Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 585 posts

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#501

Post by shagie »

flutas wrote: post #496
shagie wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apollo averages ~345 calls per-user per-day The mobile front end does about 345 calls/user/day The push notification server does 8640 calls/user/day (one call every 10 seconds). In https://youtu.be/Ypwgu1BpaO0?t=1772 he describes how that works. > I guess there's an analogy um the way Reddit notifications work just for your inbox like you got a message or something um they work in so far as if I the developer of th…

> The mobile front end does about 345 calls/user/day > The push notification server does 8640 calls/user/day (one call every 10 seconds). I've seen you parroting this around in every thread, and don't understand why. First of all, none of the math checks out with your theory. But I'll break down why. Here[0] he says Apollo has over 100k DAUs (I noticed you've also stopped using that link...). He also says > At 100,00…

The 100k users is the total username when he released 1.3 if he were to have that entire user base get push notifications.

He didn't do that - he set up a new subscription tier for the app to handle that. Not everyone in the 100k user base bought a subscription.

The 100k number was also from 5 years ago and is likely not accurate for today. The main value from that quote is as a description of how he was architecting the notification system then and the YouTube video is how showing that this is how he is still doing it.

Unfortunately, we're going from incomplete numbers that are being interpreted different provided by different entities. The best we can do is set floor and ceilings for the numbers. And I'll admit that my math may be off in places too.

What we can do is identify how much it would cost for one account with the push notification server request as part of the API cost (noting that one subscription may set up multiple accounts - see https://apolloapp.io/notifications-faq/ How many accounts/devices does this work with? ).

The estimate I have is that as the push notification server is written, it would cost about $2/day/account (8640 requests/day x $0.24 / 1000 requests).

$2M/month would suggest that he has about 33k users with push notifications. At about 1.5M monthly users that's 4% that signed up for a subscription.

That's a ceiling as I'm not counting the "how many requests per day come from an average user with the 900k daily active users claimed".

(Some data points)

* 2M monthly users https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759180/reddit-protest-p...

* 50,000 people have a yearly subscription to Apollo https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/06/08/reddit-app-apollo...

* 1.5M monthly active, 900k daily active https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/31/popular-reddit-app-apollo-...

---

And yes, I will certainly agree that Reddit, lacking an event based notification system is an oversight in how their API was used.

The push notification server needs to be considered as part of the API load and it is really easy to get that number to grow.

If you scale back the notifications from 1 every 10 seconds to 1 every 5 minutes, it becomes a much more reasonable number with only 288 requests per day per user - which gets into very different numbers when dealing with a subscription.

Let's call it on average 600 request per day per user overall then, and you're at 18k/month/user and that's $5 of API use cost. Up the subscription from its current $4.99 to $9.99 and you've paid Apple's 30% (or 15% if more than a year) and Reddit's API costs and made a profit.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#502

Post by johnnyanmac »

randomdata wrote: post #447
johnnyanmac wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the apps paid a reasonable rate with respect to what is reasonable to app developers, Reddit would still go bankrupt. I know reddit was never profitable, but I'm not convinced Reddit is so short on money that they can't last to 2024. They'd probably do major layoffs like so much of the tech industry has this deal and lighten that load. From what I heard, Reddit employs 2000 workers and I can't imagine they need t…

> They'd probably do major layoffs like so much of the tech industry has this deal and lighten that load. Yes, that is addressed at the end. 'Next will be a massive layoff to follow the small layoff earlier this week to address the haemorrhaging on the expense side. The "everything will be okay in a few days" notice sent to employees today indicates that something "not okay" is coming.' You don't want to start there…

>You don't want to start there if you don't have to.

Of course (I was laid off last month, no dev wishes other devs to be laid off). But to open up my cynical side for a bit: I also don't sympathize with these huge companies taking advantage of (what EVERYONE knew was) a temporary boon in tech and growing off of low interest rates proportions that would not be needed in 2-3 years.

I as an individual saved aggressively for when that bubble inevitably popped and I'd very likely be laid off (fears which came true. Twice.). These companies instead decided to throw all bets in, and I can't exactly sympathize when the obvious future called their bluff. If Reddit didn't have a war chest to help wheather the storm with, I just see that as myopic at best and greedy at worst.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#503

Post by paxys »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #131
flutas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the solution is easy for any laywer to provide - just shut down the business. I don't really agree with that take. He's already talked about what happens now, and it includes refunds for unused subscription time. > I've been talking to my rep at Apple, and over the next few weeks my plan is to release something similar to what Tweetbot did (Paul has been incredibly helpful in all of this) where folks can decide…

I'm astounded that he was actually able to run a business pulling in $500,000 a year in subscriptions without ever having to pay the actual platform the users are "subscribing" to a dime. And he's been doing this for what? 8 years? No wonder he doesn't care about shutting it down. It was a free lunch the whole time.

$500-600K/year in revenue.

Take away 1. app store fees (30%) 2. income taxes 3. hosting costs 4. contracting costs (he employs at least one part time engineer) 5. design costs 6. health insurance + other payroll taxes, and you are left with a small percentage of that as net income.

Now add in the hours of his life he has presumably put into this app for the last 8+ years. I'm going to go ahead and guess that it was more than 40 hr/5 day weeks

If you consider his skills as a premier iOS/full stack developer, simply getting a job in big tech would be a wayyyy better option for him financially. Heck he could pocket $500K/yr at Google/Meta in straight salary without any of the associated fuss.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#504

Post by lukifer »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #325
nocoiner wrote: post #4

IMO, he’s doing a pretty good job negotiating this as well. I know there’s a lot of words right now about broken promises and everyone not wanting to do business with anyone else, but from the outside to this uninformed observer it looks to me like this is a high stakes showdown that’s inching toward a commercial resolution. There’s some dollar amount (representing either an exchange of value or avoided losses) where…

I've felt the opposite. He's basically tried to have an argument in public to get people to turn against Reddit. His communication is no longer negotiation. It's burn everything down with me because I've given up. I understand that Christian is in a really challenging place, but fighting with Spez in a public place is not the way to do it. It only encourages other developers to build a following that they attempt to…

Negotiations aren’t based on pretty words; they’re based on leverage (BATNA). If both parties saw a win-win on API costs which can sustain 3PAs, we wouldn’t be in this situation. Once negotiation goes “hardball”, demonstrating leverage through something like a strike is part of the negotiation process.

“It only encourages other developers to build a following that they attempt to leverage against Reddit.”

This is a feature, not a bug. While Reddit has a substantial moat of momentum and content, the longer a strike goes on, the more users are incentivized to defect to Reddit clones (temporarily at first, but potentially the “new normal” as time goes on), and of course the apps can add support for these alternatives.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#505

Post by paxys »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #499
paxys wrote: post #21

The part about him already selling 50K annual subscriptions to Apollo is the interesting one in the piece, and explains the decision to discontinue the app. He entered into a contract with users assuming that his API costs would be 0. He can't change that contract and start charging another fee on top, and is obligated to continue to provide the service no matter what Reddit now decides to charge him. So the solution…

Why can't he cancel the existing "Ultra" subscription, refund the remaining time just as he already plans, then launch a new subscription with the new price?

Something tells me this is exactly what he is going to do once the uproar dies down and everyone goes back to using Reddit like normal.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#506

Post by tezgon »

tmpz22 wrote: post #116
more_corn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These obvious places to start would have needed to take place months ago before the decision was made, before the deadline set, before management dug in. Before the revolt. What are the obvious places to go from here and now?

> What are the obvious places to go from here and now? Act like adults. Admit mistakes. Change policies. Rebuild trust through honest and prompt communications.

Based off the C-suites I've encountered in my life, that is the last thing that will happen.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#507

Post by dTP90pN »

shagie wrote: post #427
heisenbit wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apollo claimed to be more efficient in API use than the Reddit client and somehow the rate you quote make no sense. Polling for push notifications at that rate? If that is the case then the Api is insane.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/9l3ema/apollo_13... > For some quick math, Apollo has well over 100K active users. The server polls Reddit approximately every 6 seconds, so that's 10 requests per minute per user, or 600 requests per hour per user (assuming they only have one account and one device). At 100,000+ users, that's in the realm of 60 million requests per hour that my server would have to handle,…

Note: According to the published server source code, the NotificationCheckInterval has been increased to 60s sometime in back in March:

https://github.com/christianselig/apollo-backend/blob/b992d2...

Reddit had many years to listen to 3p devs and to it's own internal developers to improve their API. They/Leadership decided not to do so.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#508

Post by chasil »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #488
chasil wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I try to invest in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will." --Warren Buffet.

It's probably very easy to run a business if you've never had to worry about making a profit. I'm not sure that's a wonderful business though.

Buffet prefers businesses with "moats" that present high barriers for new competitors to take market share.

Coke and IBM were his preferred stocks for some years for these reasons.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#509

Post by suid »

x0x0 wrote: post #318
phire wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the plan was always to kill the 3rd party apps, but not until their own app was feature competitive with the 3rd party ones. But they ran into time limitations. They plan to IPO later this year and they want the 3rd party apps to be dead before then.

I can't see that. If a 1.5 person app (Apollo) is handily beating Reddit's app... what on earth is the holdup? Either the eng team is wildly incompetent, or this is by executive choice. Reddit's inability to deliver on mod tools despite a decade's worth of promises makes me think it's 40/60 wildly incompetent and needing firing vs exec choice.

I had proposed this reply to someone else's similar question.

I don't think the current app's design is an accident (i.e. it's not pure incompetence). It meets several objectives:

* Minimizes the user-generated content shown on each page (a couple of threads or a couple of comments), so it reduces the amount of traffic to the server and DB as the user browses around.

* Oh, and it leaves a ton of space for ads, which (bonus) can be served from a separate ad server, further lightening their load.

* Plus, there are Bob Ross-like "happy accidents" like pages jumping back to the top when you go a level up from a thread - going back to your spot can trigger more ads to be shown.

The 3rd-party apps subvert all this, and bypass the ads, to boot.

Re: Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted

#510

Post by WTFruit »

x0x0 wrote: post #318
phire wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the plan was always to kill the 3rd party apps, but not until their own app was feature competitive with the 3rd party ones. But they ran into time limitations. They plan to IPO later this year and they want the 3rd party apps to be dead before then.

I can't see that. If a 1.5 person app (Apollo) is handily beating Reddit's app... what on earth is the holdup? Either the eng team is wildly incompetent, or this is by executive choice. Reddit's inability to deliver on mod tools despite a decade's worth of promises makes me think it's 40/60 wildly incompetent and needing firing vs exec choice.

It’s even worse than that, because both apps didn’t start at the same time, or from the same point. The Reddit official app started out as Alien Blue, which by all accounts was a very popular and well-made 3rd-party app itself. Reddit bought it, and then made it significantly worse, and THEN Apollo came out.
Post reply on HN