Compared to Facebook and Twitter, Reddit Has Room to Grow on Mobile

One in 10 US internet users is now on content aggregation site reddit. Its user growth is primarily being fueled by an increasing percentage of people who use the site via mobile, but we estimate that that figure still lags behind Facebook and Twitter mobile users.

reddit will have nearly 30 million logged-in US users in 2019, a 16.1% growth from 2018, which we revised from our previous estimate of 9.8% because of higher-than-expected mobile growth. Our first-ever reddit mobile forecast shows that there will be 19.3 million US mobile users this year, a 49.5% growth from last year. Next year, that figure will be 23.8 million.

We consider a reddit user someone who has an account and logs in at least monthly via any device. Many people peruse reddit without an account, though features like voting, commenting and posting are limited to logged-in users.

The number of people in the US who used reddit on mobile in 2018 made up half of the social platform’s total user base, and that figure will rise to 64.5% this year. By 2020, that share will reach over 70%.

By comparison, the mobile share of reddit’s users is still much smaller than Facebook’s and Twitter’s, whose mobile shares will reach over 90% this year.

This may have to do with reddit content being longer and more engaging—which lends itself to a better experience on desktop—than the quicker, more digestible updates found on Facebook and Twitter. Still, our estimates show that reddit's mobile user base will continue its double-digit growth through 2021.

“reddit has a huge opportunity here—continued investment in their mobile platform could lead to a much wider audience and help close the gap with Twitter and Facebook,” said Nazmul Islam, junior forecasting analyst at eMarketer.

reddit released its mobile app in 2016, which has made the platform more accessible to younger consumers who are accustomed to using social media on their smartphones. The company has been continuously updating its app with additional functionality, and, taking a cue from competitors like YouTube and Twitch, reddit began beta testing livestreaming on its app this summer.