Social news site and host of thousands of weird online forums, Reddit, is opening an Australian office.
It’s a move that will see the popular site head down under in an attempt to expand its business operations.
On July 11, Reddit issued an official statement declaring that they would open an office in Barangaroo, Sydney, “to help fulfill … [their] mission … [of] bring[ing] community and belonging to everyone in the world”.
According to the forum site, Australia is the “fourth-largest user base and growing at 40% year over year”. After successfully launching in Canada and the United Kingdom, Reddit sees Australia as another golden business opportunity.
In the statement, Jen Wong, the Chief Operating Officer at Reddit, had this to say regarding the news:
“We’ve been fortunate to experience strong organic growth from our Australian user base in recent years, and with this comes a significant opportunity to level-up our local offering in a more focussed and nuanced way.”
We’re excited to see Reddit’s expansion with a new office in Sydney, Australia! I am currently writing up my latest research about live-streaming experiences on Reddit for my next book. https://t.co/Qytd3EoNVg
— Dr Faye Miller (@feliqzm) July 15, 2021
“From building out our highly engaged Australian communities to finding homes for local brands on the platform, this launch is just the beginning of our investment in the market and key to our wider international vision as we continue to scale Reddit at pace.”
But what does this mean? Essentially, Reddit’s Australian office will connect local brands to the thousands of communities on its site “through advertising campaigns, scalable solutions and trends and insight offerings”.
And with its daily 52 million users, all of whom engage in passionate online discussions about anything and everything, it will provide great exposure for Australian businesses.
“One of the benefits of having dedicated resources on the ground is that local users can build local communities and with local context,” Wong said. “And as a result, what we can do is also serve local advertisers and bring them onto our ad platform.”
G’day, Australia! I have so many fond memories of visiting offices in Sydney (and Melbourne) pitching @reddit over the years and excited there’s gonna be a full-time team there now 🇦🇺 https://t.co/v4xBAPDR4E
— AlexisOhanian.eth 7️⃣7️⃣6️⃣ (@alexisohanian) July 12, 2021
It appears that the new team will be fairly small.
In their statement, Reddit named “Community, Engineering and Sales staff, as well as Country Manager, David Ray” (who has worked in similar roles for companies such as Telstra, Amazon and Twitter) and Tariq Mahmoud (Reddit’s Head of International) who will oversee Australian business.
The Australian team will work under “Reddit’s EVP and President [of] Global Advertising, Harold Klaje”.
Founded by American entrepreneurs, Alexis Ohanian, Aaron Swartz and Steve Huffman, Reddit’s popularity amongst Australians is undeniable. Australians spend an average of 31 minutes per day on the site, while also contributing “158 million posts, comments and votes”.
The subreddit “r/australia” is the most popular among users.
The finance-focused forums, “r/ausfinance and r/asx_bets”, are also incredibly popular with sports, property, ask an Australian and Australian teachers also gaining traction in recent years.
