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Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

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Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#381

Their pricing is just absurd. Reddit's official app and webpage is garbage, and instead of working with amazing developers like Christian to add whatever functionality they need to increase their revenue, they're doubling down on bad decisions and alienating their users. Pure hubris... they've forgotten their own history and why the Digg exodus happened. Seriously, _what_ are they gaining by eliminating access to thi…

Reddit has seemed rudderless for a long time. Their ads platform is damned near useless compared to their competitors. It's a wonder they have any revenue at all. Their moderation is wildly broken, frequently leading to blanket account bans of anyone participating in a thread close to content deemed inappropriate.

None of those social media are rudderless, just that, money’s circulating in hyperspace and the lower dimension slice of those just has to be mostly consistent on time axis. We are looking at a cross section at ballast deck of a ship.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#382
post #248

Their pricing is just absurd. Reddit's official app and webpage is garbage, and instead of working with amazing developers like Christian to add whatever functionality they need to increase their revenue, they're doubling down on bad decisions and alienating their users. Pure hubris... they've forgotten their own history and why the Digg exodus happened. Seriously, _what_ are they gaining by eliminating access to thi…

Facebook's average revenue per user (ARPU) is ~$10/quarter[0], and 6x that in the US. Which is honestly kind of stunning. Reddit is presumably much less than that, but they might be reasonably gunning for a number better than Pinterest, with an ARPU of ~$1.50[1]. To put the pricing post into the same context, we're talking $7.50 per Apollo user/quarter, which is closer to what Facebook makes per user than Pinterest.…

> Facebook's average revenue per user (ARPU) is ~$10/quarter[0], and 6x that in the US.

Can someone explain this to me? Why is it so high? Even if every single person on Facebook buys a product because of ads once per year, doesn't that mean companies are paying $240 to acquire a customer in the US? Is it worth that?

My first though was that maybe 1% of users buy something in a given year, but that's $24k to acquire a customer and is so far from reality that my perspective must be way off.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#383
post #248

Their pricing is just absurd. Reddit's official app and webpage is garbage, and instead of working with amazing developers like Christian to add whatever functionality they need to increase their revenue, they're doubling down on bad decisions and alienating their users. Pure hubris... they've forgotten their own history and why the Digg exodus happened. Seriously, _what_ are they gaining by eliminating access to thi…

Facebook's average revenue per user (ARPU) is ~$10/quarter[0], and 6x that in the US. Which is honestly kind of stunning. Reddit is presumably much less than that, but they might be reasonably gunning for a number better than Pinterest, with an ARPU of ~$1.50[1]. To put the pricing post into the same context, we're talking $7.50 per Apollo user/quarter, which is closer to what Facebook makes per user than Pinterest.…

My thoughts exactly. People ask for paid options in lieu of ads and tracking, but when sites like YouTube and Reddit offer paid plans at reasonable prices ($3-$10/mo) there is an equal amount of outrage. You will never be able to please users who simply want to pay nothing.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#384

Yeah, I'm out. I'm not using Reddit on its own app nor the browser. The app is huge and clunky. The browser is turtle slow. Neither gives me the granularity that Apollo gives me. The swipe controls are slick and so are the filters. If I can't consume it with Apollo then it ain't worth it to me. And I already paid for the app. I refuse to pay more for something that is not a necessity. Apollo would have to become a su…

I have paid for Apollo, and Apollo is the only way I am using reddit. Should they go ahead, i will message Christian, send him my regards and gratitude, and nope the f out of reddit forever.

I too am sick of subscriptions, and may find myself in the same seas I found myself at 14.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#385
I stopped using Reddit last week when they shadowbanned me for, I assume because you cannot know for sure, saying something related to gun violence in America and my local area in a political subreddit. I only ever commented about sim-racing at any other point in that account's life, and so perhaps it was shadowbanned for posting my own YouTube videos that were not monitized and had like a dozen views? I don't know, and I don't care, my mental health has never been better than the past week!

tl;dr: I quit Reddit because I didn't want to make yet another account, and my life is better for it.

Edit: Also, I've been trying not to come into HN political and pop-culture threads too much, but am failing at that. Maybe today is the day I start just hitting the technical threads!

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#386

Not to go all “I told you so” but I do recall Christian talking about how Reddit would never do anything like this and how much trust he had in their developer relations team now, oh, sometime earlier this year. Hope he took the suggestion to have a backup plan seriously…relying on the whims of a single company is a hard way to make your income. Doesn’t mean you can’t try it but it is fundamentally pretty risky.

I found this attitude from Christian really off-putting.

Dude, you run an interface to another company’s core business. You cannot make any guarantees about what they may or may not do.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#387

I don’t see the issue. Apollo should charge a subscription fee that equals (cost of “reasonable API access + desired profit)/.70 and cap the number of request per user so it remains profitable. Users should understand and I would gladly pay for Apollo per month.

The current subscription price is $1.50 a month or $10 a year, so presuming the same profit the cost would have to jump to a bit more than $5 a month or $53 a year. Apollo also had a lifetime tier that would have to go away, because it was priced without knowing that future costs would be so much higher. This also entails getting rid of the free tier and imposing usage limits on the remaining subscribers since a few…

> Apollo also had a lifetime tier that would have to go away, because it was priced without knowing that future costs would be so much higher.

A “lifetime” purchase for any app is always a bad idea and is a Ponzi scheme. Mobile apps always require maintenance and updates.

Now of course I understand that he could have never predicted such a price increase.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#388

Yeah, I'm out. I'm not using Reddit on its own app nor the browser. The app is huge and clunky. The browser is turtle slow. Neither gives me the granularity that Apollo gives me. The swipe controls are slick and so are the filters. If I can't consume it with Apollo then it ain't worth it to me. And I already paid for the app. I refuse to pay more for something that is not a necessity. Apollo would have to become a su…

> The browser is turtle slow. Are you using old reddit? [1] Do you find that slow as well?? [1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/o67vzg/how_tro_get_ba...

old.reddit.com is streets faster, but I’m not a fan of the UI and realistically they're gonna discontinue it at any moment

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#390
post #7

Wow, that price is insane. To me, that's pretty clearly a shot at any competitor apps for Reddit. Purely anti-competitive behavior here, which to me is silly. Let other apps pop up to better serve your users. At the end of the day, they are still your users and you might learn things from the other apps. Who ever came up with that price is looking for short-term profits over user happiness and long-term growth.

> At the end of the day, they are still your users and you might learn things from the other apps.

but those users don't see ads on 3rd party apps. they already know what all they can implement to improve user experience. they just wont, willingly

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