Reddit Goes Down and Downloads Go Up

Reddit had a pretty big week in downloads. And when I say pretty big I mean really big! The platform saw downloads rising to the highest they've been this year. Oh, and also the highest they've ever been!

Reddit's downloads have been on the rise for much of the month but really kicked into high gear on Saturday into Tuesday, where the app added more than 1.5 million downloads, according to our estimates. Reddit added 430 thousand downloads on Tuesday alone.

For context, it added 240 thousand downloads on an average Tuesday earlier in the month, which was already higher than the average, and an average of 130 thousand on average in April.

I'm not entirely sure what caused this spike, but I know that Reddit's website went down hard with an ugly 504 error message, something I didn't expect to see from Reddit but felt very nostalgic. But it makes sense – If the site's down, use the app. Simple.

I also know Reddit recently announced an update to Reddit Talk, its Clubhouse competitor, but that update is going to the website and isn't out yet, so I'm pretty sure that's unrelated.

Do you know what caused the spike?

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