First major acquisition for Reddit
Reddit Inc. said Monday it bought video-sharing app Dubsmash to expand its presence in one of the hottest corners of the internet: user-created video.
Fifteen-year-old Reddit says Dubsmash—with its free app for creating and sharing user-generated videos—is its first major acquisition; financial terms of the cash-and-stock deal weren’t disclosed.
San Francisco-based Reddit is best known for its message boards on millions of topics and its “ask me anything” digital town halls with celebrities, politicians and various experts. Earlier this month, the social-media company disclosed for the first time that it had an average of 52 million daily active users as of October, up 44% from a year earlier.
User-created video is behind the success of the hit app TikTok, which has inspired Facebook Inc.’s FB, -1.29% Instagram and Snap Inc.’s SNAP, +0.34% Snapchat to introduce similar services. Also popular are platforms that let users broadcast live video such as Amazon.com Inc.’s AMZN, +0.48% Twitch and Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL, +0.40% GOOG, +0.36% YouTube.
“The transition to video will be bigger than the transition to mobile,” said Reddit Chief Executive and co-founder Steve Huffman. “We’re still only at the beginning.”