Reddit Acquires Short-Form Video App Dubsmash To Leverage Its Diverse Community & Video Creation Tools

Source: Reddit

Reddit has acquired Brooklyn-based short-form video app Dubsmash, marking its first major acquisition in 15 years.

Dubsmash will continue to operate as its own platform and brand, but Reddit plans to leverage its diverse community and integrate its innovative video creation tools into its platform.

"Dubsmash’s communities are driven by young, diverse creators—about 25 percent of all Black teens in the U.S. are on Dubsmash, and females represent 70 percent of users," Reddit said in a blog post.

Despite Dubsmash often being left out of the short-form video conversation, the app is second only to TikTok when it comes to short-form video app installs. It also was reportedly in acquisition talks with Facebook and Snap this past summer.

Reddit's acquisition of Dubsmash comes less than two weeks after it revealed it had 52 million daily active users in October and saw a significant increase in its advertising business this year.

Insights:

Reddit's acquisition of Dubsmash is a noteworthy move since it helps strengthen its recent diversity and inclusion efforts and moves it deeper into the world of video content.

This move alone won’t make Reddit a leader in diversity and inclusion or video content, but it has the app heading in the right direction, giving it a much-needed boost on these two fronts.

The short-form video space is getting incredibly crowded with Instagram, Triller, YouTube, and most recently, Snapchat chasing down fan-favorite, TikTok. While the branding may look different for each social media platform, they are starting to look and feel the same. Thus, it's becoming critical for platforms to have a key differentiator, especially in the short-form video space. For Reddit and Dubsmash, it looks to be diversity specifically amongst Black and Latinx creators.

Reddit has also seen significant growth in video content since launching the feature in 2017, so there is already an appetite for video content on the platform. By integrating Dubsmash's video capabilities, it will be able to further accelerate that video content growth by empowering users with new tools and features to share and engage with video content.

Overall, the acquisition will help expand Reddit’s community and boost its video offering. These combined should help make the platform more attractive for brands and creators.

As hot as the short-form video space is, it’s only a matter of time before we see another major platform acquire a short-form video app.

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SOURCE: Reddit