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Reddit gets its app to 50m Play Store downloads
- jchw 6y agoI can only imagine half of the downloads came from people trying to select the “web” option on the popup and missing. On a serious note, it must really be a good strategy to utterly ruin the web experience, if you want to get more people on your app, because its been the hot new thing for a while. At least with Reddit, third party clients are well-supported, unlike say Twitter. I use Apollo on iOS.
- garmaine 6y agoI haven’t noticed any issues with Tweetbot on iOS.
- davejk 6y agoThere's a few things it doesn't support (like polls) because Twitter didn't add those features to the API.
- tiborsaas 6y agoI don't think that the new UI is intentionally bad. I can't imagine the team that pulls it off. It must be hell to work there or it's a team of sociopaths. Imagine plannings with power points on how to mess with users. I agree that the new UI is worse, I'm just baffled by the reasons why it's the case. Probably bad management / structure.
- dageshi 6y agoI can say as someone who runs a small niche subreddit, users have been finding my sub at a much increased rate in the past 6 months, I suspect because of the "related subs" boxes that auto insert themselves in the new design. If their aim was to improve the discoverability of smaller subs, they've achieved it.
- tiborsaas 6y agoIt's not all bad of course, it's a complex product so you can simultaneously delivery useful features while making the design / usability worse.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y agoSlide on Android. Available in the F-droid store too.
- calciphus 6y agoPersonally a fan of Sync for Reddit. Multiple interface methods (list, card, full-page swipe) and other reader niceties.
- ignoramous 6y ago> it must really be a good strategy to utterly ruin the web experience Aggressive stance by Safari and Firefox isn't helping online businesses reliant on extensive user-tracking. Apple controls the AppStore so it is more likely that Apple devices would soon become the de-facto choice for people trying to evade surveillance.
- WoefullyInept 6y agoI'm genuinely surprised they haven't backtracked on this - it completely ruins the experience.
- nanagojo 6y agoThe twitter dark pattern of forcing you to refresh is so stupid
- fouc 6y agoWhat is that all about?! I've been wondering, every time I click a twitter link in iOS from say slack, I get the stupid partial load and then the refresh message.
- ycombinete 6y agoI think it's designed to frustrate you into downloading that app
- guessmyname 6y agoTwitter UI uses a token to authenticate all operations with their own API. When you use the mobile application the token is refreshed automatically. When you use the web version it does the same but only if you are logged in. It happens to me all the time. I don’t use Twitter myself but many people in my circle of friends and colleagues do. They constantly share stuff that is posted on Twitter and almost every time I click these links I get the error message because the token in my web browser storage has been invalidated, so I have to reload the page one or two times to force the UI to request a new token so I can see the content and then forget about Twitter for a couple of hours until another friend or colleague shares another link and the circle repeats again.
- rossvor 6y agoTry using nitter -- a no js twitter interface. Reading UX is so much better with it.
- jeroenhd 6y agoWhat pattern is this? I use the PWA with Firefox and I haven't encountered any dark patterns involving refreshing myself.
- thewhitetulip 6y agoI've totally stopped using reddit. It is incredibly annoying that every single page has that annoying popup.
- strombofulous 6y agoChange the www in the url to an i
- redd1taway 6y agoOr an "old". You can use "old.reddit.com" instead of "www.reddit.com", but you might get an SSL error if you try to use "https://www.old.reddit.com/..." https://www.old.reddit.com/...".
- thewhitetulip 6y agoI did not know the i.reddit.com, I did know the old one but it is not of much use on a mobile phone
- gpderetta 6y agothere's a firefox plugin for that :)
- mcjiggerlog 6y agoLink: https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect https://github.com/tom-james-watson/old-reddit-redirect
- jay3ss 6y agoI made an (experimental) extension for Firefox that lets you choose which version of reddit you want to use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/reddirect-new/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/reddirect-new...
- vultour 6y agoAm I the only one that likes the official Reddit app? I used Alien Blue before, which has actually been replaced by the official app, and there's nothing I can complain about in either. The only regression is that now there are ads, but I find them so unintrusive I don't really care.
- sigsergv 6y agoI like it too, it's clean and simple,
- TechBro8615 6y agoApollo is great. Reddit should be embarrassed that one solo dev can make a vastly better app than the Reddit team itself.
- threatofrain 6y agoYou can still find the older but better web version at old.reddit.com.
- agumonkey 6y agoset in my options as default and never ever wanted more
- Zamicol 6y agohttps://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirect/dneaehbmnbhcippjikoajpoabadpodje?hl=en-US https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
- strombofulous 6y agoAnd https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiwibrowser.browser https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kiwibrowse... so you can install that extension on your phone
- thiscatis 6y agoi.reddit.com for me is the sweet spot. If they remove that one, I’m out.
- swarnie_ 6y agoThe app is probably the only reason Reddit has any commercial value. The website version is almost unusable without old.reddit.com and a reformatting/feature adding plug-in called RES. I have to assume there is a huge crossover between people who will seek out plugins and people who run ad blocks or VPNs. I'd love to see a breakdown of just how little Reddit make per user on ads on the web based site. This is before we begin to discuss the major functional problems with Reddit... - Any community over 5k-10k users dips in quality extremely quickly. - Any unprepared sub which gets randomly hurled on to the top of /r/all will have issues for weeks if not months after. - Geo related subs reflect the actual locations so poorly its an embarrassment to the city/country. - The voting system which along with subscriber growth only helps speed up the hivemind effect. - Finally powermods who seem to treat reddit as a second job, manipulating a large amount of the content based on their own personal feelings.
- rayalez 6y agoDo you have any ideas on how you would change reddit to fix all these issues? Specifically the community moderation and voting system?
- swarnie_ 6y agoFinish selling it to China and start again? I think a lot of the flaws I've listed are pretty fundamental to how the platform works, it was broken from the whiteboard stage.
- dageshi 6y ago"Nobody goes there any more, there's too many people..."
- swarnie_ 6y ago"The people who used to go no longer turn up because the quality has dropped so far" Take a look at /r/investing, its the same 4-5 companies and the same boring daily questions.
- varbhat 6y agoUse https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit https://github.com/Docile-Alligator/Infinity-For-Reddit https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader https://i.reddit.com https://i.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com
- mikkom 6y agoOne hidden gem that many people don't know about (and which I prefer over apps) is.... http://i.reddit.com http://i.reddit.com
- rayalez 6y agoIn addition to that google's AMP made reddit totally unusable, after clicking on a link it kept taking me to logged out version which hides most of the comments, and sorts them by "best". Remember that there's an https://old.reddit.com https://old.reddit.com, it still works great, I use only this version now. There are browser extensions that automatically redirect you to the old version (not on mobile, unfortunately).
- kinow 6y agoYeah, I thank everyday I'm able to browse with old.reddit. Tried a few times on mobile, but it's really hard to use old.reddit on the small screen. The new web interface is OK on mobile, a bit slow.
- strombofulous 6y agoi.reddit.com is very good for mobile
- mcintyre1994 6y agoI'm amazed that Reddit still has such an open API that you can build apps that are far better than their own, and yet they make the mobile web experience so bad to try to push people toward the app.
- emptyfile 6y agoI user Reddit Is Fun app religiously for the past 5 years. The moment they decide to cripple 3rd party apps is probably when I'm quitting reddit. Don't even get me started on the new design which I opted out of.
- laurencei 6y agoIronically Reddit ruining the mobile experience and pushing to use their app so badly forced me to download a 3rd party App to read Reddit (Apollo). By doing this I no longer see any Reddit ads. If they hadnt pushed so hard to use their app and ruin the entire Reddit mobile experience, I would still probably just be browsing on their website (which would give them some ad eyes). Now I'll never switch back - Apollo is just awesome for Reddit.
- gnicholas 6y agoIs there a way for the content blockers on iOS to block the annoying app download banners (used by Reddit, LinkedIn, and so many others)? I would pay 99¢ for an app that did a good job of blocking all of these.
- r721 6y agoRecent reddit app discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24208958
- arbhassan 6y agoSeems like this post got shadowbanned. It doesn't appear on the front page nor the second or third. while posts with way less points and comment activity are visible. Also the title got changed from the original one.
- drivingmenuts 6y agoReddit isn’t a high enough priority in my life to warrant having a specific app for it, and I prefer a browser for most websites. I do have banking apps and a couple of other types, but it just seems like a waste of space just to browse a website. Pretty much the only reason I have a Reddit account is so I can filter the feed.
- mrbonner 6y agoHow could I disable Google AMP for reddit searches completely :) I’m more annoyed of that than their mobile site.