Reddit’s looking to add more lively indicators of activity to its subreddit headers, with a switch in the metrics displayed that aims to showcase how people are actively engaging within each community.
As you can see in this example, Reddit’s switching from the current “Member count” display to new listings of both active visitors in a community, and activity levels per week (based on rolling 28-day average).
That’ll give you a better idea of relative activity and discussion within each community, which could be a more attractive guide for visitors.
As explained by Reddit:
“Member counts don’t tell the whole story. In most cases, redditors don’t need to be a member of a community to post or comment, which means member totals have never fully reflected true engagement. With this update, Reddit becomes one of the first major platforms to publicly display active participation, focusing on meaningful, real-time engagement rather than subscriber numbers.”
Reddit says that the emphasis on active participation over passive membership will better highlight what makes Reddit unique: “Real people engaging in real conversations.”
It’s an interesting shift, which other platforms wouldn’t do, because it would look way less engaging than their topline data points. For example, X claims to have 600 million monthly active users, but if you saw that only a thousand of them are engaging in a specific topic, that wouldn’t look as impressive. It would also belie the focus of X, as the global town square, with that focus being on broader discussion and engagement among the whole X community.
But on Reddit, community is a strength, and smaller groups make for more engaged, intelligent discussion. And Reddit must also be confident that its most popular subreddits will see enough activity to underline its value as a key driver of related discussion.
Though Reddit’s already winning on that front. The platform is now known as a key connector for human-centric insights, powered by its highly engaged communities. Indeed, recent research showed that Reddit is the most referenced source for AI answers, and with more brands looking to get into those AI overviews on Google, you can bet that Reddit’s getting more attention in this respect either way.
These new indicators, then, could end up being a powerful guide for brand research and market knowledge.
