Reddit has become the fastest-growing large social media platform in the UK, overtaking X and reaching half of the country’s online adults.
According to Ofcom’s Online Nation Report, Reddit reached 47% of the UK’s online adults (22.9 million) in May 2024, up from 33% (15.6 million) in May 2023.
As a result of this increase, Reddit rose two positions in the rankings of large social media platforms, overtaking X and LinkedIn to become the fifth most popular service among UK adults.
X’s average monthly reach among online adults in the UK up to August 2024 was 22.2 million, down from 27.9 million in 2021.
YouTube is the most popular large social media, reaching 94% of the UK’s online adults, followed by Facebook/Messenger (91%), Instagram (76%) and then TikTok (51%).
Reddit has benefitted as users have become disaffected with the number of sponsored links inserted into query responses by traditional search engines, like Google. To avoid ads, people have been appending ‘Reddit’ to their searches, in order to find real discussions relating to their query.
The Ofcom report also noted that in 2023, Reddit began charging for access to its Application Programming Interface (API). As a result, some third-party apps that contained Reddit information have disappeared, meaning that the people who used those apps would have to go directly to Reddit to get the same information.
Intelligencer meanwhile notes that Google has begun to prioritise user-generated content in its search results, giving an almost unprecedented boost to Reddit.
In March, Reddit listed on the New York Stock exchange. In its Q3 2024 earnings report, published in October, the company said daily active unique visitors were up 47%, year on year, while ad revenue rose 56% to $315m.
Ofcom (Office of Communications) is the government-sanctioned regulator of communications services in the UK.
Top image by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
