Today’s Reddit blog post admits it has “not made it easier” to share content like cool chats and memes to other social platforms — but now it’s doing something about it. Reddit is improving the embedding of links for messaging apps and adding more sharing functionality such as sharing directly to Instagram Stories directly from the Reddit app.
If you’ve ever tried to share a Reddit link from the official app on, say, iMessage on an iPhone, you might remember that it doesn’t have a particularly content-rich preview. The company is now improving it with a more robust visual preview of the content, its subtitle, and the number of upvotes and comments it has.
Third-party Reddit client apps have, for years, developed better ways to share content — like how Apollo can create a threaded screenshot that displays however many responses you want — but these don’t include a link for the recipient encouraging them to visit Reddit.
Reddit’s new app-and-platform prioritization comes hot as the world searches for the next best app to use as an information conduit, adding these features designed to the official Reddit mobile app on iOS and Android.
Even users of the official Reddit app are in the habit of taking screenshots of everything they want to share. But now Reddit will remind them of another way to do it: 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 posting platforms, like this one the edge used to bring you these articles, thanks to the company’s release of its new Embedding Toolbox (PDF). It’s often easier to embed content from other social platforms like Twitter or YouTube than it is to embed Reddit links on websites, but that could change.
Of particular note is that the new tools and capabilities also come after Reddit’s recent overhaul of how it allows outsiders to manipulate its data. In a post on Reddit, developer Apollo described the changes as “no necessarily for the worst in all cases, provided Reddit is reasonable,” but said that based on discussions with the company, it does not plan to offer free API access to commercial third-party applications in the future.