Reddit, a popular platform for people to connect, get answer to questions, and share experiences, has announced a major development. The company has confirmed that it is working on an AI (artificial intelligence) feature, which will convert the Reddit posts into audio and video format. This will basically narrate the posts like a podcast, or an explainer video, to make it easy for users to understand the content.
Reddit’s CEO, Steve Huffman, during the second-quarter earnings call in July, confirmed that they noticed a pattern that people are already picking Reddit posts, and converting it into podcasts, and video posts on other platforms. Reddit wants this to be enabled inside the platform itself. This may help the platform in increasing user retention.
Platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Meta’s Instagram Reels have creators coming up with text-to-speech content, and getting all of Reddit content distributed there. This is, in a manner, Reddit losing out on the content retention and user retention because its platform is basically used to build content for other platforms, and users are consuming it primarily not on Reddit.
On the earnings call, Huffman said, “There is an emerging content type elsewhere on the internet of, basically, podcasts where people read Reddit content. I think this version of, like, listened-to or spoken Reddit can be really engaging, as well.”
The platform is currently in the testing stage for this. It has not been widely rolled out. The initial tests, with limited users will allow Reddit to understand whether this feature can actually be useful for the users or not.
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