Today’s Reddit blog post admits it “didn’t make it easy” to share content like cool conversations and memes to other social platforms — but now it’s finally doing something about it. Reddit improves link embedding for messaging apps and adds more sharing features like sharing directly to Instagram stories right from the Reddit app.
If you’ve ever tried to share a Reddit link of the official app on, say, iMessage on an iPhone, you might recall that it didn’t have a particularly content-rich preview. Now the company is improving it with a more robust visual preview of the content, the name of the subreddit, and the number of upvotes and comments it has.
Third-party Reddit client apps have spent years developing better ways to share content — like how Apollo can take a threaded screenshot with the number of replies you want — but they don’t include a link for the recipient encouraging them to visit Reddit .
Reddit’s re-prioritisation of its own app and platform is coming along nicely as the world looks for the next best app to use as an information channel, adding features built for Reddit’s official mobile app on iOS and Android.
Even official users of the Reddit app have gotten into the habit of simply taking a screenshot of anything they want to share. But now Reddit will remind them to do it in a different way: with a pop-up notification inviting the user to share the link via the share sheet.
Reddit’s focus on providing richer embeds also extends to content publishing platforms such as those The edge used to bring you these articles, thanks to the company’s release of a new embedding toolbox (pdf). Content from other social platforms like Twitter or YouTube is often easier to embed into websites than Reddit links, but that could change.
It’s especially noteworthy that the new tools and capabilities also come just after Reddit’s recent comprehensive overhaul of how it enables outsiders to interact with its data. In a post on Reddit, the developer of Apollo called the changes “not necessary in all cases for the worse, provided Reddit is reasonable,” but said that based on conversations with the company, it has no plans to offer free API access for third-party commercial apps in the future.