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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

#511

Post by sockaddr »

gaudat wrote: post #480

I have a story to tell, about the demise of one of the largest internet forums in my language. About ten years ago, when smartphones just started appearing, the forum did not have a mobile version, and there are various 3rd party clients on the App Store or Android Market. Later on, one of the largest 3rd party client was blocked, because of they hammering the forum's servers too hard,. Or something about caching and…

Yup. I'd join Apollo if it was substantially similar. They could not possibly make a worse UI than the current "new" reddit web UI so the bar is pretty low.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#512

Post by ziziyO »

gaudat wrote: post #480

I have a story to tell, about the demise of one of the largest internet forums in my language. About ten years ago, when smartphones just started appearing, the forum did not have a mobile version, and there are various 3rd party clients on the App Store or Android Market. Later on, one of the largest 3rd party client was blocked, because of they hammering the forum's servers too hard,. Or something about caching and…

This Tapatalk by chance? I only remember it because it would sign your posts with a little ad.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#513

Post by xavdid »

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…

> every user using Apollo instead of their own first party apps is lost revenue

That's maybe true as a first-order effect.

But, for the ads that everyone else sees to be worth anything, the site has to be worth visiting at all. If your most dedicated/prolific users mainly post/comment using third party apps, then making their experience worse will reduce the quality of the site overall (even if you start getting revenue on behalf of those dedicated users).

It strikes me as a very shortsighted move.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#514

Post by jeffalyanak »

mdgrech23 wrote: post #503
Eji1700 wrote: post #418

Everyone saying their pricing is absurd had better get ready for the new wave of API pricing. Like every other industry, there's a growth period where things are new and prices are reasonable, and then there's the "squeeze" where bean counters come in, make charts that are likely bs, and explain how much easier it'd be if we charged 4x as much for half the customer base. Twitter was one of the first to give access to…

If you make more money it's hardly BS. There are supply and demand graphs and you can reasonably calculate how many customers you lose/gain from a price increase/decrease.

It can be rational and still be BS.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#515

Post by jamilton »

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…

Is the math that the dev did broadly accurate? If it is, it seems they could safely charge 10-19x less and get more revenue per-user than they do from ads alone... assuming that even a 10x lower cost would be affordable for third-party clients, which isn't a given.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#517

Post by wvenable »

SirMaster wrote: post #460
jamie_ca wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not that great at APIs. Is client_id something you have to register with reddit? So you can't, for example have a client_id per user? What if you as the app maker forced all your users who want to use your app to go register for their free personal client_id for their own personal API use, and then you have them give that client_id to the app along with their OAuth with they log in? I am just trying to understand…

> Is client_id something you have to register with reddit?

Yes.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#518

Post by teej »

danijelb wrote: post #327

The web went in the wrong direction when we abandoned the initial concepts of user agents, which was that the browser has the ultimate choice of what to render and how. That concept, transferred to today's world of apps would simply mean that any client like Apollo is essentially a browser locked on Reddit's website, parsing HTML (which has the role of an API) and rendering the content in a native interface. As long…

There was a 15 year period where many websites were only compatible with Internet Explorer. The dream of clients in control is worth fighting for, but it’s never been reality.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#519

Post by popcalc »

sockaddr wrote: post #511
gaudat wrote: post #480

I have a story to tell, about the demise of one of the largest internet forums in my language. About ten years ago, when smartphones just started appearing, the forum did not have a mobile version, and there are various 3rd party clients on the App Store or Android Market. Later on, one of the largest 3rd party client was blocked, because of they hammering the forum's servers too hard,. Or something about caching and…

Yup. I'd join Apollo if it was substantially similar. They could not possibly make a worse UI than the current "new" reddit web UI so the bar is pretty low.

You could always co-opt Dread ;)
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