Reddit is updating its mobile app on iOS and Android to emphasize comments, the company said today. The few changes announced are aimed at “removing obstacles and reducing points of friction,” the company wrote in a blog post.
The changes are subtle but add up to comments becoming more of a focal point in the user experience. Comments will now load faster and open in an “instant” when users click on a post's comment icon. Clicking on the comments icon takes users directly to the top comment, essentially skipping the original post.
A “context bar” with the original post will be pinned to the top of the screen with the compressed text, image or video content. Clicking on the thumbnail will take the user back to the original post text or an enlarged image.
The update also streamlines the way users navigate to comments, creating consistency between different types of posts (text, video, and images). Users can now swipe left between new posts and swipe up to go directly to the comments section, regardless of the media type of the original post.
The adjustments suggest that Reddit is working to encourage more engagement through comments and beyond simply reading or viewing posts, but it could lead to some context being lost. For example, I've gotten into the habit of immediately clicking the comments icon on a post with an image (rather than clicking on the image itself) so I can open the entire post without expanding the image. But now if I did that, the app would jump straight to the comments and compress the image and title. In other words, this new feature may cause some people to miss details in a post if they click the comments icon out of habit or forget to scroll up.
