Each time a website shuts shop and perches on to the app space, it sends across a reminder on the future course of the internet, how the World Wide Web aka www, in the years to come, might be just another bookmark in the history of the evolution of information space. Why look elsewhere when a jungle of e-marts out there swap websites with apps overnight?
The canon is evolving, growing wider and bigger. Heard the latest? The ‘front page of the internet’, as it refers itself, Reddit —an entertainment, and social news networking site — has stepped into palmtop from desktop, releasing its very first official app for iOS and Android platforms in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. Further expansion is most-likely.
The first-look of the app clearly shows the face-lift from the complexities of a cumbersome, cluttered homepage of the website to a well-trimmed handy image of what the e-buzz terms as a 'card view'. Though there are several third-party apps from Reddit, the built-in-house kind is a first. The purpose is clear — to channelise the resources, efforts, and focus over to the new release. This far, Alien Blue, acquired by Reddit back in October 2014, has been holding the official app title.
“This gets redditors to their content and communities, and with as little extra fluff as we can get away with,” The Washington Post quotes Alex Le, Reddit’s vice president of consumer product. “We saw that Web traffic was 50 per cent mobile,” he adds.
Alien Blue users’ suggestions were collected by the design team of Reddit before the launch. The popular Night Mode (a feature facilitating readability in dim lit conditions) of the website is copied over to the app, a reason why it is called a ‘souped-up version of Alien Blue’. Users are put at ease to navigate long-winding textual sessions with the new add-on ‘speed read.’
The feather-weight size, of just 4.8 MB, makes it an easy download in less than five seconds. It comes close on the heels of the iPhone version ditching Alien Blue as the site’s official mobile client. But its paid-iPad version would continue to stay till Reddit conceives a dedicated one for tab. Reddit offers the users a take-off period bonus — a one week free trial of ad-free gold membership.
