By: Nick Gambino
Reddit, like many who’ve come before, has never released the number of daily active users flocking to the site. This has forced us to guess or glean the count through osmosis. Now the platform has, for the first time, revealed that they see 52 million active users each day.
They spilled the beans to The Wall Street Journal, claiming a 44% increase over the past year. While it might seem like a lot, you have to consider the fact that the big social media platforms report crazy numbers – Twitter: 187 million, Snap: 249 million, Facebook: 1.82 billion.
Even if they’re not playing on the same field as the big boys, 44% increase year after year is nothing to write off. If they keep it up, Reddit will catch up in the not-too-distant future, especially considering the fact that none of these other competitors are reporting user growth like that.
But why after years of being tight-lipped, did they decided to finally cough up the deets on their daily active users? The company told WSJ they decided on this course of action “as a more accurate reflection of our user growth and to be more in-line with industry reporting.”
Platforms tend to release these numbers only when they have something good to report. With 44% growth, Reddit no doubt felt they had something to brag about that could entice advertisers to do business with them.
Now, it’s not that we never had any idea how many users flocked to the “front page of the internet.” Reddit has shared their monthly users in the past. Last year, they stated that they were seeing 430 million monthly users which was a 30% increase over the year before.
All of this growth is most likely associated with the actions they’ve taken over the last couple years to weed out some of their more toxic elements. Some might call it censorship, but I call it acting on your conscience.
By distancing themselves from platforms like 4chan and 8chan, and embracing more mainstream features, they’ve established themselves as a major contender. This shows in their 52 million daily active users.
