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Reddit just finished its second earnings report as a public company, and CEO Steve Huffman hinted at some key changes that may be coming to the platform. In the report, the Reddit co-founder said that the company will start testing AI-powered search results later this year.
“Later this year, we’ll begin testing a new AI-powered search result page that summarizes and recommends content to help users learn more about products, shows, games, and discover new communities on Reddit,” Huffman said. He didn’t say when the test would begin, but said it would use both first-party and third-party models.
Huffman noted that while Reddit search “hasn’t changed in a long time,” it represents a big opportunity to attract new users, and that search could become a significant source of advertising revenue for the company in the future.
Huffman also hinted at revenue sources beyond advertising. He suggested the company might experiment with paid subreddits to monetize new features. “I think the existing, altruistic, free version of Reddit will continue to exist and grow and thrive just as it always has,” Huffman said. “But it opens the door to building new types of subreddits with new use cases, with exclusive content and private areas and things like that.”
A Reddit spokesman declined to elaborate on Huffman’s comments, but it’s no secret that the company has been exploring new ways to grow since going public earlier this year, signing multimillion-dollar licensing deals and even doing business with search engines that don’t pay the company.
“Some players in the ecosystem haven’t been transparent about their use of Reddit’s content, and in those cases we block access to protect Reddit’s content and the privacy of our users,” Huffman said. “We want to know where Reddit’s data is going and what it’s being used for, so it’s a term of the deal.”
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