26 ms·

There's something that I don't get about forcing mobile browser users into mobile apps - how does it make sense for the company? They're forcing themselves into

by c7b 3y ago

There's something that I don't get about forcing mobile browser users into mobile apps - how does it make sense for the company? They're forcing themselves into a walled garden, where the gardener takes a hefty "app store tax" on your revenues and has countless levers to force you to style the app how it suits their interests, not yours. For some apps, this might still be the best way to gain traction. But if have already attracted users who are obviously happy with the web experience, why on earth not keep them there? I would be expecting developers, if anything, to be nudging people in the other direction. But that's not what's happening, not just with reddit, so what am I missing here? I get that there are some marketing benefits from having your logo on of the user's home screens (likely not the main one), and that very few users even know you can do the same thing with websites, and that in the early days there was a big feature gap between native and mobile apps. But for apps like Reddit, it seems to me like you should be able to achieve everything you could want with modern web standards, and users who use their browser a lot will probably see your logo on the "New Tabs" page anyway. So what am I missing?

otikik 3y ago
Blocking Ad Blockers
timbre1234 3y ago
It's 100% about being able to stop adblockers
- majani 3y ago
  And access to push notifications
  - shmoogy 3y ago
    iOS 17 supports pwa notifications, so it's pretty much exclusively ads at this point
    - KyeRussell 3y ago
      iOS 17 isn’t out yet.
    - o1y32 3y ago
      "support" means that user needs to explicitly do something (add as an "app") before you can get notifications which is not as easy as in the app
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    And access to more data for analytics and attributions than is available to a web page.
- VHRanger 3y ago
  On mobile? Apart from a few geeks using firefox on android, mobile browsers generally dont hinder ads
  - maven29 3y ago
    Every single browser except Chrome would be a better way to put it.
  - o1y32 3y ago
    You can install an ad filter, set up content filtering, and then use Safari without seeing ads.
  - wincy 3y ago
    AdGuard on iOS blocks ads just fine. I pay $5 a year because then it blocks YouTube ads.
  - inpdx 3y ago
    Brave browser.
  - Mindwipe 3y ago
    Samsung Browser and Safari both very much enable ad blocking, and especially Samsung actively notifies users to enable it.
  - Tangurena2 3y ago
    There have been lots of complaints about a well-funded advertising campaign from Hobby Lobby called "He Gets Us". App users are getting DMs from the advertiser and are unable to block the adverts or user. Other advertisers are blockable, which stops those ads.
joshribakoff 3y ago
The decision maker likely wants the app installed because it increases the friction to users to “replace” the app with a competing one. Amazon used to offer $5 credits to install their app years ago, and I initially struggled to understand the reasoning; however these days its so convenient to buy via the amazon app compared to signing up for an account on different websites (i am more likely to use Amazon which is already installed than to go directly to some manufacturer and buy directly)
- CharlieDigital 3y ago
  For Amazon, I prefer the web-app since it's able to open tabs for products I'm comparing. With the app, you're forced into a forward/back/forward navigation pattern that I think is sub-optimal when comparing products. Is there something I'm missing here? It seems that the app is the less usable experience to me.
  - AnonCoward42 3y ago
    Yeah this is a common theme. The web presence often gets more attention ironically, because it is the facade and starting point for the given endeavor. Then comes greed and they try to discourage web usage ... we've all seen it play out over and over.
dmix 3y ago
You’re assuming there is some cohesive strategy here. It’s better to look at what often happens in practice at a more practical level. Some exec will be constantly getting pressure to make his mobile app growth chart keeping going up. So instead of doing customer research finding out what people want, having a product vision, market research (“why do people like Apollo?”), making the app so good that Redditors tell other Redditors how much better it is, etc they just say “why not just force existing web users to use it?” It’s just lazy belligerent tactics so [x] chart goes up. The mobile app team probably has a ton of political pull so they get to stomp on others to get their metrics.
- joshribakoff 3y ago
  It sounds like you are saying there is no reason other than pressure, presumably from a board. Perhaps the board has a reason.
  - ianai 3y ago
    Probably sopping up more money from all the privacy intrusions possible with an app. Better ad revenue. Probably spent money on the app and need validation of the expense. Board might even have threatened whole team terminations without better app take up. How many times is improvement UX in desired there?
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    I think people are usually over-inclined to assume that these companies know what they're doing; that there is, somewhere, some well-thought-out master plan. Often, there isn't. Even with Twitter, which has just been a cavalcade of obviously nonsense moves for months and months, there are still believers in The Plan. I'm actually a little curious why this is; despite presumably having had interactions with poorly-run companies in the course of their daily lives, some people _really_ seem to struggle with the idea that a company might be poorly-run, and seek any other explanation.
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
      Because a reasonable person will have a plan. Maybe not the best plan, maybe not a master plan, but a plan. To your specific point: 'person knows what they are doing' does not equal have a 'well-thought-out master plan'
jbinney 3y ago
Push notifications! Super valuable for driving re-engagement.
- jfoster 3y ago
  "Install the app" walls might be super effective at destroying reengagement, though. I gave in and installed the Reddit app, but it simply doesn't work well enough or transition well enough from a Google search into the app. Would definitely engage a lot more with Reddit if only the app pushing nonsense were gone, and that's as a user who does have the app installed.
  - IggleSniggle 3y ago
    When Reddit first tried pushing their mobile app I gave it a try, but it was so horrible I decided to stay on web. But they kept degrading the web experience, so I quit Reddit on mobile until discovering Apollo. At this point I don’t browse on desktop, and with Apollo being shut down, I don’t think I’ll be back.
    - BizarroLand 3y ago
      Same for me but with RIF. RIF is reddit to me, if they stick to it and block API access I'll log on one last time to delete my account.
- shawabawa3 3y ago
  websites can do push notifications though now
  - chrisshroba 3y ago
    Not unless you go through a kind of esoteric “install to Home Screen” process, which most users aren’t likely to do.
- datavoid 3y ago
  [flagged]
lozenge 3y ago
If the user follows a link to an article or video, there's a high chance it'll be the end of their reddit session, due to distraction or back button capture. There's also a high chance the browser will unload the reddit page causing a flash of no content and potentially losing the user's scroll position. After a few rounds of this the user will leave in frustration. Now they could use the tabs feature, but this is again a lost opportunity to have them browse some comments etc. Plus, if they need to browse for another purpose, you'll just be one or ten of a hundred open tabs instead of one of the couple of recent apps.
- devnullbrain 3y ago
  >If the user follows a link to an article or video, there's a high chance it'll be the end of their reddit session, due to distraction or back button capture. Ironically this is made worse by apps teaching users not to multitask. You can't open a tab to read later.
- kitsunesoba 3y ago
  > There's also a high chance the browser will unload the reddit page causing a flash of no content and potentially losing the user's scroll position. The funny thing about this is that this misbehavior is mostly exclusive to badly written SPAs and other heavily-JS’d sites. Plain old rendered HTML sites like old Reddit don’t flash blank and restore scroll position fine.
veidr 3y ago
The web puts the user in control; apps (on all significant platforms currently existing) put the company in control. Yes, Google and (especially) Apple may force Reddit to comply with this or that, but Google and (especially) Apple also prevent the user from doing all sorts of things they can do with an open platform like the web. Users can't block ads in an app. Users can't block telemetry. Users can't prevent tracking, at least without help from the platform vendor. Users can't easily save their favorite content from your app if the company doesn't want them to. Etc. The web is fundamentally user-centric, and apps are roughly the opposite of that. There are also legitimate user-benefiting advantages of apps, such as ability to use the accelerometer or other non-web features, but I can't really think of any that convincingly apply to Reddit's app. Maybe somewhat better push notifications, and "sign in with Apple" but... still seems like another own-goal from team Reddit if they are, in fact, doing this.
- baq 3y ago
  This, this and exactly this. Their finance team probably made a projection that if they can get X% of current mobile web users onto the app, they’ll be able to extract Y% more total revenue. They have no idea that they should split users into contributors and lurkers and even if they had, they have absolutely no idea how to model their value, so they don’t, the board sees the numbers and tells them ‘ASAP’ and that’s how you kill social networks, because the financial model is based on false assumptions.
  - Freak_NL 3y ago
    > They have no idea that they should split users into contributors and lurkers […] They probably did do the maths and conclude that the contributors who'll stick around are driving a significant part of the desired engagement. Dumb memes and culture war potshots and disinformation sure, but engagement.
  - sclarisse 3y ago
    It’s less about extracting that revenue and more about extracting that sweet IPO capital with a story about being replacement-TikTok.
efxhoy 3y ago
I work at a company trying to get more people into our app. The logic is completely flawed: "we want more engagement, app users show more engagement than web users, so if we get more users from web into the apps we'll get more engagement". It's obviously completely flawed but the product people and analytics department don't seem to get it. At least we aren't doing hostile stuff to get people into the apps, yet.
- javajosh 3y ago
  A good compromise is to educate users on how to add a shortcut to their homescreen. I don't think people (including product people) know about this feature, and mobile browsers bury it. The pareto principle applies: 80% of stickiness is that icon, which you can get for 20% of the effort of an app.
  - PaulHoule 3y ago
    It doesn't work for me. All icons on mobile look the same to me: I mean, Android's Material Design icons really look the same to me and even the icons from iOS never really stick in my head. That "settings" icon for instance with all the gears looks like a movie poster for The Golden Compass and not a settings dialog. The App store and Adobe Acrobat and many applications have meaningless logos based around a generic triangle... Once something gets a mobile icon I will struggle to find it, but if I want to find something on the web it is a quick search, often autocompleted when I type a few letters, or easy to find in the bookmarks or maybe my history.
    - javajosh 3y ago
      On Android the shortcut icon is derived from the favicon, so material design doesn't apply. (There is also a "badge" for the browser app itself).
      - PaulHoule 3y ago
        One way or another there are a bunch of Google-app icons that all look the same to me. Third party apps on iOS or Android generally have nondistinct icons: I have many icons that are basically a letter like "H" with no indication that one of those icons controls my stereo and another one does something else. I use Microsoft' RDP on my iPad all the time and I struggle to find the icon not least because the colors blend into the background but it is just some arrows without stems like the logo of some british railway from the 1970s. I find myself deleting apps aggressively because the junk apps make it hard to find the few apps I really use, most of all I use the web as much as I can because it is so easy to find anything on the web.
hunterhod 3y ago
So I actually worked at Reddit a few years ago and our “cohort” got to chat with Steve as a part of onboarding. I was super nervous and I guess I wanted to appear sharper than I actually was, so I asked Steve directly “why do you push users from mobile web to the app? That’s a pretty bad experience.” Apparently there are metrics showing that mobile app users are “stickier” than web users, meaning they come back to the app more. That was a long time ago though and my perspective on this probably isn’t relevant anymore.
- pixl97 3y ago
  You can do push notifications to the app and gamify them opening up and reading again. FB was the masters of doing this.
  - jeltz 3y ago
    I have uninstalled several apps that I actually wanted to use due to trying to do this. I feel you probably increase engagement of the users who stay at the cost of scaring away a whole bunch of other users. I have for example uninstalled the FB app and only user their website.
    - paulmd 3y ago
      > I have for example uninstalled the FB app and only user their website. Well, that is why Facebook and others are pushing to "allow alternative app stores" on iphone. Getting past the app-review process means the dark patterns and data mining can get way more noxious, and at that point they just do like reddit and kill the mobile experience. No, no phones allowed on the website, we have a native app for that.
- jeltz 3y ago
  But third party app users are likely to be even more sticky. Doesn't that mean they should encourage everyone to install third party apps? No, this is just idiocy.
  - 3y ago
86J8oyZv 3y ago
It’s the same reason as the third-party app API changes: prevailing forces within the company want to know that for every X API requests made, Y targeted ads were put in front of eyeballs. Most mobile browsers can block ads at this point. Plus, native apps offer more ways of gathering user data opaquely, which is worth lots of money in the eyes of finance people even if they haven’t started doing it, or if they expect it to be limited in various ways by mobile OSes and/or laws. The profits vs losses just point them this way, at least according to certain financially-minded people. This isn’t really a new phenomenon. If Reddit execs thought they could take the same approach on desktop (forcing us all into desktop apps with unblockable ads and more system access), they absolutely would. They see that Slack and Discord did accomplish this effectively, and probably want to catch up.
- Zak 3y ago
  Slack and Discord work fine in desktop browsers and do not regularly hassle users about installing a desktop app. I think Discord users often install the app for actual user-centric features that are not possible to provide from a browser (push-to-talk voice chat while playing games for Discord, as I recall).
  - TheCoelacanth 3y ago
    I don't think either of those apps are ad-supported, so there are completely different incentives.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  They could have changed their API or keys to require an adserve API included and given the app makers time to adapt to the new setup. Premium users would only see the ads from Reddit, where non-premium would also have seen ads from the app maker. It would have increased the ads shown to users, added more money into reddit's pocket, and increased the liklihood of users paying cash for the platform while pissing off fewer people.
travisgriggs 3y ago
I too find this baffling. I have developed and maintain two platform native pairs of apps in use in the agriculture level irrigation control sphere. Our reasons for doing so are varied (historical, user experience, performance, desire to minimize cloud dependencies, need to really push Bluetooth and other OS assets (like location, storage, and photos)). But it is a butt ton of annoying work. From Java to Kotlin, Android to Compose, ObjC to Swift, UIKit to SwiftUI. It seems to never end. How I would love to use the a “cross platform silver bullet”, but I spent 20 years using and pitching Smalltalk in that space and am just really distrustful that that problem is truly solvable. But I’m surrounded by what seems 10:1, if not more, of web programming hoards who all use the cloud and web apps as the hammer to every problem they see. Their enthusiasm through the industry is great. I honestly am confused why I see app after app be retooled native in parallel or in replacement to a mobile web app. The variety of contexts is great enough that I’m uncomfortable ascribing it to a machivelean subtext of control. There’s too much inconsistency and incompetence betwixt the various marketing/steering levels of all the participants to see it as some universal evil plot. I feel there has to be something more general going on.
rpastuszak 3y ago
Easier targeting, especially third-party means higher CPM, means more advertising driven revenue. Also, you’re worth more if you can be tracked across different devices (that became more important after the so called cookie-geddon.) Speaking as someone who worked in publishing, ad tech and built primarily for mobile (PWA or native).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bcherny 3y ago
99% sure the reason is push notifications. Putting on my PM hat, I bet: - On web, the biggest top of funnel entrypoint for Reddit is Google search - On mobile, it’s push notifications The latter is probably the single biggest retention lever Reddit has. The former is an acquisition lever, but probably doesn’t do much for retention.
jupp0r 3y ago
> So what am I missing? AdBlock
pflenker 3y ago
Couple of reasons: - Push notifications to reengage the user - Collect more data - you can spy way more on a user using the app than on the web - Bypass adblockers All this makes losing customers who are not willing to make the transition to the app worth it.
ako 3y ago
Its easier to collect info on users via a mobile app than via a webpage. My guess is that they're simply trying to increase what they know on their users which is the data they can monetize with their ad customers (with some small print to not get them in conflict with data protection laws).
awiejrliawjer 3y ago
In addition to all of the control issues that other commenters have mentioned like blocking adblock and including tracking, an app also puts the user in the mindset of using your service by default and exclusively. If you view Reddit on the web, you might copy and link and repost it to Twitter. You're less likely to do that in an app. Additionally, it leads people to use Reddit by default, for all purposes. On the web, I might think "Oh, I should search for this on Reddit", but then if Reddit doesn't have the results that I need I'll check another website. Humans are creatures of habit. Once I get used to opening the Reddit app by default, I'll subconsciously invent ways to use the Reddit app for everything, as my one-stop-shop. Which is why I don't use any proprietary apps, ever, if I can do the same thing on the website. And also why I don't use mobile internet very much, to be honest.
ziggrat 3y ago
Its the ads

by c7b 3y ago

otikik 3y ago

Blocking Ad Blockers

timbre1234 3y ago

It's 100% about being able to stop adblockers

majani 3y ago
And access to push notifications
- shmoogy 3y ago
  iOS 17 supports pwa notifications, so it's pretty much exclusively ads at this point
  - KyeRussell 3y ago
    iOS 17 isn’t out yet.
  - o1y32 3y ago
    "support" means that user needs to explicitly do something (add as an "app") before you can get notifications which is not as easy as in the app
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  And access to more data for analytics and attributions than is available to a web page.
VHRanger 3y ago
On mobile? Apart from a few geeks using firefox on android, mobile browsers generally dont hinder ads
- maven29 3y ago
  Every single browser except Chrome would be a better way to put it.
- o1y32 3y ago
  You can install an ad filter, set up content filtering, and then use Safari without seeing ads.
- wincy 3y ago
  AdGuard on iOS blocks ads just fine. I pay $5 a year because then it blocks YouTube ads.
- inpdx 3y ago
  Brave browser.
- Mindwipe 3y ago
  Samsung Browser and Safari both very much enable ad blocking, and especially Samsung actively notifies users to enable it.
- Tangurena2 3y ago
  There have been lots of complaints about a well-funded advertising campaign from Hobby Lobby called "He Gets Us". App users are getting DMs from the advertiser and are unable to block the adverts or user. Other advertisers are blockable, which stops those ads.

joshribakoff 3y ago

The decision maker likely wants the app installed because it increases the friction to users to “replace” the app with a competing one. Amazon used to offer $5 credits to install their app years ago, and I initially struggled to understand the reasoning; however these days its so convenient to buy via the amazon app compared to signing up for an account on different websites (i am more likely to use Amazon which is already installed than to go directly to some manufacturer and buy directly)

CharlieDigital 3y ago
For Amazon, I prefer the web-app since it's able to open tabs for products I'm comparing. With the app, you're forced into a forward/back/forward navigation pattern that I think is sub-optimal when comparing products. Is there something I'm missing here? It seems that the app is the less usable experience to me.
- AnonCoward42 3y ago
  Yeah this is a common theme. The web presence often gets more attention ironically, because it is the facade and starting point for the given endeavor. Then comes greed and they try to discourage web usage ... we've all seen it play out over and over.

dmix 3y ago

You’re assuming there is some cohesive strategy here. It’s better to look at what often happens in practice at a more practical level. Some exec will be constantly getting pressure to make his mobile app growth chart keeping going up. So instead of doing customer research finding out what people want, having a product vision, market research (“why do people like Apollo?”), making the app so good that Redditors tell other Redditors how much better it is, etc they just say “why not just force existing web users to use it?” It’s just lazy belligerent tactics so [x] chart goes up. The mobile app team probably has a ton of political pull so they get to stomp on others to get their metrics.

joshribakoff 3y ago
It sounds like you are saying there is no reason other than pressure, presumably from a board. Perhaps the board has a reason.
- ianai 3y ago
  Probably sopping up more money from all the privacy intrusions possible with an app. Better ad revenue. Probably spent money on the app and need validation of the expense. Board might even have threatened whole team terminations without better app take up. How many times is improvement UX in desired there?
- rsynnott 3y ago
  I think people are usually over-inclined to assume that these companies know what they're doing; that there is, somewhere, some well-thought-out master plan. Often, there isn't. Even with Twitter, which has just been a cavalcade of obviously nonsense moves for months and months, there are still believers in The Plan. I'm actually a little curious why this is; despite presumably having had interactions with poorly-run companies in the course of their daily lives, some people _really_ seem to struggle with the idea that a company might be poorly-run, and seek any other explanation.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    Because a reasonable person will have a plan. Maybe not the best plan, maybe not a master plan, but a plan. To your specific point: 'person knows what they are doing' does not equal have a 'well-thought-out master plan'

jbinney 3y ago

Push notifications! Super valuable for driving re-engagement.

jfoster 3y ago
"Install the app" walls might be super effective at destroying reengagement, though. I gave in and installed the Reddit app, but it simply doesn't work well enough or transition well enough from a Google search into the app. Would definitely engage a lot more with Reddit if only the app pushing nonsense were gone, and that's as a user who does have the app installed.
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  When Reddit first tried pushing their mobile app I gave it a try, but it was so horrible I decided to stay on web. But they kept degrading the web experience, so I quit Reddit on mobile until discovering Apollo. At this point I don’t browse on desktop, and with Apollo being shut down, I don’t think I’ll be back.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    Same for me but with RIF. RIF is reddit to me, if they stick to it and block API access I'll log on one last time to delete my account.
shawabawa3 3y ago
websites can do push notifications though now
- chrisshroba 3y ago
  Not unless you go through a kind of esoteric “install to Home Screen” process, which most users aren’t likely to do.
datavoid 3y ago
[flagged]

lozenge 3y ago

If the user follows a link to an article or video, there's a high chance it'll be the end of their reddit session, due to distraction or back button capture. There's also a high chance the browser will unload the reddit page causing a flash of no content and potentially losing the user's scroll position. After a few rounds of this the user will leave in frustration. Now they could use the tabs feature, but this is again a lost opportunity to have them browse some comments etc. Plus, if they need to browse for another purpose, you'll just be one or ten of a hundred open tabs instead of one of the couple of recent apps.

devnullbrain 3y ago
>If the user follows a link to an article or video, there's a high chance it'll be the end of their reddit session, due to distraction or back button capture. Ironically this is made worse by apps teaching users not to multitask. You can't open a tab to read later.
kitsunesoba 3y ago
> There's also a high chance the browser will unload the reddit page causing a flash of no content and potentially losing the user's scroll position. The funny thing about this is that this misbehavior is mostly exclusive to badly written SPAs and other heavily-JS’d sites. Plain old rendered HTML sites like old Reddit don’t flash blank and restore scroll position fine.

veidr 3y ago

The web puts the user in control; apps (on all significant platforms currently existing) put the company in control. Yes, Google and (especially) Apple may force Reddit to comply with this or that, but Google and (especially) Apple also prevent the user from doing all sorts of things they can do with an open platform like the web. Users can't block ads in an app. Users can't block telemetry. Users can't prevent tracking, at least without help from the platform vendor. Users can't easily save their favorite content from your app if the company doesn't want them to. Etc. The web is fundamentally user-centric, and apps are roughly the opposite of that. There are also legitimate user-benefiting advantages of apps, such as ability to use the accelerometer or other non-web features, but I can't really think of any that convincingly apply to Reddit's app. Maybe somewhat better push notifications, and "sign in with Apple" but... still seems like another own-goal from team Reddit if they are, in fact, doing this.

baq 3y ago
This, this and exactly this. Their finance team probably made a projection that if they can get X% of current mobile web users onto the app, they’ll be able to extract Y% more total revenue. They have no idea that they should split users into contributors and lurkers and even if they had, they have absolutely no idea how to model their value, so they don’t, the board sees the numbers and tells them ‘ASAP’ and that’s how you kill social networks, because the financial model is based on false assumptions.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  > They have no idea that they should split users into contributors and lurkers […] They probably did do the maths and conclude that the contributors who'll stick around are driving a significant part of the desired engagement. Dumb memes and culture war potshots and disinformation sure, but engagement.
- sclarisse 3y ago
  It’s less about extracting that revenue and more about extracting that sweet IPO capital with a story about being replacement-TikTok.

efxhoy 3y ago

I work at a company trying to get more people into our app. The logic is completely flawed: "we want more engagement, app users show more engagement than web users, so if we get more users from web into the apps we'll get more engagement". It's obviously completely flawed but the product people and analytics department don't seem to get it. At least we aren't doing hostile stuff to get people into the apps, yet.

javajosh 3y ago
A good compromise is to educate users on how to add a shortcut to their homescreen. I don't think people (including product people) know about this feature, and mobile browsers bury it. The pareto principle applies: 80% of stickiness is that icon, which you can get for 20% of the effort of an app.
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  It doesn't work for me. All icons on mobile look the same to me: I mean, Android's Material Design icons really look the same to me and even the icons from iOS never really stick in my head. That "settings" icon for instance with all the gears looks like a movie poster for The Golden Compass and not a settings dialog. The App store and Adobe Acrobat and many applications have meaningless logos based around a generic triangle... Once something gets a mobile icon I will struggle to find it, but if I want to find something on the web it is a quick search, often autocompleted when I type a few letters, or easy to find in the bookmarks or maybe my history.
  - javajosh 3y ago
    On Android the shortcut icon is derived from the favicon, so material design doesn't apply. (There is also a "badge" for the browser app itself).
    - PaulHoule 3y ago
      One way or another there are a bunch of Google-app icons that all look the same to me. Third party apps on iOS or Android generally have nondistinct icons: I have many icons that are basically a letter like "H" with no indication that one of those icons controls my stereo and another one does something else. I use Microsoft' RDP on my iPad all the time and I struggle to find the icon not least because the colors blend into the background but it is just some arrows without stems like the logo of some british railway from the 1970s. I find myself deleting apps aggressively because the junk apps make it hard to find the few apps I really use, most of all I use the web as much as I can because it is so easy to find anything on the web.

hunterhod 3y ago

So I actually worked at Reddit a few years ago and our “cohort” got to chat with Steve as a part of onboarding. I was super nervous and I guess I wanted to appear sharper than I actually was, so I asked Steve directly “why do you push users from mobile web to the app? That’s a pretty bad experience.” Apparently there are metrics showing that mobile app users are “stickier” than web users, meaning they come back to the app more. That was a long time ago though and my perspective on this probably isn’t relevant anymore.

pixl97 3y ago
You can do push notifications to the app and gamify them opening up and reading again. FB was the masters of doing this.
- jeltz 3y ago
  I have uninstalled several apps that I actually wanted to use due to trying to do this. I feel you probably increase engagement of the users who stay at the cost of scaring away a whole bunch of other users. I have for example uninstalled the FB app and only user their website.
  - paulmd 3y ago
    > I have for example uninstalled the FB app and only user their website. Well, that is why Facebook and others are pushing to "allow alternative app stores" on iphone. Getting past the app-review process means the dark patterns and data mining can get way more noxious, and at that point they just do like reddit and kill the mobile experience. No, no phones allowed on the website, we have a native app for that.
jeltz 3y ago
But third party app users are likely to be even more sticky. Doesn't that mean they should encourage everyone to install third party apps? No, this is just idiocy.
- 3y ago

86J8oyZv 3y ago

It’s the same reason as the third-party app API changes: prevailing forces within the company want to know that for every X API requests made, Y targeted ads were put in front of eyeballs. Most mobile browsers can block ads at this point. Plus, native apps offer more ways of gathering user data opaquely, which is worth lots of money in the eyes of finance people even if they haven’t started doing it, or if they expect it to be limited in various ways by mobile OSes and/or laws. The profits vs losses just point them this way, at least according to certain financially-minded people. This isn’t really a new phenomenon. If Reddit execs thought they could take the same approach on desktop (forcing us all into desktop apps with unblockable ads and more system access), they absolutely would. They see that Slack and Discord did accomplish this effectively, and probably want to catch up.

Zak 3y ago
Slack and Discord work fine in desktop browsers and do not regularly hassle users about installing a desktop app. I think Discord users often install the app for actual user-centric features that are not possible to provide from a browser (push-to-talk voice chat while playing games for Discord, as I recall).
- TheCoelacanth 3y ago
  I don't think either of those apps are ad-supported, so there are completely different incentives.
BizarroLand 3y ago
They could have changed their API or keys to require an adserve API included and given the app makers time to adapt to the new setup. Premium users would only see the ads from Reddit, where non-premium would also have seen ads from the app maker. It would have increased the ads shown to users, added more money into reddit's pocket, and increased the liklihood of users paying cash for the platform while pissing off fewer people.

travisgriggs 3y ago

I too find this baffling. I have developed and maintain two platform native pairs of apps in use in the agriculture level irrigation control sphere. Our reasons for doing so are varied (historical, user experience, performance, desire to minimize cloud dependencies, need to really push Bluetooth and other OS assets (like location, storage, and photos)). But it is a butt ton of annoying work. From Java to Kotlin, Android to Compose, ObjC to Swift, UIKit to SwiftUI. It seems to never end. How I would love to use the a “cross platform silver bullet”, but I spent 20 years using and pitching Smalltalk in that space and am just really distrustful that that problem is truly solvable. But I’m surrounded by what seems 10:1, if not more, of web programming hoards who all use the cloud and web apps as the hammer to every problem they see. Their enthusiasm through the industry is great. I honestly am confused why I see app after app be retooled native in parallel or in replacement to a mobile web app. The variety of contexts is great enough that I’m uncomfortable ascribing it to a machivelean subtext of control. There’s too much inconsistency and incompetence betwixt the various marketing/steering levels of all the participants to see it as some universal evil plot. I feel there has to be something more general going on.

rpastuszak 3y ago

Easier targeting, especially third-party means higher CPM, means more advertising driven revenue. Also, you’re worth more if you can be tracked across different devices (that became more important after the so called cookie-geddon.) Speaking as someone who worked in publishing, ad tech and built primarily for mobile (PWA or native).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bcherny 3y ago

99% sure the reason is push notifications. Putting on my PM hat, I bet: - On web, the biggest top of funnel entrypoint for Reddit is Google search - On mobile, it’s push notifications The latter is probably the single biggest retention lever Reddit has. The former is an acquisition lever, but probably doesn’t do much for retention.

jupp0r 3y ago

> So what am I missing? AdBlock

pflenker 3y ago

Couple of reasons: - Push notifications to reengage the user - Collect more data - you can spy way more on a user using the app than on the web - Bypass adblockers All this makes losing customers who are not willing to make the transition to the app worth it.

ako 3y ago

Its easier to collect info on users via a mobile app than via a webpage. My guess is that they're simply trying to increase what they know on their users which is the data they can monetize with their ad customers (with some small print to not get them in conflict with data protection laws).

awiejrliawjer 3y ago

In addition to all of the control issues that other commenters have mentioned like blocking adblock and including tracking, an app also puts the user in the mindset of using your service by default and exclusively. If you view Reddit on the web, you might copy and link and repost it to Twitter. You're less likely to do that in an app. Additionally, it leads people to use Reddit by default, for all purposes. On the web, I might think "Oh, I should search for this on Reddit", but then if Reddit doesn't have the results that I need I'll check another website. Humans are creatures of habit. Once I get used to opening the Reddit app by default, I'll subconsciously invent ways to use the Reddit app for everything, as my one-stop-shop. Which is why I don't use any proprietary apps, ever, if I can do the same thing on the website. And also why I don't use mobile internet very much, to be honest.

ziggrat 3y ago

Its the ads