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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

#431

Post by waboremo »

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…

Meta's reach is gigantic, their data is detailed and expansive. You're actually paying less on average when spending on Meta platforms than you are elsewhere, and likely getting more back. This is why companies are comfortable with throwing an ad campaign on Meta platforms just to get email signups, there was a blog on Shopify where a smaller company talked about spending $5000 for a newsletter ad, and per new subscriber they only spent $1.50 on the ad campaign. Even though technically they've really lost money on such a situation, they feel comfortable doing it again on calculations for future revenue.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#432

Post by uoaei »

slipshady wrote: post #323
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…

> 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...

Mobile reddit takes minimum 5 seconds to load on the latest Android using a fork of Firefox called Mull. I suspect the slow load is retaliation for preventing analytics, under the guise of "this script is waiting for a response, won't time out immediately". I'm always confronted with a "this experience is better in the app!" pop up. Signed in on old reddit.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#433

Post by busymom0 »

consumer451 wrote: post #400
busymom0 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, they will kill Apollo by squeezing it out of API costs. Once it's dead, they will buy it for cheap.

After I hit the add comment button to post the question, this was one of my thoughts. Giving an API price like that is an instant devaluation of every 3rd party Reddit app.

I wouldn't call it "devaluation" because what Reddit is basically saying is that Apollo is worth $20 million at least. Won't be surprised if they first squeeze the third party apps out of business, then buy them for super cheap.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#434

Post by CharlesW »

altairprime wrote: post #359

I'm looking forward to this outcome. Reddit and Apollo both need to get paid, on a recurring basis, for their recurring services that require recurring maintenance and updates. Reddit gets paid either through ad revenue displayed to non-paying visitors to the website, or through API calls for access to their dataset. Apps that enable user access via the API will need to pass along this charge to their users. Apollo m…

> There are no good free outcomes that are not advertising-supported, and the API is incompatible with advertising…

I'm curious why you'd think that. If anything, an API access agreement allows Reddit to compel Apollo to meet advertising requirements.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#435

Post by sen »

slipshady wrote: post #323
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…

> 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...

They’ve recently killed i.Reddit and /.compact (the mobile versions of old.reddit) and have also gimped old.reddit immensely over the last year, with things like images being force-embedded into the new layout even if you access the raw image path (!!), among other things. There’s absolutely no way old.reddit lasts much longer.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#436

Post by spacebanana7 »

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…

Not quite $240, but Netflix apparently spends about $100 for customer acquisition [1] (data is a few years old). I imagine the other streaming sites have similar unit economics.

In consumer finance, CACs are even higher. For standard credit cards it’s around $200 but can be over $1000 for premium cards.

[1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/01/23/netflixs-83-millio... [2]https://www.unifimoney.com/blog/changing-the-vicious-cycle-o...

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#437

Post by rozab »

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…

It's a tragedy, because reddit is the last source of publicly available truth on the internet. I can search for anything with site:reddit.com and see actual human beings' opinions on the matter.

All other truth is locked down in unindexed chats, and all other search results are SEO'd AI written articles shilling referral links.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#438

Post by bluefirebrand »

dontreact wrote: post #326
hendersoon wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They priced the API for LLM training and killing third-party apps is just a great bonus. If they wanted to retain third-party apps while protecting their revenue stream they could have simply created a new free API including all the ads. They deliberately chose to kill these apps.

Why wouldn’t people then just scrape using the free API?

You can throttle APIs so they are still useful for a human browsing content, but essentially worthless for scraping meaningful amounts of data.

You can also detect accounts that are displaying scraping behavior and block them.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#439

Post by yunohn »

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…

> And I already paid for the app. I refuse to pay more for something that is not a necessity.

To be fair, paying for Apollo unfortunately doesn’t support the future of Reddit. They need some way to keep the business afloat.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#440

Post by Eji1700 »

galangalalgol wrote: post #211
BlackjackCF wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I only find Reddit tolerable because of Apollo. The official Reddit app pales in comparison. I hope they can come to some sort of agreement or find a way to acquihire the Apollo developer (though that might kill the app with crappy features as well).

I've always just used the web, is there some reason to use an app for it? I liked it as a place to look for people talking about things I might want to buy. I'm sure it is full of fake comments, but the ones that make verifiable claims for or against are useful.

I've used RES + web + adblockers forever. Any app i've looked at is usually more cluttered than that.
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