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I would love to know the conversion rate that resulted from that test, it must have been absolutely abysmal.

by japhyr 3y ago

comte7092 3y ago
I’ve already been ignoring the extremely annoying spammy pop ups telling me to download the app for years. I’m not downloading the app. I am just not doing it. Period.
- wtetzner 3y ago
  I always treat those popups as a reminder to switch to old.reddit.com. The annoyance of having to do that then reminds me why I don't use reddit much.
- zuppy 3y ago
  if you happen to be using safari on ios, someone just created an extension for cleaning up the mobile web version: https://apps.apple.com/ro/app/sink-it-for-reddit/id6449873635?l=ro https://apps.apple.com/ro/app/sink-it-for-reddit/id644987363...
  - jackdh 3y ago
    Now that they have extension support in IOS, I'm surprised RES has not been ported across.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
eastbound 3y ago
Worse than the conversion rate, Google will most certainly deindex the Reddit pages if they are not available as webpages. But surely Reddit has already calculated that “[search query] + Reddit” is traffic they don’t care about?
- Implicated 3y ago
  I’d venture to bet that they respond to google with a different version of the page, without the pop up.
  - RobotToaster 3y ago
    Isn't that also something Google delists pages for?
    - Nextgrid 3y ago
      Used to. Nowadays Google is equally user-hostile and is happy to accommodate its peers.
    - jonathantf2 3y ago
      I think most news sites with paywalls do this? If you change your UserAgent to Googlebot you can bypass them.
tazjin 3y ago
People refusing to use their app etc. are likely a minority. Most people are completely used to being bullied into submission by tech companies, and will happily follow along. I'd assume their goal with this isn't to convert the stragglers, it's to just close the gates to them so that they disappear from ad-view related statistics. Edit: Further to this point, the Apollo app which everyone was talking about the other day has 50000 (fifty thousand!) paid users. Reddit has hundreds of millions of monthly users. They don't care about this minority of users, they just want the shitstorm to pass so they can move on. They also don't care that there's likely a small minority of users creating most actual good content, but it doesn't matter because the site can be floated entirely by meme spam bots and porn posts and still be massively profitable.
- emeril 3y ago
  I'm personally not confident if the signal to noise ratio took a turn for the worse (re: spam and porn posts), the site would be as a profitable/popular anymore What I'm curious about is why didn't (and maybe they did as I'm not particularly well read in this situation) reddit just buy the apollo app for like $1M/$5M/etc. and then just modify it so it injects whatever tracking they want instead of creating this giant far more costly shitstorm? Further, maybe the 50k paid users but perhaps there were many unpaid users using it less intensely?

I would love to know the conversion rate that resulted from that test, it must have been absolutely abysmal.

by japhyr 3y ago

I would love to know the conversion rate that resulted from that test, it must have been absolutely abysmal.

I’ve already been ignoring the extremely annoying spammy pop ups telling me to download the app for years. I’m not downloading the app. I am just not doing it. Period.

wtetzner 3y ago
I always treat those popups as a reminder to switch to old.reddit.com. The annoyance of having to do that then reminds me why I don't use reddit much.
zuppy 3y ago
if you happen to be using safari on ios, someone just created an extension for cleaning up the mobile web version: https://apps.apple.com/ro/app/sink-it-for-reddit/id6449873635?l=ro https://apps.apple.com/ro/app/sink-it-for-reddit/id644987363...
- jackdh 3y ago
  Now that they have extension support in IOS, I'm surprised RES has not been ported across.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

eastbound 3y ago

Worse than the conversion rate, Google will most certainly deindex the Reddit pages if they are not available as webpages. But surely Reddit has already calculated that “[search query] + Reddit” is traffic they don’t care about?

Implicated 3y ago
I’d venture to bet that they respond to google with a different version of the page, without the pop up.
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  Isn't that also something Google delists pages for?
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    Used to. Nowadays Google is equally user-hostile and is happy to accommodate its peers.
  - jonathantf2 3y ago
    I think most news sites with paywalls do this? If you change your UserAgent to Googlebot you can bypass them.

tazjin 3y ago

People refusing to use their app etc. are likely a minority. Most people are completely used to being bullied into submission by tech companies, and will happily follow along. I'd assume their goal with this isn't to convert the stragglers, it's to just close the gates to them so that they disappear from ad-view related statistics. Edit: Further to this point, the Apollo app which everyone was talking about the other day has 50000 (fifty thousand!) paid users. Reddit has hundreds of millions of monthly users. They don't care about this minority of users, they just want the shitstorm to pass so they can move on. They also don't care that there's likely a small minority of users creating most actual good content, but it doesn't matter because the site can be floated entirely by meme spam bots and porn posts and still be massively profitable.

emeril 3y ago
I'm personally not confident if the signal to noise ratio took a turn for the worse (re: spam and porn posts), the site would be as a profitable/popular anymore What I'm curious about is why didn't (and maybe they did as I'm not particularly well read in this situation) reddit just buy the apollo app for like $1M/$5M/etc. and then just modify it so it injects whatever tracking they want instead of creating this giant far more costly shitstorm? Further, maybe the 50k paid users but perhaps there were many unpaid users using it less intensely?