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Reddit is inching closer to video with Discover tab

The social media platform launched a new tab for photo and video search.

An illustration of the Reddit logo displayed on a smartphone screen

Reddit launched a tab to scroll through videos and photos.

Image: Omar Marques/Getty Images

Reddit is slowly inching toward video. The platform on Thursday launched a Discover tab that lets users scroll through photos and videos on its app. “We’re ushering in a new era of discovery on Reddit, with images and video top of mind,” Jason Costa, Reddit’s director of product for content and communities, said in a statement.

Users who view the Discover tab will see tailored content. For example, users who spend much of their time scrolling through football and baseball subreddits will see sports-related photos and videos on the tab, according to the announcement. Users can also tell Reddit to show them more or less of a certain category, or hide specific content.

The Discover tab is Reddit's next major move toward building up its in-house multimedia platforms. Years ago, image sharing and hosting service Imgur had a constant presence on Reddit, but Reddit eventually began testing its own in-house image hosting platform as Imgur got stronger on its own. "It’s probably too risky for Reddit to continue relying on a direct competitor for image hosting,” data analyst Randy Olson wrote back in 2016.

Twitter also encouraged third-party photo platforms in the past, but eventually moved to an internal service.

The new tab will also make Reddit look closer to a video-sharing platform than a messaging space. Other social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, have beefed up their video-sharing services in an effort to compete with dominant platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.

Reddit is currently looking to go public as soon as next month, reportedly seeking a valuation as high as $15 billion.

Sarah Roach

Sarah (Sarahroach_) writes for Source Code at Protocol. She's based in Boston and can be reached at sroach@protocol.com

videophotodiscover tabreddit
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