“The front page of the Internet” Reddit has announced the acquisition of third-party iOS mobile app, Alien Blue which will now become the company’s official mobile app. Earlier, many users had to depend upon third-party apps to use the popular news message board. As Reddit acquires the Alien Blue iPhone app, the company will be launching the Android version of the application soon.
The app was developed by Australia-based Jase Morrisey, who will join Reddit and improve the app as a part of the deal. The acquisition comes after Reddit had raised $50 million in funding by led by Sam Altman with Sequoia Capital’s Alfred Lin and Marc.
The popular message board site has sought to venture into the mobile space for adapting to the technological advancements. The terms of the deal and the number of app users were not revealed.
“We want to be able to have new features from Reddit.com show up on mobile faster and better,” said Ellen Pao, head of partnerships and strategic development at Reddit.
Earlier, the company had worked with Mr.Morrisey for some years and decided to help him as there was help needed to further develop the app. The company mentioned in a blog post that hey were happy to welcome the first Aussie in their team and the popular iOS client. The Alien Blue iOS client will be available alongside the official Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) app in the app store and users can upgrade it to the pro version for a week. Morrisey shared a post on Reddit, expressing his happiness on joining the company.
Reddit has definitely lost out a significant amount of revenue by not releasing a mobile app and integrating ads similar to the AMA app. the company plans to introduce ads in the app in the coming days and there will be future upgrades. The details regarding revenue from feature upgrades were not disclosed.
If you are interested to know why the developer hasn’t developed an Android version of Alien Blue, then read his thread here, where he said:
To the degree that I don’t feel entirely confident that I could deliver the fast and native experience that Android users deserve to have. That’s partly why I’ve been standing on the sidelines, and cheering on other Android developers (reddionic, BaconReader, Reddit News etc.) who are way more skilled than me on that platform.
As I work with iOS (and Objective-C in general) day in and day out, I’m a little more clued on about how to optimise for speed, touch response and work around platform specific bugs.
Forbes noted that Reddit is hiring an Android engineer to build an app for Google Play soon.
[ Source ] [ Reddit Blog ] [ App Store ]
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