Reddit’s app is getting an Instagram-like ‘Discover’ feed
Reddit’s app now has another feed to endlessly scroll. The company introduced a new “Discover” section that will surface a personalized stream of photos, GIFs and videos.
The feed, the first time a new section has been added to the Reddit app in more than two years, is meant to help drive Redditors to corners of the site they might not encounter on the front page or in r/popular, according to Jason Costa, the director of product for content and communities a Reddit.
“Discover is more meant to solve the breadth problem and really help people traverse the wide corpus of Reddit,” Costa tells Engadget. He notes that early testing of the feature shows that one out of five users have joined “at least one subreddit as a result of Discover.”
Discover also gives Reddit the chance to showcase the vast catalog of memes and GIFs and videos that are shared every day, but aren’t always front and center in the app. While much of Reddit remains a “text-based experience,” the new Discover feed could help draw in people who would rather aimlessly scroll rather than read.
The feed itself is meant to be personalized to each user much the way Instagram’s Explore section would be. New users or people who aren’t logged in will see popular content that may be trending on the service or getting a lot of engagement. While existing users will see recommendations based on subreddits they follow and the types of content they spend the most time viewing.
For now, the Discover fee is limited just to Instagram’s mobile apps, but Costa says that if Redditors like the feature it could influence more aspects of the service. “ I could absolutely see it impacting other surface areas and maybe impacting the design language of Reddit,” he said.
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