Reddit acquires popular third-party Reddit-browsing app Alien Blue

Reddit is already putting last month’s $50 million capital raising round to good use, taking on Australian developer and software engineer Jason “Jase” Morrissey, whose popular third-party Alien Blue app has been acquired by the community news sharing site. “We are pleased to announce that the most popular iOS client for Reddit, Alien Blue, is now an official Reddit app,” the company said in a blog post. “We’re also happy to say that its lead developer, Jase Morrissey, has joined us as our first Aussie. We have been working closely with Jase for the past several years, and are thrilled to officially welcome him to our team.”

If you’re even kind of active on reddit, you probably know of Alien Blue. As far as perusing reddit on iOS goes, it’s pretty much the undisputed champ. It seems reddit would agree. The company has just taken Alien Blue under its wing, acquiring the project assets and hiring its sole developer. We heard whispers of this deal going back a few weeks. While reddit isn’t disclosing terms, they’ve just confirmed to me that they’ve acquired the Alien Blue project and that its Melbourne-based developer, Jase Morrissey, will be joining their team. Curiously, reddit seems to hesitate in calling the app their “official iOS reader” — they’re keeping the “Alien Blue” name, for example, rather than changing it to just be called “reddit” or “reddit reader” or something. If they’re not taking Alien Blue and strapping their name on it, why buy it? “Our whole philosphy has been to give our users choice. We’ve got the reddit AMA app, and alienblue coming out… but we really want users to use whatever they want.” says Ellen Pao, reddit’s head of Strategic Partnerships. “We think Alienblue is great, and it’s the most popular reddit app on iOS. We wanted to be able to offer it as a reddit app, and we wanted to help Jase with additional resources to do everything he wanted to do with it.”