Reddit to buy TikTok competitor Dubsmash

Reddit said Sunday it is buying the video sharing app Dubsmash, a competitor to the widely popular app TikTok. 

Reddit will integrate Dubsmash’s video creation tools into its platform, but Dubsmash will also maintain its own platform and brand, Reddit said in a blog post announcing the deal. 

The acquisition builds on Reddit’s foray into video content. The forum-based platform launched native video in 2017, and Reddit said it has seen sharp growth in users using its video content since, including doubling the amount of videos posted on Reddit in 2020.

Dubsmash’s “entire team,” including its co-founders Suchit Dash, Jonas Drüppel and Tim Specht, will join Reddit, according to the announcement. 

A Reddit spokesperson said the company is not disclosing financial terms of the acquisition. 

Dubsmash was founded in 2013, three years before TikTok launched, and gained popularity as a video-sharing platform that allowed users to lip sync to different audio clips. The app has been downloaded close to 197 million times globally since its launch, according to data from analytics firm Sensor Tower. 

But Dubsmash trails TikTok in downloads. TikTok has been downloaded 2.6 billion times globally since its launch, according to the reported Sensor Tower data. 

TikTok has also seen an increase in installs in 2020, up about 41 percent compared to 2019, while Dubsmash has decreased about 27 percent during the same time period, according to the analytics firm.

Several tech companies have recently launched short-form video-sharing features amid TikTok’s rise in popularity. Facebook-owned Instagram launched Reels, which lets users edit short clips with music, in August, and Snapchat launched a similar feature called Spotlight in November. 

TikTok has faced its own legal challenges in the U.S. 

The Trump administration has sought to overhaul how the Chinese-owned app operates in the U.S. President Trump signed an executive order in August urging ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to sell the app or have it banned in the U.S.

Trump tentatively approved a deal in September that would establish a U.S. headquartered TikTok Global with partial U.S.-based owners, Oracle and Walmart, but it has not been finalized. The deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok passed earlier this month without a final deal being reached or a further deadline extension. 

The Treasury Department said at the time it is still engaging with ByteDance to complete steps for the divestment.

Updated at 12:47 p.m.