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Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#291

Post by freedomben »

spians wrote: post #192
YPCrumble wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly parent’s plug is a dark pattern to avoid dark patterns! It’s also surprising that even on HN, a place where many people write software for a living, people are avoidant of advertising paid features.

> Interestingly parent’s plug is a dark pattern to avoid dark patterns! Sorry I didn't find any dark patterns here. If you can elaborate more on this, that would be really helpful. > It’s also surprising that even on HN, a place where many people write software for a living, people are avoidant of advertising paid features. Exactly! A lot of users want privacy focused - no ads apps. But many of them are hesitant to p…

You're right, I do want a FOSS solution and I'm hesitant to pay for something closed and controlled entirely by the dev.

But I am not opposed at all to pay for apps that include the source (and build instructions). I don't mind if it's licensed accordingly to prevent me redistributing it (which would undermine sales). I frequently buy apps like that.

More times than I can count I have bought an app that was later either abandoned when it stopped making money, or got an unwanted UI overhaul that wrecked it, or removed an obscure feature I depended on, etc. I will happily pay for software, but if it's not software I could potentially maintain myself then the amount of money I'm willing to spend goes way down and I'm a lot more hesitant to make the initial purchase.

It's not about money, it's about freedom.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#292

Post by simias »

dylz wrote: post #205
simias wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no excuse to get such a bad quality for even low-res videos. Imgur, gfycat and Youtube manage to stream higher quality video faster on the same device on the same connection. I also think they shouldn't even attempt to stream video under a certain bitrate, I'd sooner have a video buffer for 10s than end up with something that's unwatchable because the resolution is like 10x10. And I'm barely exaggerating, I d…

imgur and gfycat directly stream a .mp4/etc file, the opposite of what reddit does. Many uploads on reddit are also repeated re-uploads of compressed and then recompressed ad nauseum videos and stolen content, so I wouldn't be surprised if a fairly significant amount of the uploads started at 360p or less, downloaded from a phone. > I also think they shouldn't even attempt to stream video under a certain bitrate You…

Those excuses don't really work for me. At some point you can come up with all kinds of justifications, it doesn't change the fact that from a end user's perspective it's crap.

I activated throttling in Firefox, setting it to "Regular 3G". I went to Youtube, selected a random video I had never watched before (so no cache): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mMIOhoUcCM

It loaded for about 10 seconds then started playing at 480p. Quality was fine, it's SD but sharp. Once it started playing it wouldn't buffer anymore: https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20200819-153915_youtube.jpg

Then I went on Reddit, same settings, this page: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/ib6gmu/i_pretended_t...

Reddit ends up playing in 96p apparently (judging by the file name, DASH_96, altough maybe it's misleading). It looks like this: https://svkt.org/~simias/up/20200819-153748_redditvideo.jpg

Note that in the "optimal" version of the video the text on top is perfectly sharp.

So you can spin that any way you like, doesn't change the fact that Youtube performs vastly better in the same degraded conditions. But maybe the target demographics are people who have a fetish for ultra blurry video?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#293

Post by ninth_ant »

prepend wrote: post #83
kaushikt wrote: post #19

User retention on mobile is much higher as compared to websites. Now, people are more attention deficit. Everyone I know has a weird habit of opening their phone and checking their "FEED" (could be reddit, could be fb or insta even). All this on mobile. Ads is a good reason too. In my past workspace, we spent a crazy amount of money on facebook ads and got 80% of traffic from their mobile app. Reddit is trying to fol…

Is user retention really higher on mobile? Or is it that web users can’t be tracked so look like they drop off and come back. I think people make too many definitive statements and bad assumptions based on what they can measure. Leaving off understanding gaps where data doesn’t exist or never will.

Measuring retention is going to be mainly useful for logged-in accounts. And that is is something that could be trivially measured and compared between platforms.

My guess based on experience in this area in other companies is that app users will report a better experience, stay much longer, and return more often.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#294

Post by danielscrubs »

the_gipsy wrote: post #274
mark_l_watson wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will somewhat reluctantly support Apple on this. There are no web sites that I want to allow interrupting my work/writing flow with notifications. Also, the new awesome privacy settings in Safari on the beta iOS and beta iPadOS and beta macOS Bug Sur are very much appreciated, at least by me.

The constant nagging to "download the app" is worse. Notifications can be left off, for a website or an app - this constant install-app-nagging is unavoidable now. It absolutely IS possible to add the feature, as opt-in like with app permissions, and e.g. with some user-initiated event like audio already does. The REAL motivation here is money, forcing users to use the appstore, instead of the web which is an open pr…

“Download the app” is still visible on Chrome.

Nagging will always be good business, no matter what platform or what shape or form.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#295

Post by yodon »

As a conversion optimization question, I suspect Reddit would get better conversion on their "do you want the mobile app" banner if they only showed it randomly about 10-15% of the time. By showing it every time, they cause viewers to remember their "why would I want that - I don't" decision from the previous time they saw the question. Reducing the frequency would likely result in more people considering the question as a fresh new question independent of the previous viewing when presented with it the second time, increasing the odds they go with the install (by definition these are people who didn't install the first time, so their remembered decision is by definition no, so encouraging them to consider the question again as a fresh question can only improve the conversion effectiveness of the prompt over their remembered decision).

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#297

Post by AgloeDreams »

jakevoytko wrote: post #10

Other people are saying "ads," but the story is probably more expansive. Mobile apps have better hooks for pulling people back into the app, like popup notifications. Reddit has natural lifecycle points where they can do this: when people respond to your comments or comment on your posts. They could also notify users of events like their yearly Secret Santa. I wouldn't be surprised if their engagement numbers were mu…

Yup, many companies I've worked for see push notifications as the raison d'être for apps.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#298

Post by krapp »

PakG1 wrote: post #268
GekkePrutser wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand, but they're also pushing many users away with this behaviour. It's what I like about HN.. It feels like they don't even care how much users 'engage'. I bet they don't even run a report on it. They just let us do our thing here and not worry about it. As a user this is a much nicer experience.

Easy for HN to do that. HN is not incentivized to make money. The people who run HN do not care if HN does not make any money. In fact, they have zero monetization strategies for HN.

The only reason HN isn't incentivized to make money directly is that its owned by a company that makes money on it indirectly.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?

#299

Post by tiziano88 »

yodon wrote: post #295

As a conversion optimization question, I suspect Reddit would get better conversion on their "do you want the mobile app" banner if they only showed it randomly about 10-15% of the time. By showing it every time, they cause viewers to remember their "why would I want that - I don't" decision from the previous time they saw the question. Reducing the frequency would likely result in more people considering the questio…

Please don't suggest them more ideas to make this even more annoying than it currently is :) (and yes, I would consider reducing the frequency of displaying it as an increase in annoyance, for exactly the reasons in the parent comment)
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