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Other people are saying "ads," but the story is probably more expansive. Mobile apps have better hooks for pulling people back into the app, like popup notifica

Other people are saying "ads," but the story is probably more expansive. Mobile apps have better hooks for pulling people back into the app, like popup notifications. Reddit has natural lifecycle points where they can do this: when people respond to your comments or comment on your posts. They could also notify users of events like their yearly Secret Santa. I wouldn't be surprised if their engagement numbers were much better on mobile: since they can draw users back into the app with notifications, they have better ad views, more people buy Reddit Gold, more people comment (which leads to other people having content to read), etc.

nevf1 6y ago
Yep, I think ads is just another way of saying monetization. The app has lots of annoying notifications like "You might like...", "You got 100 upvotes", etc which, when you engage with more, they make more money through ads, coins etc. Your attention, retention and engagement is a lot easier to manage and increase through an app than it is through website.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Instead of direct monetization, they probably measure by engagement. If a service has a permanent presence on your device, you get a LOT more engagement and recurring visits than a web version. Websites on mobile are one-time, visit-and-forget/move on things. I'd love to be proven wrong though; what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage? Also not to be underestimated is that a mobile app will always have better UX than a website. Think of the subtle things like page transitions. Navigating Reddit still causes full-page reloads, whereas on the app it's a much more organic process. Speed is also an important factor.
  - allerhellsten 6y ago
    Exactly this. To give you a datapoint from our properties: Our web site attracts 90% of the users, but only 60% of the actual traffic. In all metrics like retention, frequency and time on site, mobile leads by factors of 2-5. Part of that is definitely self-selection, but as some people already said, other notable effects are push notifications, mindshare, loss aversion (you're on somebody's device already, so they can just as well use it) and partly better performance. So much about the users, but Monetization is much better as well, mostly due to mobile ad-IDs, which especially on iOS lets you extract double the revenue per user due to targeting. Ad blockers are harder to bypass. In the end, a mobile app will get you anywhere between 2-10x the revenue per user you attracted to your property, so that's why Reddit is pushing so hard. To stay in Reddit's lingo though: `LPT: https://old.reddit.com` https://old.reddit.com`
    - GekkePrutser 6y ago
      I understand, but they're also pushing many users away with this behaviour. It's what I like about HN.. It feels like they don't even care how much users 'engage'. I bet they don't even run a report on it. They just let us do our thing here and not worry about it. As a user this is a much nicer experience.
      - PakG1 6y ago
        Easy for HN to do that. HN is not incentivized to make money. The people who run HN do not care if HN does not make any money. In fact, they have zero monetization strategies for HN.
        zozbot234 6y ago
        HN has ads on its front page. Not many of them, and they are quite hard to spot at a glance (mixed in with the content, not clearly marked as such) but they're there.
        fauigerzigerk 6y ago
        I've never seen an ad on HN. They must be really hard to spot.
        waterhouse 6y ago
        There's currently one on the frontpage for GiveCampus, shown below a regular story: 14. The Haunted House – Privacy on Google Street View (harpers.org) 8 points by b0b10101 1 hour ago | flag | hide | 1 comment 15. GiveCampus (YC S15) hiring Sr Engineers who care about education (lever.co) 1 hour ago | hide Distinctive features: no upvote button, no point value, no flag link, no comments.
        fauigerzigerk 6y ago
        14. "The Haunted House" is not an ad as far as I can see. It does have an upvote button. 15. is a job posting by a YC company. Perhaps you could classify it as an ad, but I see it as a perk that YC grants its own companies.
  - badassiel 6y ago
    someone compared mobile and web (with data from study) as Web, easier to attract, difficult to retain and vice versa for mobile. Could be the reason why web to app migration practices are followed. best of both worlds.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    > what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage? Reddit Do you really think that people would stop going to reddit if they used the site instead of the app on their mobile? (But, of course, the people more prone to recurring visits are more likely to install an app.) > mobile app will always have better UX than a website And again, it's reddit we are talking about here. The app experience is just horrible.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  They really hurt their own monetisation by making the subscriptions too expensive though. They more than doubled in price recently. It's not worth the price anymore for me.
- RealStickman_ 6y ago
  It's also interesting to note that the old ui on a desktop does not have these useless messages you mentioned.
mxcrossb 6y ago
I think this must be why they require you to register an account to read reddit now.
julianwachholz 6y ago
Yet all of this could also be easily done with a PWA that could present with a much less intrusive "add to homescreen" bar.
- FreakyT 6y ago
  Not on iOS! PWAs can't send push notifications on that platform, ever.
  - robin_reala 6y ago
    It’s been under consideration recently, though what the current internal consensus is is anyone’s guess. https://twitter.com/othermaciej/status/1170808259264958464 https://twitter.com/othermaciej/status/1170808259264958464
  - chromedev 6y ago
    Fortunately Apple can't prevent PWAs from telling users that Apple is the reason they can't have good things. I'm disappointed however in Apple also blocking PWA's from the App Store.
    - briandear 6y ago
      Despite what many might think, everything doesn’t need to be an “app,” PWA or otherwise. Reddit is literally a message board, one of the earliest types of website. It doesn’t need my location — ever. Email works just fine as a notification, if I want it as a “push” notification, I could VIP-enable the notification email address in Mail. Does Reddit need my accelerometer? Or direct access to my camera or microphone? Or address book? Or graphics APIs like Metal? Nope. It’s just a message board. Sell contextual ads for the different subreddits, don’t bother tracking people, and be done with it. Of course that would likely require a significantly smaller workforce.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        What are you on about? Being a PWA doesn't mean it needs to access any of those things. And no, email does not fit all the same use cases as notifications.
jawns 6y ago
There are so many mobile apps out there that are little more than wrappers around the mobile site -- but it's vital that they be apps for precisely this reason. Neverthless, as a user, it drives me crazy; I just want to access the site in my browser. What we are starting to see is web push notifications becoming fully supported by browsers, and I think it's only a matter of time before iOS and Android start allowing app-like websites to notify users without them having to download a full-fledged app. It would be interesting to see what this does for the iOS and Android development landscape. They're in a golden age now where every major property needs both a mobile site and a dedicated app on both platforms. But if the mobile site can handle more features that were previously the sole provenance of native apps, that seems likely to shift the landscape.
- vanviegen 6y ago
  Android support for browser notifications landed in Chrome mobile about five years ago. (And yes, that included support for Android versions that were old even then.) iOS still has no support, and nothing even on the horizon, as far as I know. Apple is intentionally holding back the open web. I find this infuriating.
  - mark_l_watson 6y ago
    I will somewhat reluctantly support Apple on this. There are no web sites that I want to allow interrupting my work/writing flow with notifications. Also, the new awesome privacy settings in Safari on the beta iOS and beta iPadOS and beta macOS Bug Sur are very much appreciated, at least by me.
    - loh 6y ago
      I'm personally not a fan of notification spam either, but I would assume that notifications via mobile browsers would be opt-in. Is that a bad assumption?
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        It is not, I haven't seen a browser for which notifications weren't opt in.
mcintyre1994 6y ago
They also keep adding new stupid in-app notifications (I have OS notifications blocked for them) which ironically you have to use the website to disable. "Trending" stuff in subreddits you're not even in and suggested subreddits and garbage like that. I assume that rubbish does become an OS notification if you let them.
- macNchz 6y ago
  Those kind of “nagifications” are among my biggest pet peeves on the modern internet. Almost every social platform these days abuses the notifications icon to show you a bunch of not-actually-a-notification garbage to boost your engagement. LinkedIn is especially egregious in this regard.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    Someone actually installed a LinkedIn mobile app? May I ask why?
    - maxk42 6y ago
      LinkedIn actually disables some features, including certain types of messaging on their mobile site when not accessing it via the mobile app. Infuriating.
      - boring_twenties 6y ago
        Are people using LinkedIn messaging for anything other than occasionally responding to recruiters? Can't that just wait until you get home?
      - philsnow 6y ago
        Yelp doesn't let you see more than a few photos in mobile web; if you switch to desktop view you can see all the photos but of course all the dimensions are janky.
        6y ago
bemmu 6y ago
Also Reddit can offer IAP more easily, since users won't need to input their CC info again inside Reddit.
TheRealWatson 6y ago
What you said is all true but it still boils down to getting people to see more ads. I'm not sure how big a part of their revenue Reddit Gold is.
Ozzie_osman 6y ago
This is correct. It's about retention more than monetization. With the app, you can not only send notifications, but you also have the app icon which reminds people of the apps existence. Even little things like "badging" (when the app icon shows a dot or number to indicate new notifications) and even that can have a noticeable impact on retention (we're all programmed to click into anything with a notification). Also, they can recommend better content for you. I don't know if this is still possible and whether reddit does it, but an app used to be able to get the list of other apps installed on the phone, and many companies used that as an input into their recommendation systems (along with your location, etc).
- mbesto 6y ago
  > retention more than monetization FWIW, retention is monetization.
  - spenczar5 6y ago
    I don’t see how. Can you explain how a company makes revenue purely by retaining users? I think they still need a monetization scheme separately. [edited for clarity]
    - tehbeard 6y ago
      In the context of Reddit, it's only a no-ad website if you're running adblock.
      - spenczar5 6y ago
        Sorry, I was unclear - I was trying to pose a hypothetical, not to say Reddit has no monetization.
    - mbesto 6y ago
      Retaining users means: - You can sell ads to them - You can continue to sell ads to them A proxy, if you will. For a for profit business, what other reason is there if not to drive some monetary value.
maurys 6y ago
Would there be confounding variables though? Users who have the app are anyways likely to be the ones who use Reddit more so naturally it has much higher engagement than on a browser.
- Enginerrrd 6y ago
  Yes! And as a general rule, it's safe to assume their marketing department isn't interested in that issue. Marketing departments can't help but market themselves too, and if BS numbers make them look good even to the detriment of the company, it's almost a sure bet you'll see them do that.
AgloeDreams 6y ago
Yup, many companies I've worked for see push notifications as the raison d'être for apps.
- seppin 6y ago
  I mean, most companies are mobile companies now, and the app is the only thing that matters to them.
  - AgloeDreams 6y ago
    I mean even existing non-mobile companies.
robbyking 6y ago
Not to mention analytics. There are a ton of third party frameworks that make it very easy to see where the bottlenecks and friction points are in your app. It's standard practice.
pmarreck 6y ago
Apparently the only platform that you can't send notifications direct from websites on is iOS. So that needs to get fixed, and then this problem might go away naturally
charlesju 6y ago
Also helps them rank higher on app store which is a discovery engine
kevincox 6y ago
Of course on web they have email. Of course that only actually works about 5% of the time. No wonder their retention numbers are trash...
propogandist 6y ago
it's more expansive, as in more data that can be mined for adverting purposes. I got a presentation from Reddit a few of years ago on their ad-platform and it was terrible (for enterprises). Their sales team were hyping big changes and things that were coming including geo-location, strong user profiling etc. This was pre-redesign and it became clear what they were doing and their roadmap of features all were to grow the ad business. Mobile makes sense as it's how their key audiences consume content and it enables stronger profiling, richer engagement and better ad-targeting due to persistance. The mobile app allows reddit to mine user behavior (every outbound link click is tracked, even on the desktop website) and then they're able to link your device profile, to content you consume and engage with. This can be used for ad-targeting or sold to other data brokers to build a richer profile about ABC user with this device, across XY IPs, typically based in ZZZ location.
m463 6y ago
It is monetization. A guy I know worked for a PC manufacturer years ago. The offered a windows version of a machine, and folks asked why they didn't offer a linux version. A linux version would cost more money, because they made a non-trivial amount of money by loading up the PC with shovelware. I've seen this countless times at companies. The decision makers do not want to greenlight projects that do not make money, or worse that cost them money. So I think if you follow the money you'll find a mobile app makes them more money.

nevf1 6y ago

Yep, I think ads is just another way of saying monetization. The app has lots of annoying notifications like "You might like...", "You got 100 upvotes", etc which, when you engage with more, they make more money through ads, coins etc. Your attention, retention and engagement is a lot easier to manage and increase through an app than it is through website.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Instead of direct monetization, they probably measure by engagement. If a service has a permanent presence on your device, you get a LOT more engagement and recurring visits than a web version. Websites on mobile are one-time, visit-and-forget/move on things. I'd love to be proven wrong though; what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage? Also not to be underestimated is that a mobile app will always have better UX than a website. Think of the subtle things like page transitions. Navigating Reddit still causes full-page reloads, whereas on the app it's a much more organic process. Speed is also an important factor.
- allerhellsten 6y ago
  Exactly this. To give you a datapoint from our properties: Our web site attracts 90% of the users, but only 60% of the actual traffic. In all metrics like retention, frequency and time on site, mobile leads by factors of 2-5. Part of that is definitely self-selection, but as some people already said, other notable effects are push notifications, mindshare, loss aversion (you're on somebody's device already, so they can just as well use it) and partly better performance. So much about the users, but Monetization is much better as well, mostly due to mobile ad-IDs, which especially on iOS lets you extract double the revenue per user due to targeting. Ad blockers are harder to bypass. In the end, a mobile app will get you anywhere between 2-10x the revenue per user you attracted to your property, so that's why Reddit is pushing so hard. To stay in Reddit's lingo though: `LPT: https://old.reddit.com` https://old.reddit.com`
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    I understand, but they're also pushing many users away with this behaviour. It's what I like about HN.. It feels like they don't even care how much users 'engage'. I bet they don't even run a report on it. They just let us do our thing here and not worry about it. As a user this is a much nicer experience.
    - PakG1 6y ago
      Easy for HN to do that. HN is not incentivized to make money. The people who run HN do not care if HN does not make any money. In fact, they have zero monetization strategies for HN.
      - zozbot234 6y ago
        HN has ads on its front page. Not many of them, and they are quite hard to spot at a glance (mixed in with the content, not clearly marked as such) but they're there.
        fauigerzigerk 6y ago
        I've never seen an ad on HN. They must be really hard to spot.
        waterhouse 6y ago
        There's currently one on the frontpage for GiveCampus, shown below a regular story: 14. The Haunted House – Privacy on Google Street View (harpers.org) 8 points by b0b10101 1 hour ago | flag | hide | 1 comment 15. GiveCampus (YC S15) hiring Sr Engineers who care about education (lever.co) 1 hour ago | hide Distinctive features: no upvote button, no point value, no flag link, no comments.
        fauigerzigerk 6y ago
        14. "The Haunted House" is not an ad as far as I can see. It does have an upvote button. 15. is a job posting by a YC company. Perhaps you could classify it as an ad, but I see it as a perk that YC grants its own companies.
- badassiel 6y ago
  someone compared mobile and web (with data from study) as Web, easier to attract, difficult to retain and vice versa for mobile. Could be the reason why web to app migration practices are followed. best of both worlds.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  > what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage? Reddit Do you really think that people would stop going to reddit if they used the site instead of the app on their mobile? (But, of course, the people more prone to recurring visits are more likely to install an app.) > mobile app will always have better UX than a website And again, it's reddit we are talking about here. The app experience is just horrible.
GekkePrutser 6y ago
They really hurt their own monetisation by making the subscriptions too expensive though. They more than doubled in price recently. It's not worth the price anymore for me.
RealStickman_ 6y ago
It's also interesting to note that the old ui on a desktop does not have these useless messages you mentioned.

mxcrossb 6y ago

I think this must be why they require you to register an account to read reddit now.

julianwachholz 6y ago

Yet all of this could also be easily done with a PWA that could present with a much less intrusive "add to homescreen" bar.

FreakyT 6y ago
Not on iOS! PWAs can't send push notifications on that platform, ever.
- robin_reala 6y ago
  It’s been under consideration recently, though what the current internal consensus is is anyone’s guess. https://twitter.com/othermaciej/status/1170808259264958464 https://twitter.com/othermaciej/status/1170808259264958464
- chromedev 6y ago
  Fortunately Apple can't prevent PWAs from telling users that Apple is the reason they can't have good things. I'm disappointed however in Apple also blocking PWA's from the App Store.
  - briandear 6y ago
    Despite what many might think, everything doesn’t need to be an “app,” PWA or otherwise. Reddit is literally a message board, one of the earliest types of website. It doesn’t need my location — ever. Email works just fine as a notification, if I want it as a “push” notification, I could VIP-enable the notification email address in Mail. Does Reddit need my accelerometer? Or direct access to my camera or microphone? Or address book? Or graphics APIs like Metal? Nope. It’s just a message board. Sell contextual ads for the different subreddits, don’t bother tracking people, and be done with it. Of course that would likely require a significantly smaller workforce.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      What are you on about? Being a PWA doesn't mean it needs to access any of those things. And no, email does not fit all the same use cases as notifications.

jawns 6y ago

There are so many mobile apps out there that are little more than wrappers around the mobile site -- but it's vital that they be apps for precisely this reason. Neverthless, as a user, it drives me crazy; I just want to access the site in my browser. What we are starting to see is web push notifications becoming fully supported by browsers, and I think it's only a matter of time before iOS and Android start allowing app-like websites to notify users without them having to download a full-fledged app. It would be interesting to see what this does for the iOS and Android development landscape. They're in a golden age now where every major property needs both a mobile site and a dedicated app on both platforms. But if the mobile site can handle more features that were previously the sole provenance of native apps, that seems likely to shift the landscape.

vanviegen 6y ago
Android support for browser notifications landed in Chrome mobile about five years ago. (And yes, that included support for Android versions that were old even then.) iOS still has no support, and nothing even on the horizon, as far as I know. Apple is intentionally holding back the open web. I find this infuriating.
- mark_l_watson 6y ago
  I will somewhat reluctantly support Apple on this. There are no web sites that I want to allow interrupting my work/writing flow with notifications. Also, the new awesome privacy settings in Safari on the beta iOS and beta iPadOS and beta macOS Bug Sur are very much appreciated, at least by me.
  - loh 6y ago
    I'm personally not a fan of notification spam either, but I would assume that notifications via mobile browsers would be opt-in. Is that a bad assumption?
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      It is not, I haven't seen a browser for which notifications weren't opt in.

mcintyre1994 6y ago

They also keep adding new stupid in-app notifications (I have OS notifications blocked for them) which ironically you have to use the website to disable. "Trending" stuff in subreddits you're not even in and suggested subreddits and garbage like that. I assume that rubbish does become an OS notification if you let them.

macNchz 6y ago
Those kind of “nagifications” are among my biggest pet peeves on the modern internet. Almost every social platform these days abuses the notifications icon to show you a bunch of not-actually-a-notification garbage to boost your engagement. LinkedIn is especially egregious in this regard.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  Someone actually installed a LinkedIn mobile app? May I ask why?
  - maxk42 6y ago
    LinkedIn actually disables some features, including certain types of messaging on their mobile site when not accessing it via the mobile app. Infuriating.
    - boring_twenties 6y ago
      Are people using LinkedIn messaging for anything other than occasionally responding to recruiters? Can't that just wait until you get home?
    - philsnow 6y ago
      Yelp doesn't let you see more than a few photos in mobile web; if you switch to desktop view you can see all the photos but of course all the dimensions are janky.
      - 6y ago

bemmu 6y ago

Also Reddit can offer IAP more easily, since users won't need to input their CC info again inside Reddit.

TheRealWatson 6y ago

What you said is all true but it still boils down to getting people to see more ads. I'm not sure how big a part of their revenue Reddit Gold is.

Ozzie_osman 6y ago

This is correct. It's about retention more than monetization. With the app, you can not only send notifications, but you also have the app icon which reminds people of the apps existence. Even little things like "badging" (when the app icon shows a dot or number to indicate new notifications) and even that can have a noticeable impact on retention (we're all programmed to click into anything with a notification). Also, they can recommend better content for you. I don't know if this is still possible and whether reddit does it, but an app used to be able to get the list of other apps installed on the phone, and many companies used that as an input into their recommendation systems (along with your location, etc).

mbesto 6y ago
> retention more than monetization FWIW, retention is monetization.
- spenczar5 6y ago
  I don’t see how. Can you explain how a company makes revenue purely by retaining users? I think they still need a monetization scheme separately. [edited for clarity]
  - tehbeard 6y ago
    In the context of Reddit, it's only a no-ad website if you're running adblock.
    - spenczar5 6y ago
      Sorry, I was unclear - I was trying to pose a hypothetical, not to say Reddit has no monetization.
  - mbesto 6y ago
    Retaining users means: - You can sell ads to them - You can continue to sell ads to them A proxy, if you will. For a for profit business, what other reason is there if not to drive some monetary value.

maurys 6y ago

Would there be confounding variables though? Users who have the app are anyways likely to be the ones who use Reddit more so naturally it has much higher engagement than on a browser.

Enginerrrd 6y ago
Yes! And as a general rule, it's safe to assume their marketing department isn't interested in that issue. Marketing departments can't help but market themselves too, and if BS numbers make them look good even to the detriment of the company, it's almost a sure bet you'll see them do that.

AgloeDreams 6y ago

Yup, many companies I've worked for see push notifications as the raison d'être for apps.

seppin 6y ago
I mean, most companies are mobile companies now, and the app is the only thing that matters to them.
- AgloeDreams 6y ago
  I mean even existing non-mobile companies.

robbyking 6y ago

Not to mention analytics. There are a ton of third party frameworks that make it very easy to see where the bottlenecks and friction points are in your app. It's standard practice.

pmarreck 6y ago

Apparently the only platform that you can't send notifications direct from websites on is iOS. So that needs to get fixed, and then this problem might go away naturally

charlesju 6y ago

Also helps them rank higher on app store which is a discovery engine

kevincox 6y ago

Of course on web they have email. Of course that only actually works about 5% of the time. No wonder their retention numbers are trash...

propogandist 6y ago

it's more expansive, as in more data that can be mined for adverting purposes. I got a presentation from Reddit a few of years ago on their ad-platform and it was terrible (for enterprises). Their sales team were hyping big changes and things that were coming including geo-location, strong user profiling etc. This was pre-redesign and it became clear what they were doing and their roadmap of features all were to grow the ad business. Mobile makes sense as it's how their key audiences consume content and it enables stronger profiling, richer engagement and better ad-targeting due to persistance. The mobile app allows reddit to mine user behavior (every outbound link click is tracked, even on the desktop website) and then they're able to link your device profile, to content you consume and engage with. This can be used for ad-targeting or sold to other data brokers to build a richer profile about ABC user with this device, across XY IPs, typically based in ZZZ location.

m463 6y ago

It is monetization. A guy I know worked for a PC manufacturer years ago. The offered a windows version of a machine, and folks asked why they didn't offer a linux version. A linux version would cost more money, because they made a non-trivial amount of money by loading up the PC with shovelware. I've seen this countless times at companies. The decision makers do not want to greenlight projects that do not make money, or worse that cost them money. So I think if you follow the money you'll find a mobile app makes them more money.