Reddit CEO Steve Huffman confirmed in a letter to shareholders about third-quarter performance that the company is moving "to a logged-in-only experience." Reddit will start testing the login requirement in "select," non-US markets in Q4, and will use those tests to decide what a logged-in-only Reddit will look like "globally," according to Huffman.
Huffman said the change will give users "the best Reddit experience possible" and help them find relevant content and communities. He also said it will provide more signals for ad targeting, protect access to Reddit's data corpus, and help the company adapt to emerging regulations. He added that the requirement will help Reddit retain new users.
The move follows a drop in search referral traffic. Huffman wrote that this traffic "was down meaningfully in Q3," with the largest decline coming from logged-out and web traffic. He said search traffic fell by more than 1 million referrals on average per week in October. If that rate continues, he wrote, total daily active unique users (DAUqs) could fall in Q4 by a low-double-digit percentage from the current base of 130 million. Reddit's average DAUqs rose 12 percent year over year in Q3.
Reddit has tested a login requirement on desktop since at least August, according to user reports. As of July, users must be logged in to use Old.Reddit.com, and the company has blocked access to Old Reddit for people who have not logged in within the previous six months. Earlier this year, Reddit began testing a requirement that people use one of its mobile apps to access its mobile website. Huffman said only about 13 percent of eligible mobile web users are seeing the app conversion prompt.
In Q3, Reddit reported net income of $283 million, up 74 percent year over year, on revenue of $895 million, up 53 percent. Source: Ars Technica.