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I agree. The OP makes the case that it will cost him on average $2.50 per month per user - so... charge $3 per month - no blog post needed. Same with Twitter.

by Alupis 3y ago

I agree. The OP makes the case that it will cost him on average $2.50 per month per user - so... charge $3 per month - no blog post needed. Same with Twitter. So many businesses were built upon basically free API access and are now shocked the company responsible for their app's customer appeal wants some of that action. It's not Reddit's responsibility to float OP's business and make it profitable. OP's billions of monthly requests have a real cost for Reddit - and now that Reddit's API is so coveted, they can charge whatever they want for it's access. No Twitter - no Twitter App. No Reddit - no Reddit App. It's really simple...

lapcat 3y ago
> The OP makes the case that it will cost him on average $2.50 per month per user - so... charge $3 per month Apple takes at least 15% of that, or 30% depending on the developer's revenue, leaving $2.55 or $2.10.
- Alupis 3y ago
  The point was - figure out what you need to charge instead of complaining you can't profit off someone else's resources. Reddit, Twitter et all don't owe you anything. They do not make money via read-access API calls - they lose money. It's super simple... Only a fool would build a business around a free service with no escape plan.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > Reddit, Twitter et all don't owe you anything. They do not make money via read-access API calls - they lose money. It's super simple... Twitter eliminated 3rd party clients, and now Twitter is estimated to be worth 1/3 of its acquisition price.
    - Alupis 3y ago
      Seeing how all the numbers are private, I don't know how anyone can reasonably estimate it's value. Seeing how unaffected Twitter has been in public discourse, and media, it seems these estimates are grossly underinflated. Lastly - Twitter's market price has nothing to do with it's profitability. That seems obvious, but apparently needs to be said here.
      - lapcat 3y ago
        > Lastly - Twitter's market price has nothing to do with it's profitability. That seems obvious, but apparently needs to be said here. It's not profitable. That's why they're cutting to the bone and not even paying a lot of their bills. They had to make an advertising exec the nominal CEO, because a lot of advertisers have fled the platform.
        Alupis 3y ago
        [flagged]
        lapcat 3y ago
        > You forget how unprofitable Twitter has been over the past decade. I haven't forgotten anything. > It's crazy this stuff needs to be said on HN folks. This shouldn't need to be said, but "Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        Alupis 3y ago
        The argument you are putting forth boils down to folks like Apollo should receive free API access because they increase the usefulness of Reddit for end-users. That would be a fair argument, except for the fact that nothing is really free and Apollo currently makes millions in profit at Reddit's expense. That is not sustainable... any business should have realized this right from the beginning. Apollo's own business model requires income to continue to run... so Reddit's doesn't? This is just a silly discussion to be having. Of course Apollo and businesses like Apollo were going to be required to pay for API access at some point. The business owner complaining "it's not fair", or that it's not priced like API's that nobody cares about is just staggering.
        lapcat 3y ago
    - raydev 3y ago
      Ad revenue cratered for ElonTwitter months before Elon banned third party clients. Unrelated events.
  - myk9001 3y ago
    While I very much agree with what you're saying in this thread: Reddit is not a public service, it's a business, and the owners want to make money off it. I wouldn't call that Apollo app's author a fool. My understanding is they were turning a profit from the app up to now. So, apparently, it was a nice business. It's just that their business model is about to stop working. Well, that happens to other business too sometimes. They'll have to adapt somehow or come up with another business. Life as usual.
- SirMaster 3y ago
  Why not just make the users pay for their own API requests? Reddit even gives each user 100 API queries per minutes for free. Why can't apps use that to access the data for each user? When I go use an app that talks to OpenAI for example, it asks me to put in my API key. So why not just do that for third party reddit apps? I think the app can just ask the user to OAuth with it and then it should be able to use that user's API access up to the free rate limits.
  - manmal 3y ago
    I suppose calls need to provide an API secret, and you need to register with Reddit (with a credit card) in order to get one.
    - SirMaster 3y ago
      If so yeah, but that wasn't clear to me. It sounded like an OAuth'd user gets an individual allocation of free rate limited API queries (100 per minute).
mmis1000 3y ago
Honestly, reddit is the only one irritated me enough that I get a third party app. The ass behavior of popping sub I didn't subscribe and pretend it is a notification of reply to me just drives me insane. They are just truly shitty at make a working app. It's really not a business or what, just the official one truly don't work. Popup ad to notification is already bad, pretend it to be user message? How the fxxk do they think it is going to encourage the engagement?

by Alupis 3y ago

lapcat 3y ago

> The OP makes the case that it will cost him on average $2.50 per month per user - so... charge $3 per month Apple takes at least 15% of that, or 30% depending on the developer's revenue, leaving $2.55 or $2.10.

Alupis 3y ago
The point was - figure out what you need to charge instead of complaining you can't profit off someone else's resources. Reddit, Twitter et all don't owe you anything. They do not make money via read-access API calls - they lose money. It's super simple... Only a fool would build a business around a free service with no escape plan.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Reddit, Twitter et all don't owe you anything. They do not make money via read-access API calls - they lose money. It's super simple... Twitter eliminated 3rd party clients, and now Twitter is estimated to be worth 1/3 of its acquisition price.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    Seeing how all the numbers are private, I don't know how anyone can reasonably estimate it's value. Seeing how unaffected Twitter has been in public discourse, and media, it seems these estimates are grossly underinflated. Lastly - Twitter's market price has nothing to do with it's profitability. That seems obvious, but apparently needs to be said here.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      > Lastly - Twitter's market price has nothing to do with it's profitability. That seems obvious, but apparently needs to be said here. It's not profitable. That's why they're cutting to the bone and not even paying a lot of their bills. They had to make an advertising exec the nominal CEO, because a lot of advertisers have fled the platform.
      - Alupis 3y ago
        [flagged]
        lapcat 3y ago
        > You forget how unprofitable Twitter has been over the past decade. I haven't forgotten anything. > It's crazy this stuff needs to be said on HN folks. This shouldn't need to be said, but "Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        Alupis 3y ago
        The argument you are putting forth boils down to folks like Apollo should receive free API access because they increase the usefulness of Reddit for end-users. That would be a fair argument, except for the fact that nothing is really free and Apollo currently makes millions in profit at Reddit's expense. That is not sustainable... any business should have realized this right from the beginning. Apollo's own business model requires income to continue to run... so Reddit's doesn't? This is just a silly discussion to be having. Of course Apollo and businesses like Apollo were going to be required to pay for API access at some point. The business owner complaining "it's not fair", or that it's not priced like API's that nobody cares about is just staggering.
        lapcat 3y ago
  - raydev 3y ago
    Ad revenue cratered for ElonTwitter months before Elon banned third party clients. Unrelated events.
- myk9001 3y ago
  While I very much agree with what you're saying in this thread: Reddit is not a public service, it's a business, and the owners want to make money off it. I wouldn't call that Apollo app's author a fool. My understanding is they were turning a profit from the app up to now. So, apparently, it was a nice business. It's just that their business model is about to stop working. Well, that happens to other business too sometimes. They'll have to adapt somehow or come up with another business. Life as usual.
SirMaster 3y ago
Why not just make the users pay for their own API requests? Reddit even gives each user 100 API queries per minutes for free. Why can't apps use that to access the data for each user? When I go use an app that talks to OpenAI for example, it asks me to put in my API key. So why not just do that for third party reddit apps? I think the app can just ask the user to OAuth with it and then it should be able to use that user's API access up to the free rate limits.
- manmal 3y ago
  I suppose calls need to provide an API secret, and you need to register with Reddit (with a credit card) in order to get one.
  - SirMaster 3y ago
    If so yeah, but that wasn't clear to me. It sounded like an OAuth'd user gets an individual allocation of free rate limited API queries (100 per minute).

mmis1000 3y ago

Honestly, reddit is the only one irritated me enough that I get a third party app. The ass behavior of popping sub I didn't subscribe and pretend it is a notification of reply to me just drives me insane. They are just truly shitty at make a working app. It's really not a business or what, just the official one truly don't work. Popup ad to notification is already bad, pretend it to be user message? How the fxxk do they think it is going to encourage the engagement?