Reddit Acquires Alien Blue iOS App: 'The Alien Has Landed'

"The Alien Has Landed." So said Reddit in a blog posting Wednesday evening announcing that it has acquired Alien Blue, the most popular unofficial app for viewing Reddit.com on Apple iPhones and iPads.

Reddit, the popular and influential site that calls itself "the front page of the Internet," said in the blog post that it will only make minor changes to Alien Blue, a fact that likely comes as a relief to current devotees.

The new Alien Blue features a new icon with an "r" for Reddit in the upper-lefthand corner, and the pricing has been amended slightly. The iPad version of the app will now be free (it previously cost $4), while the iPhone version will remain free with a $2 upgrade to the "pro" version, which includes a number of premium features.

Switching to the new Alien Blue will require downloading a whole new application from the Apple iOS App Store at this link, though it may take a while to show up depending on what part of the world or country you access the App Store from.

Reddit also announced that it hired its first Australian employee, Reddit Blue lead developer Jase Morrissey.

"Now that I'm an official member of the team, I'm hoping to spend even more time doing what I love - building fun and powerful software for all of you," Morrissey said in a statement included in Reddit's blog post announcement. "We’re also continuing to work with other third-party app developers and will continue to do so, because we believe our communities are interested in multiple ways to experience reddit."