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It seems like the plan was always to kill the 3rd party apps, but not until their own app was feature competitive with the 3rd party ones. But they ran into ti

by phire 3y ago

It seems like the plan was always to kill the 3rd party apps, but not until their own app was feature competitive with the 3rd party ones. But they ran into time limitations. They plan to IPO later this year and they want the 3rd party apps to be dead before then.

dylan604 3y ago
Isn't this always the way. Crowd source development and ideas to see what gains popularity, and then build those features into your thing or buy the 3rd party thing to rebrand as your thing. That's like startup culture 101
- theturtletalks 3y ago
  Another thing that probably irked Reddit was that Apollo, RedditIsFun, and the other popular clients were monetizing their apps by including their own ads, charging a one-time or monthly fee. I'm surprised that wasn't against their API terms.
  - shagie 3y ago
    It's not. It's similar to how Imgur does it. Imgur serves advertisements when you go to their page. But you don't get them through the API. https://api.imgur.com/#commercial https://api.imgur.com/#commercial > Your application is commercial if you're making any money with it (which includes in-app advertising), if you plan on making any money with it, or if it belongs to a commercial organization. Calling an API and monetizing the front end it is fine. The money that Imgur loses from ads is made up in the API call monetization. The Reddit APIs don't prohibit serving advertisements or any other form of monetization of the use of the APIs and mention it as something that your app would need to do. https://www.redditinc.com/policies/data-api-terms https://www.redditinc.com/policies/data-api-terms You will disclose in your App through a privacy policy how you collect, use, store, and disclose data collected from your App Users and other visitors, including, where applicable, that third parties (e.g., advertisers) may serve content or advertisements and collect information directly from your App Users and other visitors that may include the use of cookies. In addition, by using the Data APIs, Reddit may use submitted information in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Note that sending data to 3rd parties from a front end (e.g., advertisers) is something that is allowed provided that it is properly disclosed to the App Users or other visitors and that it may serve content or advertisements from the application.
  - mdekkers 3y ago
    Never seen an ad in Apollo
    - theturtletalks 3y ago
      Apollo has a 1-time fee to post and a monthly fee for notifications and other features.
  - DropInIn 3y ago
    Seems more that they were upset/afraid about how it made the corporation appear inept (and correctly so). It was about maximizing the value of the IPO by ensuring investors would be minimally aware of the failures of the app and new Reddit, by ensuring as few 3rd party products exist as comparatives to the first party offerings. It could be argued to be part of a conspiracy to defraud investors by ensuring they were incapable of being fully informed....
- tommit 3y ago
  But they have done neither. They did not build the most popular 3PA features into their native app, nor did they offer to buy them out.
x0x0 3y ago
I can't see that. If a 1.5 person app (Apollo) is handily beating Reddit's app... what on earth is the holdup? Either the eng team is wildly incompetent, or this is by executive choice. Reddit's inability to deliver on mod tools despite a decade's worth of promises makes me think it's 40/60 wildly incompetent and needing firing vs exec choice.
- Fanmade 3y ago
  I know several developers, myself included, who are significantly more productive in their personal projects than in their main jobs. This discrepancy can be attributed largely to unnecessary bureaucracy. I have a lot of examples to illustrate this point. In one instance, we found ourselves in a meeting with nearly 30 people, spending close to an hour discussing how long it would take to implement a particular topic. In a typical project, this implementation would have been completed within half a day, employing TDD and incorporating feedback cycles, no shortcuts or hasty work. However, due to the need to navigate through a chaotic development process, involving for examples over 20 microservices managed by a three-person team, this task is projected to span multiple two-week sprints. Another example: Over a year ago, I decided to explore programming with Python. At work, we encountered the problem of our web-based software requiring users to download PDFs to read them. As a personal project, I set out to build a Python application that would generate individual image files for each page of the PDFs, providing both a preview image and a higher resolution version. I dedicated a few evenings and two Saturdays to the project, and after approximately two weeks, it was successfully completed. Additionally, I created a simple GUI using Vue.js, enabling file uploads and displaying the resulting images. An experienced Python developer could likely achieve the same task in just one or two hours, with an additional two hours for the frontend. Months later, the company decided to embark on a similar project but with additional extended OCR (Optical Character Recognition), incorporating machine learning to extract structured data from the PDFs. Initially, the prototype aimed solely at uploading the PDFs, with the machine learning aspects simulated. Months were spent discussing, conceptualizing, refining, and revising before the implementation phase commenced. Over a year later (though I have since left the company, I remain in contact with current employees), the first prototype was completed. Users can upload PDFs, and the system generates images from individual pages. The frontend simulates a progress bar, as the microservices run in the background without a built-in monitoring system. One of the more experienced developers foresaw this issue from the start, but management hindered his efforts until he eventually resigned. To date, the machine learning component remains unimplemented. My last example for now: I recall a situation where the best developer I know was hired by a large corporation as external support. Within a few weeks, he was assigned an easy standard task that any competent developer could handle with ease. Believing it to be a sample project for the standard onboarding process, he promptly and efficiently completed it in less than a week. When he delivered the finished result, his clients were astonished. They had planned this to be his sole project for the next six months and had expected it to take a significant amount of time. In summary, it is not uncommon for companies to invest months of work and millions of dollars into projects that a reasonably skilled developer could accomplish in a day. Never underestimate the incompetence of some organizations.

by phire 3y ago

dylan604 3y ago

Isn't this always the way. Crowd source development and ideas to see what gains popularity, and then build those features into your thing or buy the 3rd party thing to rebrand as your thing. That's like startup culture 101

theturtletalks 3y ago
Another thing that probably irked Reddit was that Apollo, RedditIsFun, and the other popular clients were monetizing their apps by including their own ads, charging a one-time or monthly fee. I'm surprised that wasn't against their API terms.
- shagie 3y ago
  It's not. It's similar to how Imgur does it. Imgur serves advertisements when you go to their page. But you don't get them through the API. https://api.imgur.com/#commercial https://api.imgur.com/#commercial > Your application is commercial if you're making any money with it (which includes in-app advertising), if you plan on making any money with it, or if it belongs to a commercial organization. Calling an API and monetizing the front end it is fine. The money that Imgur loses from ads is made up in the API call monetization. The Reddit APIs don't prohibit serving advertisements or any other form of monetization of the use of the APIs and mention it as something that your app would need to do. https://www.redditinc.com/policies/data-api-terms https://www.redditinc.com/policies/data-api-terms You will disclose in your App through a privacy policy how you collect, use, store, and disclose data collected from your App Users and other visitors, including, where applicable, that third parties (e.g., advertisers) may serve content or advertisements and collect information directly from your App Users and other visitors that may include the use of cookies. In addition, by using the Data APIs, Reddit may use submitted information in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Note that sending data to 3rd parties from a front end (e.g., advertisers) is something that is allowed provided that it is properly disclosed to the App Users or other visitors and that it may serve content or advertisements from the application.
- mdekkers 3y ago
  Never seen an ad in Apollo
  - theturtletalks 3y ago
    Apollo has a 1-time fee to post and a monthly fee for notifications and other features.
- DropInIn 3y ago
  Seems more that they were upset/afraid about how it made the corporation appear inept (and correctly so). It was about maximizing the value of the IPO by ensuring investors would be minimally aware of the failures of the app and new Reddit, by ensuring as few 3rd party products exist as comparatives to the first party offerings. It could be argued to be part of a conspiracy to defraud investors by ensuring they were incapable of being fully informed....
tommit 3y ago
But they have done neither. They did not build the most popular 3PA features into their native app, nor did they offer to buy them out.

x0x0 3y ago

I can't see that. If a 1.5 person app (Apollo) is handily beating Reddit's app... what on earth is the holdup? Either the eng team is wildly incompetent, or this is by executive choice. Reddit's inability to deliver on mod tools despite a decade's worth of promises makes me think it's 40/60 wildly incompetent and needing firing vs exec choice.

Fanmade 3y ago
I know several developers, myself included, who are significantly more productive in their personal projects than in their main jobs. This discrepancy can be attributed largely to unnecessary bureaucracy. I have a lot of examples to illustrate this point. In one instance, we found ourselves in a meeting with nearly 30 people, spending close to an hour discussing how long it would take to implement a particular topic. In a typical project, this implementation would have been completed within half a day, employing TDD and incorporating feedback cycles, no shortcuts or hasty work. However, due to the need to navigate through a chaotic development process, involving for examples over 20 microservices managed by a three-person team, this task is projected to span multiple two-week sprints. Another example: Over a year ago, I decided to explore programming with Python. At work, we encountered the problem of our web-based software requiring users to download PDFs to read them. As a personal project, I set out to build a Python application that would generate individual image files for each page of the PDFs, providing both a preview image and a higher resolution version. I dedicated a few evenings and two Saturdays to the project, and after approximately two weeks, it was successfully completed. Additionally, I created a simple GUI using Vue.js, enabling file uploads and displaying the resulting images. An experienced Python developer could likely achieve the same task in just one or two hours, with an additional two hours for the frontend. Months later, the company decided to embark on a similar project but with additional extended OCR (Optical Character Recognition), incorporating machine learning to extract structured data from the PDFs. Initially, the prototype aimed solely at uploading the PDFs, with the machine learning aspects simulated. Months were spent discussing, conceptualizing, refining, and revising before the implementation phase commenced. Over a year later (though I have since left the company, I remain in contact with current employees), the first prototype was completed. Users can upload PDFs, and the system generates images from individual pages. The frontend simulates a progress bar, as the microservices run in the background without a built-in monitoring system. One of the more experienced developers foresaw this issue from the start, but management hindered his efforts until he eventually resigned. To date, the machine learning component remains unimplemented. My last example for now: I recall a situation where the best developer I know was hired by a large corporation as external support. Within a few weeks, he was assigned an easy standard task that any competent developer could handle with ease. Believing it to be a sample project for the standard onboarding process, he promptly and efficiently completed it in less than a week. When he delivered the finished result, his clients were astonished. They had planned this to be his sole project for the next six months and had expected it to take a significant amount of time. In summary, it is not uncommon for companies to invest months of work and millions of dollars into projects that a reasonably skilled developer could accomplish in a day. Never underestimate the incompetence of some organizations.