Reddit is making sweeping moves to improve its website by including an AI-driven chatbot called “Answers.” Under the direction of product-focused CEO Steve Huffman, the company is now charting a bold course. By 2025, they do want to embed this feature more seamlessly into the user experience. The initiative targets two distinct categories of users: scrollers who browse content and seekers who are looking for specific answers.
Launched in beta last December, “Answers” has generated one million weekly active user engagement already. The product surfaces verbatim answers and summaries from existing Reddit posts, making it a valuable resource for users seeking information. Just last month, Reddit expanded availability of “Answers” beyond the US. Until now, users in Australia, the U.K., Canada and India were able to access this exciting new feature.
According to Huffman, the addition of “Answers” is meant to make user experience more continuous across the site. As he put it, “Until very recently, we haven’t created a product for them. This is further indicative of Reddit’s acknowledgement of the needs of users that arrive on the site specifically looking for answers rather than to engage in community conversations.
The CEO did tease more deeply integrating “Answers” into the main search box. This might allow searchers to type in complete questions rather than the short, clunky keywords, leading to a better search result. In particular, Huffman underscored the importance of understanding the complex and varying use cases that users come to the platform with. He explained, “Those users are not coming to Reddit looking for a community at that time. They’re coming for an answer. First, let’s acknowledge the user’s use case. In doing so, we can address the root of the issue!
Not only will “Answers” make searching within the site easier, Huffman suggested a second possible entry point for “Answers” via external search engines. This would greatly open up the use case of using Reddit as a platform to summarize or parse down easy-to-consume versions of complex content. You’re an absolute newbie jumping into Reddit for the first time. When you search through Answers, you’ll find out that Reddit most likely has what you need—guaranteed!
Despite these ongoing challenges, Reddit has continued to post astounding growth numbers. One major stumbling block was the mixed bag of user growth due to a major algorithm change to Google Search in Q4 2024. The multi-use platform just posted a $392.4 million revenue haul, a 61% jump up year-over-year. Daily active unique users hit 108.1 million, up 31% year-over-year. We’d venture a guess that Reddit sees Q2 revenue somewhere in the $410-430 million range. Further, they expect adjusted EBITDA in the range of $110 million to $130 million.
Huffman pointed to Reddit’s commitment to openness and transparency. He focused on their mission to help content be found by Google Search. “We’re an open platform, and we want people to discover Reddit content in [Google] Search.” That’s what he told the Congress.
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