Reddit is testing a new way to watch — and listen to — its viral posts

Reddit is taking a cue from TikTok to bring viral stories to life through video. On Thursday’s second-quarter earnings call , the company said it’s been working on a new “video Reddit” experience that would not only allow users to watch videos from the platform, but also listen to posts in the background. CEO Steve Huffman told investors that the company already sees people consuming this type of content on other platforms. He’s right — on TikTok, for instance, there are 19.6 million posts labeled with the hashtag #reddit and another 9.9 million labeled #redditstories. Many of these feature a text-to-speech narration of a viral story published on Reddit paired with an unrelated video, like gameplay footage 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 said. “So that would be almost a different format entirely.” It’s not clear how these types of Reddit videos will be incorporated into Reddit’s main app, but Huffman teased that the company will have something available for testing “later this year.” The news comes as mainstream social and entertainment apps experiment with adding TikTok-like video feeds to their products. Last week, Facebook announced plans to begin testing later this year a reimagined experience that will put a subset of users into a full-screen video as soon as they open the app. Streaming apps like Netflix , Disney+ , Peacock , and HBO Max have also added TikTok-like short video feeds in recent months. Amazon offers a short video feed for shopping inspiration. There’s even a short video feed on LinkedIn , of all places. It’s the TikTok-ification of the web at scale. In addition, the company touted the early success of video in comments, which launched in June. Reddit said the new feature already accounts for more than 10% of its video posts. Topics Reddit , Social , Video When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission . This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah Perez Consumer News Editor Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal. View Bio October 13 – 15 San Francisco Scale faster. Grow your portfolio. Gain practical expertise. No matter your goal, Disrupt can empower you. Save up to $330 toda y! REGISTER NOW Most Popular Claude Opus 5 became downright ruthless when tasked with running a vending machine Julie Bort Sam Altman is ready to decelerate Tim Fernholz PSA: Your Claude shared chats and Artifacts may have ended up on Google Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai Kalshi demands Netflix take down trailer for ‘Prediction Games’ documentary Anthony Ha Librarians are hosting viral ‘Avoiding AI’ workshops for people who are fed up with Big Tech Amanda Silberling SpaceX launches new V3 Starlink satellites but suffers another booster failure Sean O'Kane Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise $100M Marina Temkin