Because apps can display apps more easily and can collect (more) data more easily.
Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
81–90 of 657 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
They've grown to the sixth most visited website in the US (third in the UK), so they're doing something right.
You mean like when ethernal october hit, the internet was doing something right to attract all these wonderful people? Just because the masses like something doesn't mean it is good.
So what should they use as a standard of success?
How many Usenet poseurs give them the thumbs up?
That don't pay the bills.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#83User 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.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#84The fundamental answer to what changed with Reddit over the last 3-5 years – an IPO became the main goal of the company[1](2017): > Reddit may go public by 2020, said CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman during a keynote conversation at the Internet Association’s Virtuous Circle Summit on Monday. “The time frame is pretty far out,” he admitted. However, he also argued that going public was inevitable for Reddit to both r…
What does that have to do with using their web site versus their app
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#85That and the layout of their "new" redesign where you go to a post and it'll show the post, 2 comments (out of 500), not even the full threads of those comments either and then just some unrelated posts and you have to click on more links just to read the actual comments and you can feel your browser choke under the weight of whatever framework they use trying to render a few bits of text.
Noticed Twitter switching to the same pattern too, show 1-4 replies then just some random unrelated algorithm posts from elsewhere.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, I think ads is just another way of saying monetization. The app has lots of annoying notifications like "You might like...", "You got 100 upvotes", etc which, when you engage with more, they make more money through ads, coins etc. Your attention, retention and engagement is a lot easier to manage and increase through an app than it is through website.
Instead of direct monetization, they probably measure by engagement. If a service has a permanent presence on your device, you get a LOT more engagement and recurring visits than a web version. Websites on mobile are one-time, visit-and-forget/move on things. I'd love to be proven wrong though; what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage? Also not to be underestimated is that a mobile app will always h…
Exactly this. To give you a datapoint from our properties: Our web site attracts 90% of the users, but only 60% of the actual traffic. In all metrics like retention, frequency and time on site, mobile leads by factors of 2-5.
Part of that is definitely self-selection, but as some people already said, other notable effects are push notifications, mindshare, loss aversion (you're on somebody's device already, so they can just as well use it) and partly better performance.
So much about the users, but Monetization is much better as well, mostly due to mobile ad-IDs, which especially on iOS lets you extract double the revenue per user due to targeting. Ad blockers are harder to bypass.
In the end, a mobile app will get you anywhere between 2-10x the revenue per user you attracted to your property, so that's why Reddit is pushing so hard.
To stay in Reddit's lingo though:
`LPT: https://old.reddit.com`
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#87What's sad is that the mobile app is perfectly usable and it's obvious that a lot of thought and care has gone into it. I feel bad for the people maintaining it.
I tried the app, but it doesn’t work for me at all. As a platform, Reddit is very flexible and can be used in many different ways. Their app has been designed for (or to create) social media crack babies that can’t stop swiping and infinite feed of SMC (Social Media Crack). It isn’t designed to be useful to users, so I assume it is designed to improve engagement metrics with an Instagram effect.
In my simple case, I follow specific subreddits, but I check other ones from time to time. The web browser is much easier to work with URLs on my phone. I can go to specific reddit’s very easily by just typing in the URL on my phone browser. Even better, there is still old.reddit.com which is much faster and less glitchy (media not loading, complicated UI frames appearing resulting in unexpected scrolling/zooming issues) than their new website for tablet and desktop usage. Further, the new site constantly loses my place and resets to the beginning of the subreddit losing my place.
The constant ads for the mobile app, and the automatic switching back to the new app on browsers are a massive hurdle, so I do seek out alternatives. However, there are some great communities and information on Reddit, so I will keep using it until critical mass moves on.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#88The fundamental answer to what changed with Reddit over the last 3-5 years – an IPO became the main goal of the company[1](2017): > Reddit may go public by 2020, said CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman during a keynote conversation at the Internet Association’s Virtuous Circle Summit on Monday. “The time frame is pretty far out,” he admitted. However, he also argued that going public was inevitable for Reddit to both r…
What does that have to do with using their web site versus their app
It increases engagement metrics, which is the most important thing for an ad company looking to raise more money in the future.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#89Use an RSS reader. You will like the lack of feeling of being forced to comment on things you don't care much about in retrospection. No tracking or ads, only content. You can filter shady sites or posts from appearing. Here are some readers. 0] https://github.com/GetStream/Winds 1] https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS 2] https://github.com/feedbin/feedbin 3] https://github.com/yang991178/fluent-reader If you like so…
Yup. RSS is the way to go for browsing Reddit without all the dark patterns.
Self plug - you can try my app Plenary on Android (no ads/trackers) - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spians.ple... that has Reddit as one of the RSS Assistant option. It basically creates RSS feed for subreddits, users, search terms etc for you.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Reddit on mobile so obsessed with making me use their app?
#90Funny, they make me not read reddit on mobile with their insistence on using the app. But the real reason is tracking and spamming you with notifications to get "engagement".
I still use old.reddit.com. Such an improved experience, even on mobile where the format doesn’t fit. So maybe that’s why they want you in the app? They know their website is terrible?
Honestly even with the tiny text, even with having to pan and zoom around the page. The old.reddit experience is superior on mobile to the modern idea how to design of a "mobile app" for a site like reddit.