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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

#561

Post by dmix »

fencepost wrote: post #555

I'm surprised they didn't take the approach of "API access for paid accounts only, and with limits to restrict LLM scraping". If they'd added that to Premium, plus a lower-tier "API" pricing at $1-2/month they'd likely have cleaned up. I'm curious what percentage of Reddit Premium subscribers are also users of third-party apps - seems to me that if you're a power user you're more likely to be in both camps. Also mode…

Reddit is trying to IPO so they are looking for every possible way to make money.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#562

Post by kmeisthax »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #454
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…

> Unfortunately with today's SPA apps we don't even get the HTML directly It works the other way: with today's SPAs the API (that powers the frontend) is exposed for us to use directly, without going through the HTML - just use your browser's devtools to inspect the network/fetch/XHR requests and build your own client. ----- On an related-but-unrelated note: I don't know why so many website companies aren't allowing…

There's two reasons why they don't want third-party clients as a pro feature:

- It's a very niche thing to charge for, and merely charging for something means having to support it, so you can be underwater on support costs alone

- Users on third-party clients are resistant to enshittification

The business model of any Internet platform is to reintermediate: find a transaction that is being done direct-to-consumer, create a platform for that transaction, and get everyone on both ends of the transaction to use your platform yourself. You get people hooked to your platform by shifting your surpluses around, until everyone's hooked and you can skim 30% for yourself. But you can't really do this if a good chunk of your users have third-party clients.

This is usually phrased as "third-party clients don't show ads", but it extends way broader than that. If it was just ads, you could just charge $x.99/mo and make it profitable. But there's plenty of other ways to make money off users that isn't ads. For example, you might want to open a new vertical on your site to attract new creators. Think like Facebook's "pivot to video", how every social network added Stories, or YouTube Shorts. Those sorts of strategic moves are very unlikely to be properly supported by third-party clients, because nobody actually wants Twitter to become Snapchat. So your most valuable power users would be paying you money in order to... become less valuable users!

If social media businesses worked how they said they worked, then yes, this would actually be a good idea. But it isn't. Platform capitalism is entirely a game of butting yourself in to every transaction and extracting a few pennies off the top of everything.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#563

Post by chillfox »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #502
superfrank wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Discord seems the most likely, it matches the subreddit model and a lot of Reddit communities already have a discord. Obviously Discord is chat focused so not a one-to-one replacement but I am not sure that the younger generations will care. Plus there is the possibility of discord adding a Reddit/forum like feature, since they already have the mindshare.

Discord already has a forum feature, it’s just rarely used.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#564

Post by onion2k »

xavdid wrote: post #513
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 reve…

If your most dedicated/prolific users mainly post/comment using third party apps...

Thats really easy for Reddit to measure. Why are you assuming they haven't?

It strikes me as a very shortsighted move.

If you stop assuming that Reddit is run by idiots, and you consider the likely probability that they've modelled this stuff in some depth, it's easy to believe that your initial assumption is wrong, and that the users are on 1st party apps (or will be if others shut down), and that many will stay and continue to post rather than leave or stop posting.

Your premise is based wholly on the belief that you know more about Reddit users than Reddit does. That seems dubious to me.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#565

Post by nocoiner »

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…

Believe it or not it’s actually totally feasible to come up with a one-time number, paid upfront, that represents adequate compensation for future services. Obviously it’s going to be a multiple of periodic pricing, but equalizing a one-time payment versus a series of cash flows isn’t rocket science.

And though it’s easier to price a subscription, those also tend to be more user-hostile and occasionally not that great for the developer either (just look at the recent Twitter client debacle, where for-profit enterprises were begging their users not to ask for a refund for prepaid services that could not be rendered). I can’t imagine anyone came away from that with a good taste in their mouth.

I don’t begrudge anyone the right to earn a living, but in my mind the vast majority of subscription models on the market don’t imo represent a very compelling value proposition.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#566

Post by renewiltord »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #454
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…

> Unfortunately with today's SPA apps we don't even get the HTML directly It works the other way: with today's SPAs the API (that powers the frontend) is exposed for us to use directly, without going through the HTML - just use your browser's devtools to inspect the network/fetch/XHR requests and build your own client. ----- On an related-but-unrelated note: I don't know why so many website companies aren't allowing…

> I don't know why so many website companies aren't allowing users to pay to use their own client...

If you do that, I'm going to make a client that uses a rotating set of accounts and masquerades as a different client. I am then going to make content available through my client for free, and I'm going to put ads on it so that I can make money. With some small number of accounts, I will serve perhaps x1000 users and you can't do anything about it.

In time, perhaps I will lock the users into my platform. They will talk about how the community on Reddit doesn't understand Reneit and how all the memes come from Reneit. If I win, I'll be Reddit over Digg. If I lose I'll be Imgur.

So go ahead. You'll be Invision to Tapatalk and you will die.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#567

Post by parhamn »

Im genuinely curious, how much value should reddit be extracting per user via third-party-clients for their services given they can't serve them ads and what not themselves?

Facebook's ARPU is $58.77 in the US/Canada so $5/month. According to them, Apollo's Pro clients would earn reddit $2.50/month. Is the right number $1? I imagine that would still kill Apollo.

It seems like the problem more generally is that third-party clients cannot extract the same value from users that first-party clients can.

Has anyone tried to solve this differently? What if Reddit gave you a libAds to add in your application where you build and control the other 90% of the interface and do a profit sharing system with them.

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#568

Post by wswope »

foo1024 wrote: post #553
sockaddr wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have recently searched for some open source alternative to reddit. Lemmy.ml seems to be a fediverse alternative, and have a nice web UI and apps, though the site is pretty much empty. If popular 3rd party app could join force and migrating to lemmy because of reddit's brain-dead pricing. It will be interesting.

If you’re talking about a self-hostable Reddit-like service, Tildes’ platform might be a good option if it suits your taste.

https://docs.tildes.net/

Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing

#569

Post by kypro »

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.

This isn't true if they're charging for API access. At best it's a question of whether the lost ad revenue is being compensated for by API revenue.

If you want to attribute an ulterior motive here I'm guessing it's more about control. They want their users to use Reddit as they want them to use Reddit, or at least they'd like to reserve the right to that power.

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