Reddit has introduced a separate For You feed with personalized recommendations. The platform hopes it will help users discover new communities and keep them engaged in the app longer.
The update will become available to all users worldwide over the next few weeks.
Separating subscriptions and recommendations
Content in the app has been divided into two tabs. The first — is the familiar Following feed, which contains posts only from subreddits that users have subscribed to themselves.
The second tab — is For You. It features popular threads and subreddits similar to the content a user usually reads.
The new tab has been placed first in the app. However, users aren't forced to switch to it: the app opens on the tab they were viewing before they last closed it.
Why the platform needs a separate recommendation feed
People usually spend years browsing the same threads and rarely search for new subreddits. As a result, their feeds become repetitive, and activity in the app gradually declines.
By showing relevant posts in a separate tab, Reddit hopes to increase audience engagement and encourage users to explore new communities. To keep recommendations relevant, users will be able to hide individual posts and directly indicate which topics don't interest them.
What the launch of For You changes for organic traffic
Previously, when driving organic traffic from Reddit, posts received impressions strictly within specific subreddits. To attract an audience and move users through the funnel, a post had to quickly reach the top of its community or generate occasional clicks through keyword searches.
With the introduction of For You, the algorithm will start showing posts in a shared feed to users across the platform. Now, reaching a wider audience won't necessarily require finding large subreddits with lenient moderation: a successful post can appear in recommendations for its target audience, regardless of whether users are subscribed to the community.
As a result, testing campaign setups and redirecting traffic will become easier. If a creative performs well, the platform itself will increase impressions in the shared feed through upvotes and comments.
