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Reddit is quietly rolling out a TikTok-like video feed button on iOS
From Instagram’s Reels to Snapchat’s Spotlight, most social media platforms are looking toward the TikTok boom for inspiration. Now, even Reddit, a discussion-based forum, is making short-form video more pronounced on its iOS app.
According to Reddit, most iOS users should have a button on their app directly to the right of the search bar — when tapped, it will show a stream of videos in a TikTok-like configuration. When presented with a video, (which shows the poster who uploaded it and the subreddit it’s from), users can upvote or downvote, comment, gift an award or share it. Like TikTok, users can swipe up to see another video, feeding content from subreddits the user is subscribed to, as well as related ones. For instance, if you’re subscribed to r/printmaking, you might see content from r/pottery or r/bookbinding.
The user interface of the videos isn’t new — Reddit has been experimenting with this format over the last year. But before, this manner of watching Reddit videos was only accessible by tapping on a video while scrolling through your feed — rather than promoting discovery of other communities, the first several videos recommended would be from the same subreddit.
Image Credits: Reddit, screenshots by TechCrunch
“Reddit’s mission is to bring community and belonging to everyone in the world, and subsequently, Reddit’s video team’s mission is to bring community through video,” a Reddit spokesperson told TechCrunch, about the new addition. “Over the course of the last year, our goal was to build a unified video player, and re-envision the player interface to match what users (new and old) expect when it comes to an in-app video player — especially commenting, viewing, engaging and discovering new content and communities through video,” they noted.
Reddit doesn’t yet have a timeline for when the feature will roll out to everyone, but confirmed that this icon first appeared for some users in late July and has continued to roll out to almost all iOS users. But by placing a broader, yet still personalized video feed on the home screen, Reddit is signaling a growing curiosity in short form video. In December 2020, Reddit acquired Dubsmash, a Brooklyn-via-Berlin-based TikTok competitor. The terms of the deals were undisclosed, but Facebook and Snap also reportedly showed interest in the platform, which hit 1 billion monthly views in January 2020.
Reddit declined to comment on whether or not its new video player is using an algorithm to promote discovery of new subreddits based on user activity. However, a Reddit spokesperson confirmed that the company will use Dubsmash’s technology to develop other features down the road, though not for this particular product, they said.
Reddit first launched its native video platform in 2017, which allows users to upload MP4 and MOV files to the site. Then, in August 2019, it launched RPAN (Reddit Public Access Network), which lets people livestream to selected subreddits — the most popular livestreams are promoted across the platform. Reddit currently attracts 50 million daily active visitors and hosts 100,000 active subreddits.
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Instagram’s TikTok rival, Reels, rolls out ads worldwide
Instagram Reels are getting ads. The company announced today it’s launching ads in its short-form video platform and TikTok rival, Reels, to businesses and advertisers worldwide. The ads will be up to 30 seconds in length, like Reels themselves, and vertical in format, similar to ads found in Instagram Stories. Also like Reels, the new ads will loop, and people will be able to like, comment on, and save them, the same as other Reels videos.
The company had previously tested Reels ads in select markets earlier this year, including India, Brazil, Germany and Australia, then expanded those tests to Canada, France, the U.K. and the U.S. more recently. Early adopters of the new format have included brands like BMW, Nestlé (Nespresso), Louis Vuitton, Netflix, Uber and others.
Instagram tells us the ads will appear in most places users view Reels content, including on the Reels tab, Reels in Stories, Reels in Explore and Reels in your Instagram Feed, and will appear in between individual Reels posted by users. However, in order to be served a Reels ad, the user first needs to be in the immersive, full-screen Reels viewer.
Image Credits: Instagram
The company couldn’t say how often a user might see a Reels ad, noting that the number of ads a viewer may encounter will vary based on how they use Instagram. But the company is monitoring user sentiment around ads themselves, and the overall commerciality of Reels, it says.
Like Instagram’s other advertising products, Reels ads will launch with an auction-based model. But so far, Instagram is declining to share any sort of performance metrics around how those ads are doing, based on tests. Nor is it yet offering advertisers any creator tools or templates that could help them get started with Reels ads. Instead, Instagram likely assumes advertisers already have creative assets on hand or know how to make them, because of Reels ads’ similarities to other vertical video ads found elsewhere, including on Instagram’s competitors.
While vertical video has already shown the potential for driving consumers to e-commerce shopping sites, Instagram hasn’t yet taken advantage of Reels ads to drive users to its built-in Instagram Shops, though that seems like a natural next step as it attempts to tie the different parts of its app together.
But perhaps ahead of that step, Instagram needs to make Reels a more compelling destination — something other TikTok rivals, which now include both Snap and YouTube — have done by funding creator content directly. Instagram, meanwhile, had made offers to select TikTok stars directly.
The launch of Instagram Reels ads follows news of TikTok’s climbing ad prices. Bloomberg reported this month that TikTok is now asking for more than $1.4 million for a home page takeover ad in the U.S., as of the third quarter, which will jump to $1.8 million by Q4 and more than $2 million on a holiday. Though the company is still building its ads team and advertisers haven’t yet allocated large portions of their video budget to the app, that tends to follow user growth — and TikTok now has over 100 million monthly active users in the U.S.
Both apps, Instagram and TikTok, now have more than a billion monthly active users on a global basis, though Reels is only a part of the larger Instagram platform. For comparison, Instagram Stories is used by some 500 million users, which demonstrates Instagram’s ability to drive traffic to different areas of its app. Instagram declined to share how many users Reels has as of today.
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Instagram adds a captions option for Stories and soon, Reels
Instagram is making its video Stories and Reels more accessible with the launch of a new “captions sticker” that will allow users to watch without having the sound on. The addition will not only make it easier for users who are hard of hearing or deaf to engage with video content, it also offers a way for users to watch videos when they’re somewhere they don’t want to have their sound on — and either don’t want to wear or don’t have access to headphones or earbuds.
To use the feature, creators will first record a new video using the Stories or Reels Camera in the Instagram app, or select a video to upload from their phone’s gallery. Then, you’ll open the sticker tray and look for the new “Captions” sticker, which will convert your speech to text. You also can edit the style, position of the caption and the text and color so it matches your content. When you post, the captions will appear alongside your video for everyone to see.
At launch, the feature is only available in English and in English-speaking countries, but Instagram plans to roll it out to other countries and languages soon, it says. It’s also rolling out the captions sticker first to Stories and will then begin testing it in Reels, with a broader launch to follow.
The captions sticker had been spotted last year while in development, alongside other potential new additions, like a Collab sticker, Link sticker, Reshare sticker and others. Instagram parent Facebook also appears to have a captions sticker of its own in development. The sticker then began testing earlier this spring with some number of Instagram users.
The addition comes only weeks after TikTok announced its own captions feature, which it calls auto captions. The two products are somewhat different, however. Auto captions automatically translate the speech from a TikTok video in either American English and Japanese, to start, but the text itself isn’t customizable and can be turned on or off by the viewer from the app’s share panel. It also hasn’t yet been broadly adopted and many TikTok creators tend to still use captions they create themselves or via third-party apps.
Instagram notes it had previously launched support for captions across Threads and IGTV, but its expansion to Stories and Reels will make more of an impact, given that Instagram Stories alone is used by more than 500 million people every day.
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