Reddit adds real-time chat features, real-time vote counting, and more.

Reddit is once again making some changes and adding features to make it more modern and competitive compared to other social websites and apps.

For years, the number of comments and votes on Reddit posts only updated when you refreshed the page or when you upvoted or downvoted something. Now a little animation will play every time someone upvotes or downvotes a post, and the number will update in real time even if you don’t refresh the page.

Likewise, a new dropdown comment bar will let you know how many new comments have been added while viewing a post. “When a Reddit editor clicks on the new comment indicator, comments will be sorted by new and live comments will be highlighted in real time,”Reddit ‘s blog post reads.

This is something we’ve already seen in many other social apps. For example, Facebook has long had a typing indicator that tells you when your friends are preparing a message or comment for you.

All of the new features serve more or less the same purpose: to make Reddit posts more active, with live updates that let users know what’s changing in a conversation as they view it, and encourage users to engage more actively. (Page engagement is a key metric that apps and websites track to judge the success of a content or platform.)

It’s hard to overestimate Reddit’s impact on the internet as a whole, but the social network struggles to monetize its users to the same extent as its competitors and lags behind the competition in some performance metrics like engagement.

These changes put an increasing focus on live interaction, and they’re probably not the last we’ll see as we move the platform in that particular direction.

The changes began rolling out to all iOS, Android and web users today. The new features are only available to users using the new Reddit design. While you can still access the old Reddit, it won’t receive any updates – hence the “old”Reddit.

Disclosure: Advance Publications owns a majority stake in Reddit. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica.