Nearly a year after introducing Reddit Talk, the company is expanding its live audio chats to desktop and adding several new features to make the conversations easier to find and participate in.
When it first launches last April, the audio chats were only available on mobile and Reddit users had to listen in live if they wanted to catch the conversation. That’s now changing, though, as Reddit Talk is now available in desktop browsers, and chats are now recorded so users can stream the conversation after it’s ended. Reddit is also adding commenting abilities, so participants can chime in without having to use the “raise hand” feature and wait for the moderator to open their mic.
Finally, Reddit is trying to make the audio chats easier to find by adding a “live bar” to the top of the app that highlights conversations happening in real time, similar to the way Twitter pushes live chats in TwitterSpaces to the top of its users’ timelines.
With the expansion, Reddit is pushing live audio to be a more central part of its platform. It’s not clear yet just how widely used Reddit Talk is, but in a blog post the company says that it’s seen “250% growth in daily active listeners.” The company also notes that more than 1,000 subreddits have enabled the feature so far, including r/cryptocurrency, r/wallstreetbets and r/space.
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