Video has become the dominant form of content on social media, and Reddit is looking to capitalize on the trend. Taking a page from TikTok, the platform is developing a new “video Reddit” experience that would bring viral stories to life through video. The company revealed this during its second-quarter earnings call. This would not only allow users to watch videos from the platform, but also listen to posts in the background.
Reddit’s new video experience lets users watch and listen to viral posts
CEO Steve Huffman told investors that people are already consuming this type of content on other platforms. Rightly so, on TikTok, there are around 19.6 million posts labeled with the hashtag #reddit and another 9.9 million with #redditstories. Many of these feature text-to-speech narrations of viral Reddit stories overlaid on unrelated videos, such as gameplay footage or cooking content.
“There is an emerging content type elsewhere on the internet of, basically, podcasts where people read Reddit content,” Huffman said on the call. “I think this version of, like, listened-to or spoken Reddit can be really engaging, as well,” he said. “So that would be almost a different format entirely.”
Capitalizing on the trend
That said, it’s not clear how these types of video experiences will be integrated into Reddit’s main app. Huffman said the company may have the feature available for testing later this year. This move from Reddit comes as more mainstream social media and entertainment platforms adopt TikTok-style video feeds. Last week, Facebook announced plans to test a redesigned experience that will put some users into a full-screen video as soon as they open the app.
Streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, and HBO Max have also added TikTok-like short video feeds in recent months. Meanwhile, Amazon uses one for shopping inspiration. Interestingly, there’s even a short video feed on LinkedIn.
On a related note, Reddit also highlighted the early success of its video comments feature. This went live in June. According to the company, it already accounts for more than 10% of all video posts on the platform.
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