Yeah, started avoiding reddit links just because of that and also because you usually land somewhere else than what you where after and have to scroll. Not interested
Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
451–460 of 657 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#452Other 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…
This is correct. It's about retention more than monetization. With the app, you can not only send notifications, but you also have the app icon which reminds people of the apps existence. Even little things like "badging" (when the app icon shows a dot or number to indicate new notifications) and even that can have a noticeable impact on retention (we're all programmed to click into anything with a notification). Als…
There's probably a suffering PM there whose bonus depends on juicing these horrible metrics rather than making their product wonderful. I myself dabbled in product management but got so turned off to it from the constant focus on addiction metrics. 7-day Retention! 30-day Retention! Daily Active Use! Daily Sessions Per DAU! Eyeball-share! Get their contacts! Spam them with E-mail! Spam them with notifications! Red badges on the app icon! Get them back in the app! I felt like a drug pusher, not someone building something great.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#453I use Slide from fdroid. It really has all the features I would want and is very customizable.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#454Same reason why Google always releases new projects and then quietly closes then a couple of years later: politics.
Some product manager at Reddit has his perfomance measured by app adoption, and not by the reputation of the company and future of it's service.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
The extractive rent-seeking (slavery being the most extractive economic and political institution possible) South was significantly lagging even before the rebellion, which was crushed by the United States whose other regions had more inclusive economic institutions. In more recent times the authors compare two towns across the US-Mexico border: Nogales, AZ to to Nogales, Mexico. Even thought the language and ethnici…
> while Mexico has suffered under one party rule for decades Yet now we suffer under two-party rule.
Which has been the case since almost the inception of the country, as it is a direct consequence of the First-past-the-post voting system that the US government has implemented.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#456Other 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…
Also helps them rank higher on app store which is a discovery engine
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#457It is pretty offensive that they say "reddit works better on the app" when the only reason for that is that they broke everything on mobile (on purpose?) in a series of badly-implemented redesigns. I'm never going to install it, and I have all but stopped reading it because these prompts are so obnoxious. That's probably +$ for Reddit though. I don't understand why companies constantly do stuff that serves only _them…
MIT economists Acemoglu and Robinson wrote a book "Why Nations Fail" that analyzes why countries at similar starting points can have extremely divergent paths in terms of economic development. One example is South and North Korea. Their conclusion is that some countries have established extractive institutions, while others inclusive . The extractive ones exclude the population from the decision making process and se…
Yes, they used crowd-sourcing to build their empire, yet they seem surprised that the crowd wants to have a say in how things work.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#458I've identified my biggest pain point when these companies try to pull shit like this: it is the audacity for them to pretend like they have some authority to decide anything for me (as a user), or even nudge me in any directions, be it in content, ways to use their service, etc. ... Dear Reddit, (and the likes), You are a service company. You provide me a service. You are not an authority, or a thought leader, or an…
I wish I could give you gold for that comment, thankfully we aren't on reddit
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#459It is pretty offensive that they say "reddit works better on the app" when the only reason for that is that they broke everything on mobile (on purpose?) in a series of badly-implemented redesigns. I'm never going to install it, and I have all but stopped reading it because these prompts are so obnoxious. That's probably +$ for Reddit though. I don't understand why companies constantly do stuff that serves only _them…
I don't know why anyone would bother with the first party app when there are a bunch of really nice 3rd party ones with all sorts of additional features. All the one's I've used have been free with premium versions that only cost a few bucks. Which of course leaves me wondering how long it is before reddit pulls the plug on their API and forces people to use the busted mobile site or their app.
Link for the lazy: https://apolloapp.io/
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#460It is pretty offensive that they say "reddit works better on the app" when the only reason for that is that they broke everything on mobile (on purpose?) in a series of badly-implemented redesigns. I'm never going to install it, and I have all but stopped reading it because these prompts are so obnoxious. That's probably +$ for Reddit though. I don't understand why companies constantly do stuff that serves only _them…
What's equally absurd is that I assumed they ruined the web experience with their redesign in order to make it mobile compatible. It just goes to show they're ruining both web and mobile experience to pigeonhole users into environments where they can force feedback loops of their users so they have to spend more time in either platform.
Our only hope now is that Google downranks them, until they fix the web interface.