Reddit has announced that it will shut down Reddit Talk, its live audio chat feature, on March 21. In an ad post, the company says it made this decision because “sustaining Talk in the short term requires significant resources – more than expected.” The company will also shut down its “Happening Now” page, which exists to help you find active live chats and chats.
Talking was announced in April 2021a time when the Clubhouse audio chat app seemed like a big deal and other social networks were dash For copy its features. The reason it’s now being removed is apparently that the third-party audio provider Reddit used for the service is also shutting down. According to his post, the company doesn’t want to deal with that as it also tries to simplify its core platform and improve infrastructure, an effort that product manager Pali Bhat just discussed about decoder.
Starting March 21, users will be able to download archives of Talks hosted after September 1, 2022, and they will have until June 1 to do so. The company says there will be more details about the download closer to the shutdown date.
While Reddit says audio has a place in its goal to “become the de facto home for communities,” it doesn’t provide any sort of timeline on when audio features or even Talk itself will make a reappearance.
News of the shutdown comes as Reddit is rolling out other features to help compete with video platforms like TikTok. This includes working on separate video and text streamsthat allow users to focus on a single form of content.
