Reddit’s Retiring its ‘Live Chat’ Option in Subreddit Communities

After trying out another way to spark real-time conversation in the app, Reddit has announced that it’s sunsetting its “Live Chat” option within communities.

Which is actually one of several live engagement options that Reddit has tried, and it’s important to clarify which is which, and which is actually being shut down with this announcement.

Back in April, Reddit relaunched its “Chat Channels” option, as part of a new experiment to spark more conversation in the app. That’s still available, while Reddit has also tried live audio chats and live streaming, which generated varying degrees of interest, but ultimately didn’t catch on.

Live Chat is another, separate element, providing a means to create live text-based conversations within the posting process.

But that will soon be no more, according to the latest Reddit changelog listing.

As per Reddit:

“In an effort to streamline our chat products on Reddit, we have sunset live chat posts by disabling the live chat post setting for new and existing communities. There will be no changes to your existing live chat posts until early 2024. At that time, your existing live chat posts will be converted to standard posts with comments.”

Reddit says that Chat Channels will still be available, so you will still have ways to host live discussions in the app. But Live Chat will be gone, removing another real-time interactive option in the app.

Will that have a significant impact?

I mean, probably not, considering that Reddit is shutting it down due to limited usage. You also do have an alternative option, so you will still be able to conduct live chats, in a way. You’ll just have one less option to tap into,

But if you have been using live chats, you’ll need to change tack, while it could also have some impacts on some subreddit engagement.

On another front, Reddit’s also looking to improve related subreddit discovery, via a new topic ranking listing at the top of certain communities.

As you can see in this example, by tapping on the topic and ranking, you’ll then be directed to a list of communities within that same topic group.

That could be a good way to expand Reddit discovery, and get more users engaging in more related communities.

You can read more on the Reddit Changelog for December.