Yesterday, Reddit announced that they have acquired the German origin short-form video social platform Dubsmash.
According to the terms of the deal, the TikTok rival will live on as a separate brand and a platform. However, some of their ‘innovate tools’ for video creations will end up getting integrated into the Reddit’s platform
Note here that Reddit has been supporting native video uploads since 2017. But, their video-editing tools have always been very limited. This is why most of the video content that gets posted on their platform is hosted elsewhere.
Thus, to fix this gap, in a post announcing the acquisition, Reddit said they are looking forward to combining the talent of Dubmash’s team and theirs to bring a superior and unique ‘creator experience’ to their community-driven platform.
Along with this, Reddit also cited that the other primary reason they chose to acquire Dubsmash was because of its diverse userbase.
Close to 25 per cent of black ethnicity teenagers in the United States use Dubsmash, while 70 per cent of its users are female. This is something that is of key interest to Reddit.
In their announcement notes, Reddit said that the Tiktok rival short-form video app will provide a ‘welcoming platform’ for creators and users who happened to be under-represented in the overall social media landscape.
Now, while the Reddit’s plans post the acquisition seem to be presented in a neatly wrapped bow, it doesn’t quite address how will they compete with TikTok.
Acquisition Of Dubsmash: Reddit Take On TikTok?
According to data from App Annie, Dubsmash’s share of the US short-video market is second only to the TikTok, which therefore makes Reddit as the effective end competitor of the Chinese-origin smash hit social media platform.
Dubsmash, after a brief moment of becoming viral in 2015, was on the brink of death. But, they managed to successfully reinvent themselves and launched as a revamped platform in 2018, two months later after ByteDace merged Musically into TikTok to form a micro-entertainment phenomenon that we know of today.
Since then Dubsmash, being poised at number 2, has been riding the surge of interest in short-form video content that was originally sparked by TikTok. But, now with this recent development, it’d be interesting to watch what strategies Reddit will employ to topple the original king of short-form content.
That being said, one must also note that the competition also includes Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts and Triller.
Thus, if Reddit’s plan was to only have more superior video creation tools along with a more diverse user base, maybe they unknowingly invited themselves to a tussle between these short-video heavyweights? Could be.
It’s quite difficult to predict what would Reddit’s next few moves would be with Dubsmash. It is also very much possible that despite the acquisition Dubsmash continues to grow into the short-video market space by independently navigating the competition without any direction from Reddit at all.
The recent announcement of Reddit didn’t disclose the sum which they paid to acquire the New York-based company. We will keep you updated on all future developments. Until then, stay tuned.
