This year is a big year for Reddit. Post-IPO, the platform has a number of product features planned over the next year, and spoiler alert, most of them will be powered by AI.
“I think the IPO was an important milestone, but we're focused on building for our users,” Paris Burt, Reddit chief product officer, told TechCrunch.
Reddit's product roadmap includes faster load times, more tools for moderators and developers, and AI-powered language translation features to bring Reddit to a more global audience.
“This is actually a very nice use of LLM, allowing us to do translation in a more nuanced way than we have been able to do before,” says Bhat. “If you're in France, for example, you'll be able to use Reddit in French, no matter who most of the users on that subreddit are.”
So if a user posts in French, English-speaking Redditors can read and respond to the post in English, and French speakers can see the post in their language and respond in the same way. Masu.
“For a long time, Reddit was primarily an English-only platform, focused on the US, UK, and Mexico,” Burt said. “We are currently expanding dramatically around the world and already have a significant number of users coming from all over the world.”
If you're a Reddit investor, that's probably music to your ears. But Burt has data to back that up. According to Reddit's IPO filing, as of December 2023, 50% of Reddit's daily active unique users were from countries outside the United States.
AI is also at the core of updates to Reddit's moderator experience. Reddit recently rolled out keyword highlighting to help mods find potentially violating content in their subreddits, as well as tools to manage the influx of new members. The company plans to build on these updates using other new tools, such as LLM, which is trained on moderators' past decisions and actions.
Reddit sparked a massive user outcry last year when it changed its API pricing structure. This means that some popular third-party Reddit apps face seven-figure bills if they continue to operate. The backlash has subsided, but Reddit now encourages developers to build directly on Reddit for free, but Bhat said this could change in the future.
You can find the product through our developer platform at r/WallStreetBets. There you'll find a live dashboard of trending stocks, posters, and commenters. And, as Bart points out, his one of the most popular Super Bowl scoreboards was actually by r/TaylorSwift.
“The best part is unlocking experiences we ourselves could never have imagined,” he said. “This is really cool. It's all built on top of our API.”