As AI tools gobble up news publishers’ traffic on traditional referral platforms like Google, Reddit is offering publishers another way to share their content — within its app.
On September 10th, Reddit announced a slew of new features available to some publishers that are meant to help them better understand where their stories are being shared and to encourage them to post more on the platform. On the user side, the most significant change is a test that allows readers to open article links directly in the Reddit app, with Reddit comments from other users pinned to the bottom. In other words, you can scroll through an article while reading Reddit comments. Reddit spokesperson Courtney Geesey-Dorr told The Verge that the feature respects publisher paywalls, meaning some users may hit subscriber-only content; some publications may opt to share unlocked gift links or soften their paywalls for Reddit users.
On the backend, publishers will have specialized analytics tools, which will let them track which subreddits are sharing their stories and performance metrics like upvotes and how many people are clicking on their stories on Reddit. It sounds similar to CrowdTangle, a now-defunct Meta tool that journalists and researchers used to monitor what was going viral on Facebook. Reddit will also allow publishers to sync their RSS feeds and automatically import stories, which they can then share on different subreddits. And because we are living in the age of AI recommendations, there’s also an AI tool that will suggest which subreddits publishers should share their stories with. The suite of tools is part of Reddit Pro, a business platform that the company introduced last year. Publisher-side features have been in early testing with some outlets, with new applications for the beta test opening today.
