Reddit recently said it would bring most viral stories to life through a new “video Reddit” experience, allowing users to listen to Reddit posts in the background while doing other tasks and activities. On Monday, Reddit will begin testing an initial version of this experience with both video and audio posts across select communities to see which type of posts resonate with its users and have the potential to scale.
The company first announced its plans for narrated Reddit videos during its second-quarter earnings call in July, when CEO Steve Huffman told analysts on the quarterly call that people were already consuming Reddit content like this on other platforms.
He was referring to how other social media platforms, like TikTok and Meta’s Reels, often feature popular Reddit stories narrated through a text-to-speech feature or read aloud by creators. Some of those videos display the words on screen as they’re read or are accompanied by unrelated footage, like video gameplay or cooking content.
“There is an emerging content type elsewhere on the internet of, basically, podcasts where people read Reddit content,” Huffman explained on the call. “I think this version of, like, listened-to or spoken Reddit can be really engaging, as well,” he added.
Reddit tells TechCrunch the initial tests are early, limited experiments meant to provide the company with a better understanding of how these formats can be useful to users, and whether they can be done in a way that feels authentic to Reddit. Users will be able to choose whether they want to “read” or “play” a post, when available.
The test will focus only on select English-language posts for the time being, and will be accessible through Reddit’s iOS and Android apps.
The different formats will not replace the original, text-only post, Reddit notes. Both the original post and the comments can still be viewed and engaged with as before. Instead, Reddit suggests that people may sometimes want to listen to Reddit audio while exercising, walking, or running errands, while others might want to watch written conversations come to life through video and audio combined.
This isn’t the first time Reddit has experimented with video. The company in earlier years rolled out native video hosting and tried various iterations of a TikTok-style video feed. More recently, Reddit launched support for video in comments, which it says now accounts for more than 10% of video posts on its platform.
