(credit: Eva Blue)
Reddit announced a big, and likely welcome, change coming to its site: native video uploads. After testing the feature out in about 200 communities, native video hosting will now roll out for all Reddit communities, giving every user the ability to upload and share videos on Reddit without the use of a third-party service. Until now, users had to upload videos to another site and then post the video’s link to Reddit in order to share.
Native video uploading is supported on both the desktop and mobile versions of Reddit. Users can upload pre-recorded videos from their devices; on the Reddit mobile app, you can shoot videos to upload immediately by giving the app access to your camera. Videos must be either MP4 of MOV files, and they can be no longer than 15 minutes. You can even make gifs out of your videos by using Reddit’s new MP4 converter, and videos uploaded through the mobile app can be trimmed to show only the most important part. Since Reddit’s core is its communities, the company made it so you could watch videos and read posted comments at the same time. On desktop, the video player will shrink and stay at the top of the page so you can scroll through comments. On mobile, the video player remains at the top of the page while the bottom-half is scrollable.
Reddit’s blog post cites user experience as one of the main reasons for its new native video hosting. It was previously a hassle for users to post a video to Reddit, and the viewing experience wasn’t seamless. Reddit gave the same treatment to images last year when it cut ties with its longtime partner Imgur in favor of native image hosting. Not only does native image and video hosting make it easier for users to upload and share content to their favorite subreddits, but it also cuts the amount of time users spend on third-party sites.
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