Reddit’s looking to facilitate expanded functionalities and research tools, with the launch of a new Reddit Developer Platform, which will provide access and resources that will enable outside developers to build and iterate on Reddit’s existing operations.
As explained by Reddit:
“While our team is hard at work creating and bettering our own tools, we know that there are developers who may just want to create their own tools, like u/tweet_poster which detects Twitter links and comments with the contents of the tweet, or u/RemindMeBot which sends a direct message to remind you about a particular event. Moderators, in particular, have developed numerous tools and bots to lighten their load and help subreddits function better. That’s why today we are opening up a waitlist for our developer platform – a suite of developer tools and resources that will enable and empower developers whose contributions will support millions of users and over 100,000 active communities on Reddit.”
The Reddit Developer platform will provide access to a range of data tools and options, which will enable non-Reddit employees to build new functionalities on the back of Reddit’s platform.
That could lead to new systems for researching Reddit discussion, which can be a valuable source of market analysis and insight, while it may also enable new options for Reddit ads, and placements via third-party management tools.
“The Reddit Developer Platform will serve as an avenue for third-party developers to build meaningful Reddit extensions that our users will love.”
There’s obviously nothing built as yet, as the platform hasn’t been released. But it could open up a range of new possibilities for Reddit research and campaigns – and with 50 million daily active users, engaging on virtually every subject you can think of (over 100k active subreddits), there may well be some highly valuable use cases for Reddit add-on functionalities and tools, which could help in your process.
Reddit says the new developer platform will be made available to initial testers soon.
If you’re interested in being part of the Reddit Developer Platform, you can sign up for the waitlist here.
