Reddit’s AI play is for the Google crowd, not just the community scrollers

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says there are two types of people who come to the social media platform: scrollers and seekers.

Scrollers are those who come to the core product of Reddit, that is a community interview and is fascinating about topics they are passionate about, from R/Sourdough to R/PopcultureChat. Then there are the seekers; The people who can type their specific query in Google search and tackle “Reddit” at the end, so that they can find real advice and opinions of real people.

Reddit Answers, the AI-driven chatbot of the company that pops up literal answers and summaries of existing Reddit messages, is for the seekers. And early results suggest that it already gets a grip.

“Until recently we have not built any product for them,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman on Thursday about the profit call of the company. “Those users are not coming to Reddit for a community at that time. They are coming an answer. And I think we can do that [acknowledge] The use case that the user brings us and is more effective in solving it. “

During the call, Reddit announced that the product product has already had 1 million weekly active users since it was launched in Beta in December. Last month Reddit expanded answers outside the US and to Australia, the VK, Canada and India.

The function, which is still in beta, currently lives in the navigation bar of the app as its own separate experience. Reddit goes to 2025 and plans to integrate the answers in the platform in a few different ways.

Huffman said that the most obvious way to do this would be to integrate answers into the primary search box, so that users can type a full question instead of just a few keywords.

The director also said that the company is investigating ways to integrate answers at the start of the user trip.

“So for the first time you are a new user who opens Reddit, with answers to see what is in Reddit and to learn that Reddit almost certainly has what you are looking for,” he said.

Another “access point” for answers would be via external search, “help [users] Receive a more summarized or easy -to -go version of the answer to Reddit, “said Huffman.

That could also protect Reddit against overlaying from Google Search. In the fourth quarter of 2024, a Google -search algorithmination caused some “volatility” with the user growth of Reddit, which at the time delivered investors, despite the defeat of the winnings of the profit.

“We are an open platform and we want people to find reddit content in it [Google] Search, “Huffman said.” Open are consciousness and visibility. It can also create variability and we expect some bumps from Google along the way, because we have already seen a few this year. This is expected in every year, but given that the search eco system is under heavy construction, the short -term can be more bumpy than normal. “

The shares of Reddit rose in the trade after the hours while the company defeated the profit expectations of the analysts and strong user growth. The company reported a turnover of $ 392.4 million, an increase of 61% on an annual basis, an adapted EBITDA of $ 115.3 million and daily active unique users of 108.1 million, an increase of 31% JOJ.

In the second quarter, Reddit estimates the turnover of $ 410 million to $ 430 million and adapted EBITDA between $ 110 million and $ 130 million.