Reddit launches a new developer portal to give third-party apps and bots a boost

techcrunch.com:

Any Redditor knows that the best thing about Reddit is bearing witness to the strange and occasionally brilliant stuff that the community itself comes up with — and the company is well aware of that too.

Reddit is announcing today that it will open up a waitlist for developers who want to build software for the platform using a new toolkit from the company. The company plans to pair the new toolkit with a directory of third-party software extensions that moderators and Redditors alike can browse from to craft a custom Reddit experience.

The new portal will offer tools and other resources to empower devs to build software extensions to enhance the social network’s existing experience. Many well-loved tools by third-party developers are already ubiquitous on the platform, running unobtrusively in the background of subreddits and popping up to automatically paste the text of tweets, translate a post into a different language or send users timed reminders when prompted.

“As we allow more UI customization, we expect redditors and moderators to customize their communities to match their unique needs and tastes,” Reddit Chief Product Officer Pali Bhat told TechCrunch.

Beyond providing useful perks that make using Reddit more convenient, extensions can provide some essential utility too. Some bots already boost accessibility for visually-impaired users and offer moderators a more comprehensive set of tools for keeping communities safe and abiding by the rules. Others are more whimsical, like the infamous Yoda bots that invert comments into Yoda-like syntax — or less whimsical, in the case of Reddit’s rampant spellcheck bots that ping users for misspelled words.

Reddit will open the waitlist for the beta of its developer platform