#Reddit snaps up TikTok rival Dubsmash

Reddit has acquired the Tik Tok-like app Dubsmash, both companies said Sunday, as big tech moves to carve out territory in the lucrative short-form video-sharing market.

In a statement, Reddit said it had been drawn to Dubsmash—which reports over a billion video views a month—because of its commitment to diversity and promoting under-represented voices.

“Both Reddit and Dubsmash share a deep rooted respect for how communities come together,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said.

“Dubsmash elevates under-represented creators, while Reddit fosters a sense of community and belonging across thousands of different topics and passions,” he added.

News of the deal comes as big tech scrambles to acquire space in the massive video-sharing app market following the success of TikTok, which is now under sustained pressure from the US government over its Chinese ownership.

Dubsmash, which allows users to lip-sync to popular music or dance along to their favorite songs, has been described by tech press as the “number two” video-sharing app online.

Neither company has disclosed how much Reddit paid for Dubsmash, though the tech news website The Information earlier this year reported that a similar offer from Facebook had been in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Facebook later opted to develop its own TikTok-like platform, known as “Reels”, as did popular video messaging service Snapchat.

Dubsmash clawed its way back from the brink of collapse following brief success in 2017, with executives rebuilding the company from scratch to become one of the web’s top video sharing platforms.

Its rapid rise has not been without hiccups, however, and last year the company was subject to a massive data breach when hackers obtained and then shared online some 162 million account details.

© 2020 AFP