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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

#401

Post by treis »

donmcronald wrote: post #382
yojo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Our CAC is higher than $240. Lots of services are. When you start thinking about a customer being worth multiples of their revenue (not even profit) it makes a lot of sense.

Also, online advertising can lead to in store sales. When you look at those dollars people spend a couple orders of magnitude more than $240 on stuff every year.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#402

Post by jamie_ca »

SirMaster wrote: post #112

They say that the free tier API for users will be 100 queries per minute. Why can't a third party app use each user's individual API queries for that user's app usage? Like you have the user OAuth with the app, and then the app uses that user's own user API access to query the API. 100 queries a minutes seems like it should be enough for most people.

Because they're also taking this opportunity to change rate limiting from client_id+user_id to just client_id.

To stay inside the free tier, you get 1000 requests spread over 10 minutes (their current spike-smoothing behaviour) across your entire user base.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#403

Post by _dan »

paxys wrote: post #383
yojo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The outrage is usually because those sites deliberately go out of their way to compromise the experience for those that don’t pay.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#404

Post by Firmwarrior »

paxys wrote: post #383
yojo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reddit doesn't supply a valuable service. They basically just ran and squatted on the concept of "internet forum" and used VC/network effects to bully almost all the normal forums into (temporary) nonexistence.

Anyone reading this can make their own Reddit-esque forum on a VPS and serve a few thousand people for a few bucks a month. And if Reddit ever kicks out all the polished app users/old.reddit users, you'll see that start happening a hell of a lot more

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#405

Post by numpad0 »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #343

Without a doubt, this is another step in Reddit's demise. It will really go into freefall when they go public later this year, after which I'm certain you'll start seeing more intrusive monetization. The window just opened for someone to develop the replacement. It will rip itself apart over the next few years and all 52 million users will be looking for a new home. Reddit's product is authenticity. Monetization is t…

Note you can’t just make a New Digg and move people over - it will be something next-gen compared to what it is. And 100m babies are born each year, that’s double what’s their userbase.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#406

Post by tivert »

donmcronald wrote: post #382
yojo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> 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?

1. I wouldn't be surprised if lots of businesses lose money on their Facebook ads, but either don't realize it or Facebook has enough churn that it doesn't matter if the quit (e.g. a revolving door of unsophisticated local businesses spending money on Facebook because it's the biggest game in town).

2. A lot of advertising is broad "brand awareness," and I imagine it's actually very hard to determine if it's actually working in many cases.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#407

Post by abletonlive »

buildbot wrote: post #221
abletonlive wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that it's anti-competitive to do with your platform what you want is in my mind silly. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from building a reddit clone to compete against reddit besides your ability to attract their users. It comes off as extremely entitled to think that reddit should supply you with the data created by their platform to do what you want with it.

Um, the users create the data, and consume it. Reddit provides a "marketplace" for that, and sells your data in exchange. Now, they want to rent-seek from the very people making it possible to create and consume that content easily. And it IMO, is anti-competitive - they are intentionally killing all existing competitors, vs. improving their own offering.

Apollo is not a competitor to reddit, it's a consumer of reddit. Those are very distinct things. It literally doesn't even exist without reddit.

If I have a backyard and let you host a couple concerts in it free of charge and then next year I decide "hmm, I think I should be paid for those concerts you're hosting in my backyard" is that anti-competitive?

Absolutely not.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#408

Post by ajmurmann »

superfrank wrote: post #393
api_or_ipa wrote: post #346

The reality is that Apollo doesn't serve intrusive ads, and thus, every user using Apollo instead of their own first party apps is lost revenue. Unfortunately, reddit is in that late stage monetization step where they need to prove they are capable of big revenue to justify a high IPO share price. One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. So far, reddit has been very careful rais…

> One can only hope there'll be a watershed moment like the one that killed Digg. I think a critical part of the Digg exodus was that most people already saw Reddit as a clear #2 in the space. When Digg fucked up, there was an obvious place for everyone to migrate to. I don't see that right now. Facebook isn't cool anymore, Twitter has a large number of people who won't use it because of Elon, Mastodon isn't mature e…

Mh, it feels like there has been little to no innovation and competition between companies about social media that are primarily text-based. Mastodon is in essence a decentralized Twitter. All new social networks seem to be about media other than text. The only text-centric new entry that comes to mind is Substack, but that's not really a social network product. Maybe it's time for a new innovator?

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#409

Post by syntheticnature »

racl101 wrote: post #174

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…

As someone replied to in the comments there, Apollo adding a mandatory subscription -- which doesn't sound like what the dev wants to do, anyhow -- is basically just doing a passthru subscription to Reddit. It's the same sort of thing with certain fees in US companies that get passed to broadcasters/regional sports networks.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#410

Post by bigthymer »

He should seriously consider starting his own Reddit alternative. He has a sea of enthusiastic supporters that potentially have enough critical mass to get it started. Unlike attempts to create Reddit alternatives in the past, this group isn't full of racists and others who were kicked off the site for engaging in reprehensible topics.
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