Following the announcement of the corporate’s Q2 outcomes on Tuesday afternoon, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman spoke to shareholders and answered questions in an earnings name. As famous by Engadget, Huffman teased a number of new options that we would see on the platform within the coming months, together with paid subreddits and AI-powered search outcomes.
At one level, Huffman was requested about how he plans to guard the tradition of Reddit whereas additionally making a living for the corporate’s new shareholders.
“I feel the prevailing, altruistic, free model of Reddit will live on and develop and thrive simply the best way it has,” Huffman mentioned after explaining that new options haven’t cannibalized the platform up to now. “However now we’ll unlock the door for brand spanking new use circumstances, new varieties of subreddits that may be constructed which will have unique content material or non-public areas, issues of that nature.”
Whereas Huffman didn’t particularly point out paying to entry subreddits, it’s simple to extrapolate. As an example, what should you may pay to entry a subreddit with unique information about your favourite band, creator, or influencer? Possibly one thing just like Instagram subscriptions? It sounds prefer it’s only a matter of time earlier than this turns into a actuality.
In his opening remarks, Huffman additionally revealed that AI-powered search outcomes are coming.
“Later this yr, we’ll start testing new search end result pages powered by AI to summarize and suggest content material, serving to customers dive deeper into merchandise, reveals, video games, and uncover new communities on Reddit,” he introduced.
That’s fairly a obscure abstract of how AI search will truly work on Reddit, however we gained’t have to attend lengthy to see how the corporate implements it.
