Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said there are two types of people coming to social media platforms: rollers and seekers.

Scrollers are the people who come to Reddit's core product, which is a community conversation and brings people to engage with topics they are passionate about, from r/sourdough to r/popculturechat. Then there are the seekers; people who might type a specific query into Google search end up defining "reddit" as "reddit" so they can find real advice and opinions from real people.

Reddit answers are the company's AI-powered chatbot, which verbatim answers and a summary of existing Reddit posts are suitable for seekers. Early results suggest that it has gained appeal.

"Until recently, we haven't built products for them," Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said on the company's first-quarter earnings call on Thursday. "Those moments, these users didn't bring Reddit to the community. They want to answer. I think we can (admit) users take us with us and solve it more effectively."

Reddit announced on the call that its answers product has 1 million active users per week since its launch in December. Last month, Reddit extended the answers to the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and India.

The feature is still in Beta and currently resides in the app's navigation bar as its own standalone experience. Entering 2025, Reddit plans to integrate the answers into the platform in several different ways.

Hoffman said the most obvious way to do this is to integrate the answer into the main search box, which can allow the user to enter a complete query, not just a few keywords.

Executives also said the company is exploring ways to integrate answers into the start of the user journey.

"So you're a new user who's opening Reddit for the first time, use the answer to see what's in Reddit and learn that Reddit is almost certainly what you want," he said.

Another "entry point" to the answer will be "to help (users) get a more summary or easy-to-use version of the answer on Reddit."

This also protects Reddit from the mercy of Google searches. In the fourth quarter of 2024, changes in Google's search algorithm caused some "volatility", and investors at the time were shocked by investors, although Reddit's user growth exceeded estimated returns.

"We are an open platform and we want people to find Reddit content in (Google) searches," Hoffman said. "Open drives awareness and visibility. It can also create variability, and we do expect some bumps from Google because we've seen some this year. It's expected for any year, but given the heavy structure of the search ecosystem, the near-term is likely to be more bumpy than usual."

Reddit's stock surged after-hours trading as the company beat analyst earnings expectations and strong user growth. The company reported revenue of $392.4 million, up 61% year-on-year, adjusted EBITDA of $115.3 million, and daily active unique users of $108.1 million, up 31% year-on-year.

In the second quarter, Reddit estimated revenues between $410 million and $430 million and adjusted EBITDA to $110 million to $130 million.