Reddit has announced the acquisition of Dubsmash in a move that highlights the firm's interest in the global video-sharing market.
Announced on Sunday[1], the link aggregation and discussion platform, which offers countless forums for different topics, said that Dubsmash fills a gap for video "creators and users who are under-represented in social media," and matches Reddit's own ethos for "bringing community and belonging to everyone in the world."
Founded in 2014, New York-based Dubsmash is a small company co-founded by Suchit Dash, Jonas Drüppel, and Tim Specht that has created Android and iOS apps for users to 'dub' themselves with audio from television, film, and music.
Dubsmash has previously raised $20.2 million[2] from investors. The financial terms of Reddit's purchase were not disclosed.
When you think of user-generated video content, TikTok comes to mind. The Chinese platform, owned by ByteDance, has enjoyed runaway success in the past few years especially with younger generations -- but the US government's "national security[3]" concerns over both TikTok and WeChat forced ByteDance to begin the process of selling its US assets to Oracle and Walmart[4] this year.
Nonetheless, Dubsmash is one of the few apps in the market to be considered a rival to TikTok. The company claims [5]that its apps now account for over 350 million installs, with over six billion videos created by users.
TikTok has an estimated 50 million[6] daily active US users, but when you consider Reddit will open up an avenue to attract Dubsmash usage for its own 52 million[7] daily active users, we could be seeing the start of a company more able to chip away at the dominance of the video app giant.