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REDDIT MOBILE APP: A BRIEF REVIEW

 

    Reddit is a social media platform where people can discuss and view topics that are of their interest. Reddit is accessed through a web browser or mobile app. I have used the mobile app for over eight years and love it. The concept differs from the traditional social media giants (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) in that the users don’t post selfies or personal information (typically). The app allows users to post images, videos, or ask a question. Users post whatever they want in specific categories called subreddits. The app also uses an up-vote/down-vote system where the most popular posts will populate the home page and generate the most discussions. Reddit has a home page that contains the most popular post for any given category. The users can tailor their viewing experience by following subreddits that are of interest to them. The heart of the app is in the comment section, where users can discuss with one another. The comment section follows the same up-vote/down-vote premise. This allows users to view the most popular voted comment first. There is a subreddit for everything imaginable with the most popular ones being r/news, r/funny, r/AskReddit, to name a few. There is most likely a subreddit for everything, and if somehow there is not, then you can always create one.


              The Reddit mobile app's design utilizes scrolling features, similar to other social media platforms, were the user scrolls down through content. At the top of the app, the user is greeted with two buttons; home and popular. The home button is the default starting screen, and if the user is new to the app, it will populate posts that are being upvoted the most. Once users begin to follow subreddits, their front page will populate only post from their followed subreddits. This is an excellent feature for personalizing a user's experience. The popular tab will populate trending and controversial posts of the day. Users can also visit the popular section to find new subreddits to follow that they didn't know existed.



I have a few suggestions for improvement after being a user of this app for so long. First, seeing as most of my time is spent in the comment section, I would suggest making a search button to find a specific comment. No feature allows you to search for a particular comment or user in the comment section. Reddit has a popular subreddit called r/AMA, where people have to answer questions in the comments. This attracts many celebrities, scientists, athletes, and anyone who is an expert in their field that can answer specific questions to Reddit users. It would improve the app to add a search for section in the comments to locate their responses instead of scrolling through the endless comment sections.

               Another suggestion for improvement would be that the app does not hold your place while scrolling down the app. I have personally hit the back arrow and ended up at the top of the home page after scrolling for minutes. The app doesn’t have a place marker, so you will have to scroll until you find your place again. This happens when you close the app, so I believe that a bookmark type system would help the users.

The last improvement would be to get rid of the ads or redesign how they look. When I first joined Reddit, there were no ads, and that is what attracted me to the website in the first place. Today you experience an ad every three to six posts. I understand that ads create revenue that allows the website and mobile app to continue to operate. However, the ads have been designed to look identical to the layout of a user post, making it hard to distinguish between the two. The ads come with all the buttons that a standard post would, like up-vote/down-vote and comments, but they do not actually function. I believe they were made this way to mirror a normal post and make the users stop an view or watch the ad. I want to take away the fake buttons and change the color of the ads’ text.




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