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Last year, Reddit announced that it was going to start making original video content for its in-house BuzzFeed, Upvoted.com.
Stephen Greenwood, an ex-Vox Media video guy who joined Reddit last spring along with fellow former Vox-er Jordan Oplinger, left the company today. Oplinger remains video chief at Reddit.
The idea at the time, according to Reddit co-founder and General Manager Alexis Ohanian, was that the team would help turn highly trafficked Reddit content like AMAs into videos.
Reddit declined to tell Recode more about its current plans for video, but news broke in late April that Reddit was pulling resources back from Upvoted and the company was beefing up its ad sales operation to work more closely with big brands like Coca-Cola and Google.
In a statement provided to Recode, Ohanian said that the company’s commitment to video is unwavering, the company is proud of its growth and Reddit’s video team remains otherwise intact. You can read his full statement below, but he says that the effort to integrate more Upvoted-style video into Reddit has “taken longer than expected, because we’ve been busy shipping native mobile and a variety of other engineering projects.”
Meanwhile, Reddit is continuing its push to sign up Cokes and eBays to advertise on the service. Last week, Adweek reported that the company plans to roll out targeted ad tech later this year, and expand its customized content campaigns for advertisers.
Ohanian even attended the ad industry confab in Cannes last week. It looks like he had a pretty good time.
You can read Ohanian’s full statement below:
Upvoted and all the rest of our original content channels (podcast, video, social media) are designed to support Reddit’s growth and brand perception. Our first month had 1.3M MAUs, our second month had 2.2M MAUs (70% growth), at which point we realized that we were on to something and needed to tie in deeper to Reddit.com so we began working on integrating upvoted.com into Reddit itself and started stockpiling content for the relaunch, which will be in the next few months.
It’s taken longer than expected, because we’ve been busy shipping native mobile and a variety of other engineering projects.
* Recode is owned by Vox Media.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
