Reddit acquires popular iOS Reddit app Alien Blue

Community news sharing site Reddit today announced that it has purchased popular third-party iOS Reddit app Alien Blue.

Alien Blue is probably the most preferred Reddit iOS app for the majority of regular Reddit users — including some of the original Reddit employees, who decided to forgo development on their own in-house official Reddit app in favor of using it. In other words, it was unofficially the official Reddit iOS app anyway.

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The move comes weeks after Reddit closed a massive $50 million round of funding from a handful of notable tech entrepreneurs. That said, it makes sense that the company would use its new funding to bring Alien Blue officially into the fold, which was probably a far more attractive option than creating its own app from scratch. The acquisition also comes a month after Reddit released a standalone iOS app focused on its AMA subreddit, as VentureBeat previously reported.

Reddit said the current version of Alien Blue will remain the same, but it will pop up as an independent download. (So if you see two versions of Alien Blue, the one with the new app logo design is from Reddit.) And as an added bonus, Reddit is even offering the Alien Blue “Pro” upgrade for free to anyone that downloads the app over the next week.

As part of the acquisition, Reddit is also hiring on talented developer and Alien Blue creator Jase Morrissey to continue his work on the app. We’ve previously gushed about some of Morrissey’s other applications, such as his third-party YouTube iOS app Jasmine, so we’re really excited to see what else he comes up with now that he’s at Reddit proper.