What happened
During 2017, Reddit introduced Reddit Chat, a real-time direct-messaging system designed to replace the site's antiquated private-message inbox. The feature went live in a limited beta over the summer for roughly 7,000 users, and Reddit publicly detailed it in November 2017. The interface borrowed from mainstream messengers like Facebook's, presenting a pop-up chat window in the lower-right of the screen so users could converse instantly rather than trading slow, email-style private messages.
Reddit started small, initially supporting only one-to-one conversations before adding group messaging in subsequent updates. Chat was part of the company's wider 2017 modernization push and reflected its ambition to keep users engaged on-site rather than coordinating off-platform. Over time, real-time chat and chat channels became a standard part of the Reddit experience and a building block for later community and creator features, gradually supplanting the legacy messaging system that had served the site since its early years.