Reddit has thrown its hat into the ring against TikTok with the acquisition of Berlin-founded short video-sharing app Dubsmash for an unknown sum.
The privately held social network said on Sunday that it would keep Dubsmash as a separate app while integrating its video creation tools into its own service.
In a company blog post, Reddit pointed to Dubsmash’s popularity among female users and ethnic minority creators, with about 25pc of all black teenagers in the United States using the app.
The sale makes Reddit a surprising winner in the bidding war that has unfolded over Dubsmash, which at one time was reportedly being courted by Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter.
Founded in Germany in 2014 and now based in New York City, it has bounced back from a dire decline in users to become one of the most promising contenders for TikTok’s viral video crown.
News of the deal was first broken by Silicon Valley insiders’ outlet The Information, prompting Reddit to rush out an announcement reportedly slated for tomorrow.
we are so excited to announce that we’ll be joining forces with Reddit! ty to all our dubsmashers for being a part of this incredible journey. we’re so honored to join a company whose focus is also building thriving communities. <3 https://t.co/o6FKD045xt
— Dubsmash (@dubsmash) December 14, 2020
Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman said: “Both Reddit and Dubsmash share a deep rooted respect for how communities come together. Dubsmash elevates under-represented creators, while Reddit fosters a sense of community and belonging across thousands of different topics and passions.
we are so excited to announce that we’ll be joining forces with Reddit! ty to all our dubsmashers for being a part of this incredible journey. we’re so honored to join a company whose focus is also building thriving communities. <3 https://t.co/o6FKD045xt
— Dubsmash (@dubsmash) December 14, 2020
"It’s clear that our missions closely align and that our community-focused platforms can coexist and grow as we learn from each other.”
Suchit Dash, the head of Dubsmash, said his team was intent on connecting users to each other via interests and topics, as Reddit has done since its foundation. Mr Dash and his two o-founders, Jonas Drüppel, and Tim Specht, will stay with the app within Reddit.
The runaway global success of TikTok, owned by the Chinese tech start-up ByteDance, has set off furious competition among Western companies, from giants such as Facebook to upstarts such as the Trump-family-backed Triller.
Thank you @Forbes. We're proud to serve this community. https://t.co/ND2gJFR5Z7
— Dubsmash (@dubsmash) November 20, 2020
Dubsmash has been competing with TikTok since before its ByteDance days, when they were both best known as lip-syncing apps and TikTok was called Musical.ly. In 2017, as TikTok began to take off, Mr Dash and his team scrambled to transform Dubsmash from a video creation app with no sharing functions into more of a social network.
Having found a loyal fan base among young African-Americans, they also moved from Berlin to Brooklyn to be closer to their audience.
“Dubsmash is ground zero for culture creation in America — it’s where the newest, most popular hip-hop and dance challenges on the internet originate,” Mr Dash told TechCrunch in January.
The app was considered enough of a threat that TikTok reportedly instructed its moderators to suppress any videos posted to their service that featured Dubsmash’s watermark, along with those of Triller, SnapChat and WhatsApp.
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