Manned by only four engineers, social aggregation news site Reddit.com, which allows users to select and rank Web content, is asking users for money in exchange for subscriber-only features. In a recent blog post labeled “reddit needs help,” the group says it needs more resources in order to work more efficiently and to release new features.

The problem? Condé Nast’s budget for Reddit is proportionate to revenues and despite generating roughly 280 million monthly page views, the site’s revenues “aren’t great.” (That’s up from 51 million page views in July 2008, when the site was still managed by only four engineers.)  To combat the revenue shortfall, reddit is launching “reddit gold,” a program that allows its users to donate any dollar amount in lieu of a set subscribe fee to gain access to special features, including the ability to sort profile pages by score or a button it says users can press “to smack someone in the face over the Internet.”

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