Reddit has acquired Alien Blue, the popular mobile app reader that allows people to surf Reddit on the go. It’s turning the app into its official mobile offering, in addition to the Reddit AMA app it released in September.
Until now, Reddit never had an official mobile app, which is shocking given the fact that the user-generated content company has been around for almost a decade and raised $50.1 million in venture. Of course, the funding just came recently.
It looks like Reddit is growing up and moving past its scrappy beginnings. Readers and users are consuming content on the go more and more, leaving their desktops gathering dust. Any content company hoping to grow will need to nail a mobile execution, so it’s not surprising that Reddit’s first big move as a major venture-backed company was to tackle mobile.
It’s been less than a month since Reddit announced its funding, and the acquisition shows it isn’t wasting any time with developing a more mature product. We can expect to see future changes to the site, although the company hasn’t tipped its hat as to what they’ll be. Perhaps cleaner layouts, or ways to surf subreddits if you’re new to the application. As Mathew Ingram has detailed, Reddit will struggle to maintain what made it so special — its no-holds-barred, user-run community — as it attempts to become more appealing to advertisers and mainstream audiences.
The founder of Alien Blue, Jason Morrissey, will be joining the Reddit team, receiving support to back up his product efforts. The match makes sense, not only because Alien Blue was arguably the number one third party Reddit reader, but also because Reddit had already been working with Alien Blue’s founder. “We want to be able to have new features from Reddit.com show up on mobile faster and better,” the company told The New York Times. “With Alien Blue and Jase, it was getting to a point where it was too much work for one person. He was helping us, we were helping him and the fit was really strong.” The app will keep its original Alien Blue name, except for a new Reddit logo.
The pricing will shift slightly, with the Alien Blue iPad app going from $4 to free, with the mobile app staying free and the Pro version staying $2. People who already had the app will have to re-download it, so to lessen the annoyance for prior Pro purchasers, Alien Blue is making its Pro version free for the next week — for everyone, not just former customers.
Get it while it’s hot.

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