Reddit Wants to IPO - But Is Reddit Still Relevant?

News emerged last week that forum platform Reddit is seeking a public offering.

If you've been following the news about Reddit in the last year, this shouldn't be that big of a surprise. Between its investment in NFTs and closing up its ecosystem, it's clear Reddit wants to cash out.

But here's the real question - is Reddit still relevant?

Let's have a look at downloads over the years.

Reddit has been growing steadily for quite a while now but 2023 hasn't been all that great. In fact, downloads actually shrunk in 2023 for the firm time - and not by a little.

In more absolute terms, we estimate Reddit's mobile apps were downloaded 38M times in 2023, down from 54M in 2022. That's quite the drop!

The last time Reddit was in the 30s was in 2020 after growing more than 37% year over year.

You could say that Reddit is more of a website than a mobile app making this trend less alarming. And searching on Google, you're very likely to come across a top result that's on Reddit, further enhancing that point.

But just like Bluesky, web users are very different than mobile users when it comes to communities, making this decline very significant.

I'm no financial advisor but I expect Reddit's IPO to be rocky. I do like Reddit though so I hope I'm wrong.

Weekly News & Insights to Help Your App Win

Join 45,000+ developers, marketers, investors, and entrepreneurs who get smarter every week.


Related Resources

Insights
Competing with ChatGPT on Mobile is Harder Than Anthropic Thought

I think it's fair to say that ChatGPT is AI for many. Especially those not in tech. How can I say that so nonchalantly?...

Insights
Can Signal Survive the Latest Blow from Elon and Telegram?

Telegram decided to pick on Signal this week and Elon Musk took a stab at it too, and that led me to look at how the two...