Third party Reddit apps should just start letting users bring their own API credentials as each user gets access to a free tier of API access of 100 queries a minute which is plenty.
Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
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Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#942I guess these clients just need to scrape the websites and make post request via website with fake user agents etc. It's a lot of work but for a small fraction of 20m a year you can hire a team who only work on that. Didn't Digg primarily die from a redesign? Why has the web become so forgiving these days? People don't seem to give a shit anymore. "Oh OK, I'll use the official reddit app filled with ads, OK I will wa…
>It's a lot of work but for a small fraction of 20m a year you can hire a team who only work on that. I tried doing something like this for scraping corporate profiles. It's a lot harder than it seems. Most websites try to block bots that do this kind of scraping (unless you're Google/Facebook/etc...), so you end up having to setup a boatload of VPNs to make it seem like the bot is coming from multiple sources, but t…
They will block bots and large scrapers.
What you have to do is have the app do it directly. This is more work if you have to do it in the app but it makes life for reddit a living hell as they can not just filter high requests nunbers as the traffic is coming from individuals.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#943Earlier quoted context omitted.
This kinda assumes that people won't leave in mass. Digg migration took like 60 days. I think especially in a forum where people tend to be semi anon. This isn't staking out a facebook name and keeping up with highschool friends. I know a few user names by sight on reddit but I really don't care if I hear from them again and I don't expect they care about me. Makes leaving to anywhere that can put together a decent U…
I feel like Reddit sees their userbase as two types of users: casual users that browse /r/pics or something like that on the official app / web and power users that are subbed to niche subreddits, use 3rd party apps and likely still use the old.* subdomain. For the longest time Reddit was predominantly the latter group of power users but in recent years Reddit has had a mass influx of the former casual group of users…
I wonder how pissing off the power users, which produce most of the content, is going to turn out. There is a similar issue with moderators, who heavily rely on third party tools to moderate their subs.
I can’t imagine this killing reddit, not at all, but I think the power users and moderators are important to what makes reddit reddit and that without them the quality will decline quite a lot.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#944I'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 grea…
Let’s do so.
Apollo will be charged $2.50 per user per month to access the Reddit API, for a total of $1.7 million dollars the first month the bill is due; so, Apollo has 0.68 million users.
If we estimate that 30% of Apollo users will still be using the app after a period of time, then:
If users average one year of usage, Apollo must charge a fixed purchase price at least $2.50 * 12 = $30 plus overhead, in order to stay afloat without a subscription.
If users average three years of usage, Apollo must charge $90.
I have been using Apollo for five years, so I would expect to see Apollo charge $150 under your pricing model.
I consider Apollo to be worth $150, but only because I’ve been using it for five years. Their app would not be viable in the marketplace if it charged up front for two or more years of API usage.
Finally, I’ve been using Reddit for fourteen years, so if I continue using Apollo past my fifth year, the developer will lose $30/year on me. So, the developer will need to implement a shell game scheme, where new signups are charged an extra overhead on their $30/year flat fee to cover the usage costs of the users who are beyond their fifth year, which means that prices will be adjusted upwards each year for new users.
Flat app pricing is not a viable pricing model for Reddit’s usage-based API billing of Apollo users, resembles a pyramid scheme when modeled to include long-term existing users, and drives annual price increases leading to a collapse in user signups and the death of Apollo.
If your math shows otherwise, in some way that demonstrates how an Apollo flat fee model can pay for usage-based billing for as many years as the app continues operating, please share your work.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#945Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you go into that thread there are people begging Selig to charge them 4x what Apollo Ultra costs. And they're begging him to charge it to everyone all the time. This can't just be laid on the feet of faceless bean counters or old men in the executive suite.
40% of reddit posts are marked NSFW. All those won't be able to be accessed from the API. And those NSFW posts are far from just porn. It's frequently news (especially related to war), the "vice" subreddits (cigars, guns), mental health subreddits, ect. Also, 4x of Apollo Ultra is probably not enough. After the Appstore takes its cut and the dev pays himself, you're not left with enough money to pay for the API acces…
I’m not sure how this will be handled, considering there is only one kind of NSFW tag, but the reddit admins said that only sexually explicit content will be inaccessible from the API.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#946Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck releasing a client like that on the App Store.
On what grounds is Apple or Google going to block it? You're using the website wrong?
Re Google, possibly through this, as per https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... ?
"We don’t allow apps that interfere with […] or access in an unauthorized manner […] other […] servers, networks, application programming interfaces (APIs), or services, including but not limited to other apps on the device, any Google service, or an authorized carrier’s network."
"Examples of common violations: […] Apps that access or use a service or API in a manner that violates its terms of service."
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#947I'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…
The pricing seems to be aimed at killing 3rd party apps, rather than making them partners. Reddit seems to be entering it's late-stage period. I wonder what will replace it.
Certainly, this will kill free usage of 3rd party Reddit apps. How much revenue will be lost for Apollo when non-paying users cease using it? Will the Apollo developer be affected in any significant way when those non-paying users go away?
$2.50/user/month for Apollo usage is considerably less than the $6/user/month charged by Reddit to users directly for an ad-free website experience.
Is $2.50/month an unreasonable price for an ad-free Reddit experience? If that’s how much Reddit is being paid for advertising per Reddit user, then how many Reddit users will voluntarily pay that to use ad-free third-party apps?
This is more likely to kill Reddit Premium, than to kill paid third-party apps. Apollo is a better experience than Reddit Premium, and at a theoretical $2.50/month versus the known $6/month, would save me $42/year over Reddit premium. Sign me up.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#948I think it's very clear that the recent LLM boom is directly responsible for Twitter, Reddit, and others quickly moving to restricted APIs with exorbitant pricing structures. I don't think these orgs really care much about third-party clients other than a nuisance consuming some fraction of their userbase. Enterprise deals between these user generated content platforms and LLM platforms may well involve many billions…
ah that explains why Twitter led the pack making their APIs insanely expensive. there is value in the data and the LLM companies will be willing to fork it. a whole new business model and monetization of mass data not predicated on ads or user privacy. what could go wrong?
That's unlikely. Elon jacked up the price because he wanted Twitter to make revenue, so get people to use their app and site, and basically to just get rid of anything he doesn't control.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#949Can someone give me a couple reasons why it does not make sense to buy Apollo out, and make it the default iOS app? It is currently maintained by one excellent developer, is featured by the Apple App Store for design... what's the downside?
It is insane how absolutely shit the Reddit app is and how great Apollo is. It's bizarre as hell that reddit doesn't just offer to acquihire him for like $10M cash and $1M/yr salary and be done with it.
Reddit doesn't make money directly from providing a good clean user experience, they make money by putting ads in front of retinas, and they can drive up the value of said ads by mining user data (which can also be sold).
People gravitate towards third party apps because they have less ads, and because since they don't mine for data as much as the official app the user experience is more like "classic" Reddit and less like an algorithmic content pipe alla TikTok.
Most of the things that make the official app shit are the things that make it profitable - it just needs to avoid being so shitty as to alienate too many users.
Re: Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing
#950The 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…
a few options for Reddit: 1/ just buy Apollo. show ads 2/ do a special deal with Apollo where they somehow incorporate ads into the app 3/ API access with Reddit Premium. Apollo can now carry on as normal for premium users & charges "free" users 4/ learn to build a freaking app - people didn't end up using Apollo because of the high quality of the Reddit mobile app.
Personally I rarely use Reddit in a browser and if 3rd party apps were to go away that would be the end of Reddit for me.