After a few months of beta testing, Reddit has officially launched embeddable comments. Like Twitter’s embedded tweets feature, embeddable comments makes it easy for other sites to feature comments from Reddit users. Instead of cutting-and-pasting a comment or linking back to it, writers just have to click on its permalink and select “embed” for its code.
The feature is only available for comments on public subreddits, which will come as a relief to users on private subreddits who don’t want their thoughts potentially plastered all over the Internet.
There are several drawbacks, however, to embedding Reddit comments, like questionable usernames:
(As with any feature rollout, there are hiccups and embeddable comments are not currently showing up for me on WordPress, though the links work).
Furthermore, as the Unidan imbroglio underscored last year, even the most respected and karma-laden users may not be completely trustworthy sources of information, which is something for news organizations to keep in mind if they want to mine Reddit threads for content.
On the other hand, embeddable comments may help Reddit build a higher mainstream profile and in turn allow it to attract more users and advertisers.
Despite being a content farm for popular sites like Buzzfeed, the self-proclaimed “front page of the Internet” with about 150 million unique visitors per month, and hosting AMAs with extremely prominent people like Barack Obama, Reddit is still figuring out how to monetize successfully without alienating its core user base.
This is especially important for the company since it raised $50 million Series B at a $500 million valuation last September, from investors including Sam Altman, Andreesen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital.
TechCrunch has contacted Reddit for more information on how embeddable comments fits into its business strategy.