Reddit has officially launched its video-hosting feature, allowing more users in pre-approved communities to upload videos directly to the site rather than going through third parties.
As part of the beta testing phase launched by the company in June, featuring about 200 subreddits, Reddit already allowed native video uploading to certain communities:
However, with this extended rollout, more communities will be able to access the feature.
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Record and Upload
The video-hosting feature lets users record videos on mobile and post them directly from official Reddit mobile apps. They can also upload videos from their camera roll. Desktop users can upload video files right from their computer.
Videos can be up to 15 minutes and people can use Reddit’s native GIF converter to convert them into MP4 GIFs. They can also trim the videos and GIFs before posting.
Watch Videos on the Site
Product manager for video at Reddit Emon Motamedi acknowledges that the majority of videos on Reddit are either links to YouTube or videos that have been chopped up into GIFs (which are hosted by third-party tools). This is usually a hassle, especially to less media-savvy users. It also breaks the link between the content host and the platform for discussion (Reddit).
Motamedi says, “[Usually] you go to YouTube to watch the video and you come back to Reddit to comment.” He goes on to explain: “Because our platform has the best comments on the internet and because it’s such a big use case for our users, we wanted to build that in-house.”
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Publish Tailored Videos
The video tool will work on both desktop and mobile and will feature a built-in GIF creation tool. Motamedi explains that this gives the user more creative control and that users will be able to post videos and GIFs depending on the community they want to appeal to.
He says, “Say they record a longer cute video of their dog playing. [A user] can post that entire video to a subreddit, but also go back to the edit flow, create a GIF, and post it to another subreddit.”
Reddit says it will update the feature as it gathers more feedback from users.