Short-form video is all the rage on social media and Reddit is now the latest tech giant to hop on that bandwagon – they have acquired TikTok rival Dubsmash.
This news follows the recent cloning of TikTok style video by Instagram with the launch of Reels and Spotlight by Snapchat. Reddit is set to make the announcement official later today.
Interestingly enough, both Facebook and Snapchat were also interested in buying Dubsmash; Twitter too.
Early September this year, Oracle won its bid for TikTok’s U.S operations.
In 2015, Rihanna’s BBHMM debuted on Dubsmash.
What Next After This Acquisition?
Dubsmash’s creation tools will be integrated into Reddit while still maintaining their own platform and brand.
“Both Reddit and Dubsmash share a deep-rooted respect for how communities come together. Dubsmash elevates under-represented creators, while Reddit fosters a sense of community and belonging across thousands of different topics and passions. It’s clear that our missions closely align and that our community-focused platforms can coexist and grow as we learn from each other,” Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO said in the company’s official blog.
Dubsmash is a very popular short form video platform(1 Billion monthly views) in the U.S with 25% of its users being Black teens and 70% being female users.
A lot of Black and Latinx creator communities are on Dubmash while most popular TikTok stars are white creators.
About 30% of users log in every day to create video content, indicating a high level of retention and engagement, and Dubsmash enables more than one billion video views per month, demonstrating the strength of its communities.
Collab Crib, an all black creator mansion in Atlanta, Georgia is primarily backed by Dubsmash.
In January this year, the app pulled 27% of the U.S short-form video market in terms of installs – coming in second to TikTok’s 59%. You can read about how it revived itself after burning down its 30 person company in 2017 to rebuilding itself and moving from Germany to Brooklyn.
Dubsmash co-founders Tim Specht, Suchit Dash, Jonas Drüppel and the entire team will join Reddit once the deal is through.
“In our years of building Dubsmash, we’ve learned how video can spark creativity, unlock interactions, and deepen connections within communities. We want to continue our journey to bring best in class video products to our users, and now Reddit users. We believe in the idea of connecting creators around interests and topics, something Reddit has pioneered, in our growing Dubsmash community,’ said Suchit Dash, Head of Dubsmash.
Reddit hopes that this new acquisition will get users to natively upload videos to the site as opposed to embed links from other video platforms.
In October this year, Reddit had an average of 52 million daily active users.
“Since launching video in 2017, we’ve seen significant growth of video on Reddit (over 2x in 2020 alone) that has been amplified by the community’s creativity,” said a Reddit spokesperson in a statement.
Reddit already has Reddit Public Access Networks, the platforms livestreaming feature which launched last year.
There has been no disclosure with regards to the financial terms of the stock and cash deal.
