Reddit, a popular social news sharing website, on Wednesday announced its acquisition of Alien Blue, a much-used Reddit-browsing app for iPhone and iPad devices.
"We are pleased to announce that the most popular iOS client for Reddit, Alien Blue, is now an official Reddit app," stated the company blog post.
Notably, the company has kept the Alien Blue name, but has added the tagline "reddit official client". The company has slightly modified the app icon as well, and says it will merge the iPhone and iPad apps into a single universal app in the future. Alien Blue for iPad was previously a $4 app, but the company has now made it free. The company in its blog post announcement said, "To celebrate and ease the move to reddit, everyone can get the Alien Blue Pro upgrade free for one week," referring to both the Pro iPhone and iPad versions.
Alien Blue for iPhone and Alien Blue for iPad versions can now be downloaded from the App Store.
The acquisition also nets Reddit Alien Blue's sole developer, Jase Morrissey. Ellen Pao, Reddit's head of partnerships and strategic development, said about the acquisition, "We want to be able to have new features from Reddit.com show up on mobile faster and better. 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."
Reddit warns current Alien Blue users that the new app is a brand new download, so they will have to install and transfer their settings before removing the old app. The company in the blog post added, "Alien Blue will join the official reddit AMA app in the App Store, along with all the awesome third-party apps for reddit."
Reddit earlier this month announced it had raised $50 million from investors, and said that this time members of its community would get a piece of the action. The infusion of funding, led by Y Combinator president Sam Altman and joined by rapper Snoop Dogg, reportedly gives Reddit a valuation of about $500 million.
In July, the firm also made its live update platform, Live Threads, available to all its users. The update supports embedding of tweets, images, YouTube videos and other links.
Written with agency inputs.
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