Reddit announced the launching of their brand new official mobile app. The post appeared on the announcement section of the website asking for feedback. So far, there are more than 3,700 comments.
This is not the first time they work on an app. Alien Blue is the most popular and successful unofficial app to browse Reddit from an iPhone. In fact, the company bought the rights for the app on October 15, 2014. Alien Blue was originally developed by Jason Morrisey and it is still a fan favorite, but the company wanted to do something from scratch with its own team.
Reddit is a good place to look for people like you, regardless how unique you are, you will find groups that like to talk about anything, really anything. With such a large scale of users, creating an app that satisfies every single one of them it’s a Herculean task and that’s precisely what they want to do.
Mr. Alex made it clear when he opened the post, he wanted any kind of feedback; questions, suggestions, roasts, anything. He has been answering to different comments in the unique way a “Redditor” does. The company just wanted to offer an official alternative to what’s already on and Mr. Alex said they were going to continue improving Alien Blue.
“This is the beginning of our journey with you, our app users. For everyone joining us on this ride, you can expect a lot of updates and new features that we’ll be rolling out to mobile first. Our first feature releases are getting prepared now and we’ll be updating at least once a month. Of course, if you already have an app you like, you’re free to continue enjoying it. We will continue to support our free public api,” he said.
Internet cults are difficult to deal with and “Redditors” are not the exception. In general, most of them praise the effort done by the company and hundreds (if not thousands of them) are “beta-testing” the app providing valuable feedback on the original post. Reddit’s team has already fixed many issues with the help of the users and they have actually updated a couple characteristics like the “block user” feature in the inbox.
On the other hand, many users feel betrayed. The official app does not have a lot of things Alien Blue got them used to. There are 3 major things “Redditors” hate about the app.
People are used to tap and hold GIFs in order to preview them without opening the subreddit, but if you want to see a GIF in the new version you have to enter the subreddit and tap a couple of times. This is a big thing with hardcore Alien Blue fans. “Redditors” also love to customize things, but with the new app there are not a lot of options in this regard. Outside the night mode, the default view and the safe for work browsing, there is not really much you can change about it. The interface in Alien Blue was a little more practical and offered a lot of options that the new one does not, like automatically hiding posts with too many down votes, organizing subreddits and a long etc.
All in all, the reception is actually quite good. Most users like the new image and say the official app is much cleaner and easy to use than other versions. It seems you either love it or hate it. There are a lot of people rating the app on the Apple store and most of them are split into 5 stars and 2 stars. Right now, the API has 3.5 stars which is acceptable for the first version of a software.
Source: Reddit