Reddit has released two self-created mobile apps that it hopes provides users with a great foundation to explore the site’s content. The new iOS and Android apps are replacing the Alien Blue app, which Reddit will remove from the App Store, although it’ll still work without support for those that have previously downloaded it.
Launching its first-ever native, in-house build iOS and Android apps was the right thing for Reddit to do, according to Alex Le, the company’s vice president of product. “While looking at the future, we thought about other people on mobile devices. Our original plan was to reuse Alien Blue and modernize it, but when we got down to it, we found it was faster to build a new foundation and bring it to 100 million people in the future.”
Alien Blue has served as the default Reddit iOS app for a while. It was created by Jason Morrissey, an independent developer, but was acquired in October 2014. As the company looked to create an Android app and looked to retool Alien Blue, they discovered that the amount of effort needed outweighed the cost and that Alien Blue’s infrastructure limited what Reddit wanted to do. So a whole new set of apps were developed.
Le said that the new apps are a modern interpretation of what Reddit should be on a mobile device. His team extrapolated learnings from Alien Blue and took what Redditors loved from it and added it into the new iOS and Android apps. Some of the things that have carried over include support for night mode, which adjusts the lighting for you to peruse Reddit while you’re getting ready for bed; a speed read button which is an interpretation of how to dive into a conversational thread and get to the important part; and subreddit customizations that allows administrators to make their spot on Reddit their own, something that was previously limited to just on the desktop.
Reddit will be pulling the Alien Blue app from the App Store. Le described the move as a touch one, but that when people searched for Reddit, they were confused when seeing “Alien Blue.” While it is no longer in the app marketplace, those that have pre-installed it can continue to use it. However, Reddit won’t be making any future updates to it.
While this may seem like it’s an app replacement, it’s also an indication that the company has plans to pursue additional updates for its mobile strategy. It now has apps for both iOS and Android which will appeal to Redditors, of which 50 percent use a mobile device to access the site.
For those Alien Blue users that paid for a pro account, Reddit has notified them about transitioning to Reddit’s premium offering called Reddit Gold. Through what Le called a “harmonizing” exercise, Alien Blue Pro users have received four years of Reddit Gold, which offers an ads-free experience, for free. It also offers up potential revenue generating stream as with Alien Blue Pro, it was a one-time payment, but with Reddit Gold, subscribers pay $29.99 per year.
The new Reddit apps are optimized for smartphones, but not tablets.
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