Reddit, the popular news sharing site, has been spun out from Condé Nast to a standalone, wholly owned subsidiary called Reddit, Inc., as a way to let the site be more nimble and open to outside investment.

Or in terms that Redditors might understand, Reddit is no longer a subreddit subject to the whims of the dreaded, though largely absentee, corporate admin Condé Nast.

Reddit, a startup born out of the first Y-Combinator incubator class, was bought by Condé Nast (Wired’s parent company) in October 2006. The site’s traffic has grown from 700,000 page views a month to over a billion.

However, the people-powered site struggled to fit in at Condé Nast, a magazine publishing powerhouse. Reddit often fought protracted battles to get resources needed to grow, as it simultaneously sought to make more revenue from its infamously ad-adverse community.

Reddit, Inc. remains wholly owned by Advance Media, Condé Nast’s parent company, and the board will include Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, Condé Nast’s president Bob Sauerberg and its CTO Joe Simon.

Reddit has always been a lean operation but has recently hired a number of programmers — though the site still has only about a dozen employees total.

Reddit is also searching for a CEO to lead the site which has eclipsed Digg to become the premier site for geeks to share, vote on and comment on stories and funny images.

Much of the original crew that built and scaled Reddit are now working at Hipmunk, a travel search site founded by Reddit founder Steve Huffman and Adam Goldstein.

Condé Nast has already explored seeking outside investment in Reddit as a way to fund future growth, according to sources close to the company who spoke on condition of anonymity, and the new ownership structure makes that easier to do in the future.

Reddit has not, however, been kicked out of the building it shares with Wired in San Francisco (or the offices it shares with Wired at Condé Nast headquarters in New York). Reddit employees also seem to have retained their cafeteria privileges and were seen today enjoying BLT sandwiches from the Wired kitchen.