me.

final question from elizabeth, how does mr. khan see his curricula interacting or not with other open online education programs? >> the exciting thing is it feels like we're in a cambrian explosion of for profit and not for profit. we're very close to a lot of the folks out here in silicon vall valley, aron agerwal was one of my professors in electrical engineering the folks at corsera, audacity, i think the experimentation is really, really, really healthy. it's not online versus physical, it's interesting combination of online and physical. >> thanks to our two guests.

next time, we'll see you online. >> hello, welcome to al jazeera america. i'm jonathan betz in new york. john siegenthaler is off tonight. health care challenges. the new year brings new controversy as insurance coverage for millions of americans kicks in. blizzard warnings, first big snow storm of the year, heavy snow, bitter cold and blinding winds. crowds for cannabis. and dreams come through, the view and the dream of the 125th rows parade --