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Charge for commercial usage. The goal would be to re-capture value from commercial entities that use plain reddit posts (not paid reddit advertising) for commer
by nbadg 3y ago
Charge for commercial usage. The goal would be to re-capture value from commercial entities that use plain reddit posts (not paid reddit advertising) for commercial gain. A prime example would be a publicity firm hosting an AMA with actors to promote the release of an upcoming movie.
Update the standard user ToS to allow for only non-commercial use. Introduce paid plans for commercial usage. Introduce terms that allow for legal remedies to prevent companies from opening accounts only for the one month they want to host an AMA. Just like mods can decide whether or not a particular post is wearing a "mod hat", let commercial accounts decide whether or not users can wear the "commercial hat". Etc.
Price the plans such that the revenue reddit generates scales alongside the value that the commercial entity gets from the account.
- marcinzm 3y agoThat would block every small business owner, independent artist, indie game developer, twitch streamer, open source developer with a donation link, etc. from the platform. The legal hassle alone would make them not want to deal with it.
- dmix 3y agoWhen you run out of ideas in your B2C business the answer is always pigeonhole some B2B model on top of it whether it fits or not. Reddit is an ad business. Increasingly a mobile ad business. 3rd party apps do not fit that business model and never has. Everyone is blowing it out of proportion because Spez didn't want to be honest about it. AI/LLM is just a sweetner on top but probably not a billion dollar API business. What Reddit should be doing is making a better mobile app (and web app at that). Design and software dev in general has not their strong suit and hasn't been for the last decade.
- EnragedParrot 3y agoI think you nailed it. In reality from a business standpoint, Reddit should have taken Selig's offer and bought out Apollo and built the main app around it and injected ads, maybe offered an overpriced subscription to minimize ads for premium users. I think nobody would have complained a bit.
- jimmydorry 3y agoReddit balked at Selig's offer that he based on their API pricing (and he even halved it!). They poisoned the well before walking into that discussion, hence it was effectively off the table from the start. Negotiating for a lower buy-out would have been conceeding the point that the API price is severly inflated beyond the actual value of the users Selig served (and the cost to serve them).