Reddit tests video and audio feeds for its viral posts

Reddit is taking a cue from TikTok to bring its viral text posts to life through video. On Thursday’s second-quarter earnings call, the company said it has been working on a new “video Reddit” experience that would let users both watch videos drawn from the platform and listen to posts in the background, rather than only reading them as text threads.

CEO Steve Huffman told investors that people are already consuming this kind of content elsewhere, and he’s right: on TikTok, 19.6 million posts carry the hashtag #reddit and another 9.9 million carry #redditstories. Many of these videos pair a text-to-speech narration of a viral Reddit story with unrelated footage, like gameplay footage or cooking content.

During the call, Huffman described an emerging trend: “There is an emerging content type elsewhere on the internet of, basically, podcasts where people read Reddit content,” he said, adding that a spoken or listened-to version of Reddit could be engaging in its own right, functioning as almost a different format entirely from video. It’s not yet clear how these videos will be incorporated into Reddit’s main app, but Huffman said the company will have something available for testing later this year.

The move tracks a broader push across social and entertainment apps to add TikTok-like video feeds. Last week, Facebook announced plans to begin testing later this year a reimagined experience that drops a subset of users straight into a full-screen video as soon as they open the app. Streaming services including Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, and HBO Max have added similar short-video feeds in recent months, Amazon runs a short video feed for shopping inspiration, and even LinkedIn now has one too. TechCrunch, in its own analysis, called it the TikTok-ification of the web at scale.

Reddit also touted early traction for video in comments, a feature it launched in June: the company said video comments already account for more than 10% of its video posts.

Why it matters

Reddit is betting that the video- and audio-based consumption already happening with its content on other platforms can happen inside its own app instead, on its own terms.