As a place for more than 100,000 "passionate and engaged communities", Reddit wants to provide the tools that enable people to express themselves deeper in conversations.
Announcing on August 17th, 2017, Reddit was rolling out a native video player.
With the feature, Reddit users can upload their MP4 and MOV videos that are up to 15 minutes in length, or 1GB in size, straight into the platform, rather than outside the service like before.
For convenience, users can upload their footage on either desktop or using its mobile apps.
When a video is playing, it will be pinned to the corner of the screen while users scroll. This is somehow similar to YouTube on mobile.
And as an added feature, Reddit is also rolling out a GIF-making tool that can be used with the video feature.
"This launch is a giant step forward in our efforts to bring rich content to Reddit, following last year’s release of native image hosting and our introduction of native video ads earlier this year," said Reddit on its blog post.
According to Reddit, posts by the community are mostly videos and GIFs. Previously, content creators had to go to third-party hosting sites, upload their content, get the URL and share it as a link post. This is time-consuming, said Reddit.
And with many mobile users, they certainly want to upload things from their phones quickly. Something that was previously not possible without some tedious processes.
"With native video, we’ve streamlined this process dramatically, allowing both content creators and commenters to focus on the conversation taking place on Reddit. No third-party uploads, new tabs, or back arrows necessary," continued Reddit on its blog post/
The feature can also come useful for Reddit itself as it can be geared towards getting more sponsors and advertisers. Although Reddit is already having native video ads, having mid-roll ads, for example, can be a great way to get more revenue.
Initially, the feature was released as an extended beta to some of its communities.
