Reddit tests TikTok-style audio and video posts

Reddit recently said it would bring most viral stories to life through a new “video Reddit” experience, letting users listen to Reddit posts in the background while doing other tasks. On Monday, Reddit began testing an initial version of this experience with both video and audio posts across select communities, to see which post types resonate with users and could scale.

The company announced its plans for narrated Reddit videos during its second-quarter earnings call in July, when CEO Steve Huffman told analysts that people were already consuming Reddit content this way on other platforms. He was referring to how platforms like TikTok and Meta’s Reels often feature popular Reddit stories narrated through text-to-speech or read aloud by creators, sometimes with the words displayed on screen or paired with unrelated footage like gameplay or cooking content. “There is an emerging content type elsewhere on the internet of, basically, podcasts where people read Reddit content,” Huffman said on the call. “I think this version of, like, listened-to or spoken Reddit can be really engaging, as well.”

Reddit tells TechCrunch the initial tests are early, limited experiments meant to show how these formats can be useful to users and whether they can be done in a way that feels authentic to Reddit. Users will be able to choose whether they want to “read” or “play” a post, when available. The test focuses only on select English-language posts for now and is accessible through Reddit’s iOS and Android apps.

The different formats won’t replace the original, text-only post — both the original post and comments can still be viewed and engaged with as before. Reddit suggests people may want to listen to audio while exercising, walking, or running errands, while others might want to watch written conversations come to life through combined video and audio.

This isn’t Reddit’s first experiment with video: the company has previously rolled out native video hosting and tried various iterations of a TikTok-style video feed. More recently, Reddit launched support for video in comments, which it says now accounts for more than 10% of video posts on its platform.

Why it matters

Reddit is betting that narrated versions of its own text posts can capture attention its content already earns elsewhere, on platforms it doesn’t control.