Social networking site Reddit recently announced that it will close its voice chat function Reddit Talk on March 21, as well as the “Happening Now” page for finding active Talk and Live Chat.
The company said the decision was due to the “significant resources required to support Talk in the short term – exceeding our expectations”.
According to IT Home, Talk was launched in April 2021, when the voice chat room app Clubhouse was all the rage and other social networks followed suit. The reason for stopping its service now is that the third-party voice provider used by Reddit is said to be shutting down.
In its announcement, the company said it didn’t want to deal with this issue while working to simplify its core platform and improve its infrastructure, a point that Reddit chief product officer Pali Bhat discussed recently at Decoder.
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Starting March 21, users will be able to download archives of Talks held after September 1, 2022, and they will be able to download them until June 1. The company said it will provide more details on the download as the shutdown date approaches.
While Reddit says voice has a place in its goal of “becoming the community’s default home,” it hasn’t provided any timeline for when voice features or Talk itself will return.
Meanwhile, Reddit is rolling out other features to compete with video platforms like TikTok, including the ability to develop separate video and text streams, allowing users to focus on one form of content.
