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I'm not a webdev so I understand if this point is naive. The Apollo dev said the cost will be about 20x what Reddit pays for its user. Obviously Reddit needs an

I'm not a webdev so I understand if this point is naive. The Apollo dev said the cost will be about 20x what Reddit pays for its user. Obviously Reddit needs and can maintain a competitive advantage by having a native app. So charging more per user for a 3rd party app is not unreasonable. For the sake of simplicity let's say that reddit makes $1.00 per user per month that uses their app. Currently they make no money on third party apps. All third party app devs seem fine paying a price to use the API as that is standard practice for different websites. It seems like Reddit could have just charged them 3.00 Per user per month, so they get a healthy margin off of the third party apps. They would actually be making money off of third party apps, and if everyone used the third party app over the native one, then they would be making 3x what they would with users using the native one. 3x seems like a healthy enough margin for me, and they win whether we use their app or not. Devs like Apollo would have a lot more options for monetizing it's users at 3x Reddit's price per user than at 20x. Everyone seems to win. Instead they went with the move that is obviously intended to kill third party apps, and face major backlash from its most devoted users in a self own. The path seems simple to me but maybe that's why I'm not a CEO.

john-radio 3y ago
> Instead they went with the move that is obviously intended to kill third party apps, and face major backlash from its most devoted users in a self own It seems that the Reddit executive team has decided that killing third-party apps is in its best interest regardless of the probably-to-some-degree-expected backlash. I think Christian's and your conclusion, that Reddit intends for the new pricing to be prohibitive, which indicates that it "is obviously intended to kill third party apps," is fair.
donmcronald 3y ago
> It seems like Reddit could have just charged them 3.00 Per user per month, so they get a healthy margin off of the third party apps. That's not the way things work anymore. If they think they can charge $10 a user and get away with it they will, regardless of how unethical or deceitful they need to be. And it's not just Reddit, it's our entire world of business "leaders" that have adopted that attitude. The problem is that you're looking at it from the perspective of what makes a good product, and view 3P apps as part of a good product. However, the only question getting asked by the executives, board members, investors, etc. is "what makes a ton of money?" Bring back the product focused people IMO.

john-radio 3y ago

> Instead they went with the move that is obviously intended to kill third party apps, and face major backlash from its most devoted users in a self own It seems that the Reddit executive team has decided that killing third-party apps is in its best interest regardless of the probably-to-some-degree-expected backlash. I think Christian's and your conclusion, that Reddit intends for the new pricing to be prohibitive, which indicates that it "is obviously intended to kill third party apps," is fair.

donmcronald 3y ago

> It seems like Reddit could have just charged them 3.00 Per user per month, so they get a healthy margin off of the third party apps. That's not the way things work anymore. If they think they can charge $10 a user and get away with it they will, regardless of how unethical or deceitful they need to be. And it's not just Reddit, it's our entire world of business "leaders" that have adopted that attitude. The problem is that you're looking at it from the perspective of what makes a good product, and view 3P apps as part of a good product. However, the only question getting asked by the executives, board members, investors, etc. is "what makes a ton of money?" Bring back the product focused people IMO.