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I understand their desire to become profitable as a business, but the way Reddit has gone about this does not fill me with confidence regarding any hypothetical
by PebblesHD 3y ago
I understand their desire to become profitable as a business, but the way Reddit has gone about this does not fill me with confidence regarding any hypothetical IPO they may be considering.
An executive openly attacking community members and developers, some of whom originally wrote the app that Reddit the bought to brand as their official one, as ‘not the intended users’ of the API is just misleading. They clearly saw value in having an app and bought one, one which wouldn’t have existed without API access, and which Reddit had previously heralded as a first class feature. Now they claim apps are a misuse of their api and they intended it for bots and tools only as part of their reasoning, and it just makes their whole argument seem poorly thought out.
At the end of the day, they own their platform, and can do what they like, but this attitude will cost them some of their most active contributors who decide it’s not worth putting up with their now bloated official experiences.
Also the repeated claims that third party apps strip ads is just plain wrong. Reddit has never included ads in the API nor provided a way to show ads on reddits behalf.
- YetAnotherNick 3y agoI think I understand the perspective of shareholders. Reddit was valued $10B at last funding round. They would rather prefer the company to die with say 10% chance of becoming 5x, than drop the valuation to $1B which would be the case if current revenue continues. So they are making changes, and it doesn't even matter if the changes are most likely very bad for the company. I don't think they are naive to think that reddit can't die and this action would not lead it to that path.
- dredmorbius 3y agoAre there any sources for projecting / predicting likely valuation over the course of the RedditStrike?
- graeme 3y agoThe problem with this reasoning is there is no 5x path from the current actions. The API change is designed to kill the apps, not raise revenue.