Reddit Talk, the company’s Clubhouse clone, is shutting down.
In a post on its website, Reddit announced that it will be winding down Talk and that the service will completely shut down on March 21st. The company said that there are a few reasons for the service shutting down, including that maintaining it required “significant resourcing” in the short term which it was not anticipating. It also revealed that the third-party audio vendor powering Reddit Talk was also shutting down.
Reddit’s goal is to become the de facto home for communities. Audio, like Talk, has a place in that. However, there’s significant work we need to do – like making Reddit simpler and building better subreddit infrastructure – before incorporating audio. Our original plan was to maintain Talk while we worked on this. Unfortunately, the 3rd party audio vendor we use for Talk is shutting down its service. In other words, the resources required to keep Talk live during this transition increased substantially.
Reddit said that, while it sees audio as part of the app’s future, it has work to do on its core experience before venturing back into the space. It did not provide a timeline as to when another audio product could be released.
So, what does that mean for any planned or already recorded Talks? Thankfully, hosts will be able to still host a Talk until the March 21st shutdown date. After that, users will be able to download recorded Talks until June 1st. The company says that any talks that were hosted after September 1, 202 will be available to download until that cutoff date.
The news comes a couple of days after Reddit rolled out a major update to its mobile app. The update, which is available now, introduces News Feeds in which users can choose either the “Read” or “Watch” option. The “Watch” option looks eerily similar to TikTok and Instagram Reels.
