Reddit to release new products aimed at site’s ‘user economy’

REDDIT plans to release new products related to the company’s marketplace efforts within the next few months, co-founder and chief executive officer Steve Huffman said on Thursday (May 9) at the Bloomberg Technology Summit.

The 19-year-old company, which beat expectations for sales earlier this week in its first earnings report as a public company, plans to expand its revenue streams outside of advertising into what Huffman calls the “user economy” – users making money from others on the platform.

People on Reddit can currently make money from subscriptions, digital gifts and collectibles such as avatars. Redditors also sell physical goods and services on some of the site’s forums.

Other social media companies have built marketplaces for selling and buying goods, including Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook Marketplace and local neighbourhood app Nextdoor, which Reddit considers competitors. In the coming months, Reddit plans to launch new versions of awards, which are digital gifts users can give to each other, along with other products.

While marketplaces can be rife with scams or fake goods, problems that have plagued other social media companies, Huffman said Reddit’s unique content moderation programme helps prevent those challenges. On Reddit, comments and posts become popular only if they are “upvoted” by other users, meaning that users find the content valuable or helpful. Huffman said the voting system helps ensure that good and authentic content is shown more readily than scams. “Reddit is really good at finding the good content from a sea of noise,” he said.

Reddit also plans to continue striking data licensing deals with artificial intelligence companies, expanding into international markets and evaluating potential acquisition targets in areas such as search, he said. BLOOMBERG