Given that Reddit is where Ask Me Anything are held and that’s been in the news for when President Obama took part in an AMA, I know what it is. So in fact I know what each word in the headline means yet when you string it all together like that…
Reddit is a hugely popular online discussion area – at least, it’s hugely popular in a cult kind of secret way. It’s unfair of me but also quicker if I say that the more techie you are, the more you like Reddit. Except that was a coup getting President Obama on and Reddit’s influence and widespread popularity is growing. Yet it still remains a bit of a mess. It reminds me of the old CompuServe where you kind of got used to how it worked, its foibles became a little endearing. But they are foibles nonetheless and non-Reddit people have been trying to fix it.
Perhaps the most successful is Jase Morrissey, maker of an independent Reddit app called Alien Blue. I don’t know why it’s called that. But as of today, Alien Blue is no longer independent. Reddit has bought Alien Blue.
Techcrunch:
If you’re even kind of active on reddit, you probably know of Alien Blue. As far as perusing reddit on iOS goes, it’s pretty much the undisputed champ.
It seems reddit would agree. The company has just taken Alien Blue under its wing, acquiring the project assets and hiring its sole developer.
“Our whole philosphy has been to give our users choice. We’ve got the reddit AMA app, and alienblue coming out… but we really want users to use whatever they want.” says Ellen Pao, reddit’s head of Strategic Partnerships. “We think Alienblue is great, and it’s the most popular reddit app on iOS. We wanted to be able to offer it as a reddit app, and we wanted to help Jase with additional resources to do everything he wanted to do with it.”
It’s a free app but it used to come with paid-for in-app purchases and for a reportedly brief time, those purchases are free too. Read the full piece and then go grab yourself the iOS app if you fancy it.