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Reddit had an easy way out for the issue of 3rd party apps not showing ads, they already have a paid subscription which removes the ads on the official clients,

Reddit had an easy way out for the issue of 3rd party apps not showing ads, they already have a paid subscription which removes the ads on the official clients, so they could have made the API exclusive to users with a subscription. People would have been upset, but not this upset.

marcolussetti 3y ago
Honestly, I think they would have had a sizeable amount of people paying for the subscription. Now, even if they backtrack on this later on in a few months or years, they burned the good will, so I doubt developers are going invest the time to make a good Reddit client after this.
- Alupis 3y ago
  Not at all - if anything, this opened the door for more premium Reddit apps that charge monthly - with billing being in-line with Reddit Premium.
  - Silhouette 3y ago
    It also opened the door for a more premium non-Reddit app that charges monthly and directly competes with Reddit. From everything I've seen so far there might be enough of the existing Reddit community who are upset enough with the recent direction to make that leap viable and if the reported figures are accurate then the finances might also work if enough people jump ship to establish a new community.
    - Alupis 3y ago
      Yes, but much like the "exodus" from Twitter, and others over the years - they all fail to reach critical mass. There's a very real early-mover effect, the likes of which have prevented Mastodon and even Truth from gaining huge ground. Truth, being perhaps the most interesting, because the main personality behind it sort of compelled it to be semi-well-known simply because of media coverage. The other attempts do not share that effect, however.
      - Silhouette 3y ago
        They all fail to reach critical mass until someone does. That's always been the history of social networks. Once sites like Myspace and LiveJournal were everywhere. The next generation mostly went on Facebook and Facebook snapped up Instagram. Now a younger generation is on sites like TikTok. Digg and Slashdot are still going but they didn't stop Reddit becoming huge or more specialised sites with overlapping demographics (like HN for example) from building their own communities. You're right that early movers have some advantage but it's a big world and the Next Big Thing doesn't have to win the whole market on day one - only enough of it to plant seeds that can grow over time.
Alupis 3y ago
> they already have a paid subscription which removes the ads on the official clients Apollo is shutting down because the founder thinks they'll incur about $2.50 per month of costs per user, and apparently doesn't believe enough people will be willing to pay $5 monthly to keep Apollo running. So, this Reddit Premium (billed at $5.99 monthly) either has few-to-no paid users, or Apollo's founder isn't even trying to sustain his business.
- phonon 3y ago
  He addresses that in the post. He only has 30 days to accommodate the price increase. What is he supposed to do about his current clients that already paid for the year? Take a huge financial loss until his updated pricing catches up? He asked for more time, they said no.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - toyg 3y ago
      I'd be similarly judgemental if Christian had been the only one to behave like this. But when you look at the field, everyone was taken by surprise by the prices. Pretty much all the major apps are closing. Were all developers hopelessly naive? All of them? I find that hard to believe.
      - takeda 3y ago
        The OP didn't even bother to read the conversation. This was announced in April, but Reddit did not provide prices. It only assured this won't be as expensive as Twitter API access, and the drama started once it actually did.
    - kimixa 3y ago
      That "hope" appears to be founded on statements made to them by Reddit themselves, according to the linked post and it's communication snippets. Or at least a much larger time to recalibrate that "hope".
bscphil 3y ago
Aren't they effectively just offloading this whole question onto the apps? For the sake of argument, let's say what they are charging for the API is about 80% per-user of what they make for users who use the official app (and therefore see ads). I have no idea what the actual numbers are, this is just theoretical. In that case, app developers have several options: * start showing users ads, and use that to pay both themselves and Reddit * start charging a monthly fee for the app, and use that to pay both themselves and Reddit * some combination of these two (e.g. pay a subscription for ad-free use) Sure, Reddit could make this easier for app developers, but isn't it all basically the same thing at the end of the day? Reddit wants (or needs? I have no idea what their financials look like) to make a certain amount of money per-user or per page view. Apps take home ~100% of their profits currently, and make Reddit ~nothing. So Reddit is pricing in a profit rate into API access. I mean, just to look at Apollo, they have 166K ratings on the Apple App Store, and surely far more users than that. Reddit wants $20M a year from them. That's high, maybe too high, but how does it compare to the value of (say) a million users a year on the official Reddit app? If Apollo switched to a subscription model on which they charged $1 a month to users, would they be able to pay Reddit's API fees? (Assuming those API fees would drop by at least 50% after non-paying users quit using Apollo.)
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  > I have no idea what the actual numbers are, this is just theoretical. The issue is that the actual numbers are closer to 2,000%, not 80%. [0] [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    The comment you are responding to is talking about revenue, not costs. Very different.
    - whimsicalism 3y ago
      Read before correcting, I am also talking about revenue.
Reason077 3y ago
Exactly. In fact, Spotify works exactly like this: you can use any third-party client you like, so long as you have a Spotify Premium paid subscription. If you have a free account, you need to use the official clients with ads.
- TremendousJudge 3y ago
  or the web client with an adblocker
  - dvngnt_ 3y ago
    shhhhh

marcolussetti 3y ago

Honestly, I think they would have had a sizeable amount of people paying for the subscription. Now, even if they backtrack on this later on in a few months or years, they burned the good will, so I doubt developers are going invest the time to make a good Reddit client after this.

Alupis 3y ago
Not at all - if anything, this opened the door for more premium Reddit apps that charge monthly - with billing being in-line with Reddit Premium.
- Silhouette 3y ago
  It also opened the door for a more premium non-Reddit app that charges monthly and directly competes with Reddit. From everything I've seen so far there might be enough of the existing Reddit community who are upset enough with the recent direction to make that leap viable and if the reported figures are accurate then the finances might also work if enough people jump ship to establish a new community.
  - Alupis 3y ago
    Yes, but much like the "exodus" from Twitter, and others over the years - they all fail to reach critical mass. There's a very real early-mover effect, the likes of which have prevented Mastodon and even Truth from gaining huge ground. Truth, being perhaps the most interesting, because the main personality behind it sort of compelled it to be semi-well-known simply because of media coverage. The other attempts do not share that effect, however.
    - Silhouette 3y ago
      They all fail to reach critical mass until someone does. That's always been the history of social networks. Once sites like Myspace and LiveJournal were everywhere. The next generation mostly went on Facebook and Facebook snapped up Instagram. Now a younger generation is on sites like TikTok. Digg and Slashdot are still going but they didn't stop Reddit becoming huge or more specialised sites with overlapping demographics (like HN for example) from building their own communities. You're right that early movers have some advantage but it's a big world and the Next Big Thing doesn't have to win the whole market on day one - only enough of it to plant seeds that can grow over time.

Alupis 3y ago

> they already have a paid subscription which removes the ads on the official clients Apollo is shutting down because the founder thinks they'll incur about $2.50 per month of costs per user, and apparently doesn't believe enough people will be willing to pay $5 monthly to keep Apollo running. So, this Reddit Premium (billed at $5.99 monthly) either has few-to-no paid users, or Apollo's founder isn't even trying to sustain his business.

phonon 3y ago
He addresses that in the post. He only has 30 days to accommodate the price increase. What is he supposed to do about his current clients that already paid for the year? Take a huge financial loss until his updated pricing catches up? He asked for more time, they said no.
- Alupis 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - toyg 3y ago
    I'd be similarly judgemental if Christian had been the only one to behave like this. But when you look at the field, everyone was taken by surprise by the prices. Pretty much all the major apps are closing. Were all developers hopelessly naive? All of them? I find that hard to believe.
    - takeda 3y ago
      The OP didn't even bother to read the conversation. This was announced in April, but Reddit did not provide prices. It only assured this won't be as expensive as Twitter API access, and the drama started once it actually did.
  - kimixa 3y ago
    That "hope" appears to be founded on statements made to them by Reddit themselves, according to the linked post and it's communication snippets. Or at least a much larger time to recalibrate that "hope".

bscphil 3y ago

Aren't they effectively just offloading this whole question onto the apps? For the sake of argument, let's say what they are charging for the API is about 80% per-user of what they make for users who use the official app (and therefore see ads). I have no idea what the actual numbers are, this is just theoretical. In that case, app developers have several options: * start showing users ads, and use that to pay both themselves and Reddit * start charging a monthly fee for the app, and use that to pay both themselves and Reddit * some combination of these two (e.g. pay a subscription for ad-free use) Sure, Reddit could make this easier for app developers, but isn't it all basically the same thing at the end of the day? Reddit wants (or needs? I have no idea what their financials look like) to make a certain amount of money per-user or per page view. Apps take home ~100% of their profits currently, and make Reddit ~nothing. So Reddit is pricing in a profit rate into API access. I mean, just to look at Apollo, they have 166K ratings on the Apple App Store, and surely far more users than that. Reddit wants $20M a year from them. That's high, maybe too high, but how does it compare to the value of (say) a million users a year on the official Reddit app? If Apollo switched to a subscription model on which they charged $1 a month to users, would they be able to pay Reddit's API fees? (Assuming those API fees would drop by at least 50% after non-paying users quit using Apollo.)

whimsicalism 3y ago
> I have no idea what the actual numbers are, this is just theoretical. The issue is that the actual numbers are closer to 2,000%, not 80%. [0] [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_ca...
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  The comment you are responding to is talking about revenue, not costs. Very different.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    Read before correcting, I am also talking about revenue.

Reason077 3y ago

Exactly. In fact, Spotify works exactly like this: you can use any third-party client you like, so long as you have a Spotify Premium paid subscription. If you have a free account, you need to use the official clients with ads.

TremendousJudge 3y ago
or the web client with an adblocker
- dvngnt_ 3y ago
  shhhhh