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Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

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Re: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

#11

Post by fineIllregister »

sdwr wrote: post #7
minimaxir wrote: post #6

> Interviewer: I don’t know if I agree with the characterization that Apollo is a fully direct competitor of Reddit. > Huffman: Okay, hold on, timeout. You go to the App Store, you type in Reddit, you get two options, right? There’s Apollo. You go to one, it’s my business, and you look at our ads, use our products. That’s 95 percent of our iOS users. The rest go to Apollo, which uses our logo, or something like it, t…

He has a point, no? Sure, there's a middle ground where API access is priced so both Reddit and Apollo make money. But Apollo can offer a better experience because they don't have to sell ads, and if they get a large enough market share they can just start their own Reddit.. the codebase is not an effective moat.

> But Apollo can offer a better experience because they don't have to sell ads...

Reddit could require serving their ads as a requirement for API access. Right now there is no way for Apollo to serve reddit ads even if they wanted to.

Re: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

#12

Post by bleepblop »

tru3_power wrote: post #9
reducesuffering wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe he's the CEO of a company as big as Reddit. After being pressed for why the 3P apps have 1 month to figure out a plan, he is visibly angry and keeps saying "we've been supporting them for 10 years!" which only makes the company look incompetent for not warning sooner if July 1st is some hard deadline. Then saying "those 3p devs [Apollo] don't want to work with us" with no hint of irony. Dude, obviousl…

Seems like their ipo could flop

The people in WallStreetBets have been waiting for the chance to short reddit on day one. They have their fingers on the trigger.

Re: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

#13

Post by asciii »

Nition wrote: post #8
asciii wrote: post #5

Journalist: > I want to stop you for a second there. So you’re saying that Apollo, RIF, Sync, they don’t add value to Reddit? Spez: > Not as much as they take. No way. Let’s be clear, if 1 developer can make millions through Apollo and do a way better app than the Reddit team, what does that say about Reddit as a whole and their development? It fucking sucks!

I imagine Reddit's response would be, we have to show annoying ads etc to make back the money we spend on infrastructure. Apollo simply uses our work for free, and so can offer an artificially better deal.

> our work

A lot to unpack here.

Re: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

#14

Post by [deleted] »

sdwr wrote: post #7
minimaxir wrote: post #6

> Interviewer: I don’t know if I agree with the characterization that Apollo is a fully direct competitor of Reddit. > Huffman: Okay, hold on, timeout. You go to the App Store, you type in Reddit, you get two options, right? There’s Apollo. You go to one, it’s my business, and you look at our ads, use our products. That’s 95 percent of our iOS users. The rest go to Apollo, which uses our logo, or something like it, t…

He has a point, no? Sure, there's a middle ground where API access is priced so both Reddit and Apollo make money. But Apollo can offer a better experience because they don't have to sell ads, and if they get a large enough market share they can just start their own Reddit.. the codebase is not an effective moat.

[deleted]

Re: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

#15

Post by noahtallen »

Nition wrote: post #8
asciii wrote: post #5

Journalist: > I want to stop you for a second there. So you’re saying that Apollo, RIF, Sync, they don’t add value to Reddit? Spez: > Not as much as they take. No way. Let’s be clear, if 1 developer can make millions through Apollo and do a way better app than the Reddit team, what does that say about Reddit as a whole and their development? It fucking sucks!

I imagine Reddit's response would be, we have to show annoying ads etc to make back the money we spend on infrastructure. Apollo simply uses our work for free, and so can offer an artificially better deal.

But it would be very simple for Reddit to require ads to be served in Apollo. They could say that in order to view a feed of posts at scale, you'll have to include ads that are injected into the feed. They could revoke the API token for any clients which don't do that. In fact, there are plenty of ways for Reddit to get their money back.

Simply put, the Reddit CEO definitely wants to kill 3rd party apps. He just knows that saying it out loud would have an even bigger backlash. With the current approach, he can pretend to care about 3rd party apps, but do everything to make it financially impossible to run one.

Re: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

#16

Post by praisewhitey »

sdwr wrote: post #7
minimaxir wrote: post #6

> Interviewer: I don’t know if I agree with the characterization that Apollo is a fully direct competitor of Reddit. > Huffman: Okay, hold on, timeout. You go to the App Store, you type in Reddit, you get two options, right? There’s Apollo. You go to one, it’s my business, and you look at our ads, use our products. That’s 95 percent of our iOS users. The rest go to Apollo, which uses our logo, or something like it, t…

He has a point, no? Sure, there's a middle ground where API access is priced so both Reddit and Apollo make money. But Apollo can offer a better experience because they don't have to sell ads, and if they get a large enough market share they can just start their own Reddit.. the codebase is not an effective moat.

>But Apollo can offer a better experience because they don't have to sell ads

Apollo can offer a better experience because they don't have to constantly push recommendations and test new features to boost engagement metrics. If every 10th post on Apollo was an ad it would still be an improvement over the Reddit app.

Re: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

#17

Post by kentm »

bleepblop wrote: post #12
tru3_power wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like their ipo could flop

The people in WallStreetBets have been waiting for the chance to short reddit on day one. They have their fingers on the trigger.

Well I guess that means it’s going to the moon then.

Re: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

#18

Post by shagie »

sdwr wrote: post #7
minimaxir wrote: post #6

> Interviewer: I don’t know if I agree with the characterization that Apollo is a fully direct competitor of Reddit. > Huffman: Okay, hold on, timeout. You go to the App Store, you type in Reddit, you get two options, right? There’s Apollo. You go to one, it’s my business, and you look at our ads, use our products. That’s 95 percent of our iOS users. The rest go to Apollo, which uses our logo, or something like it, t…

He has a point, no? Sure, there's a middle ground where API access is priced so both Reddit and Apollo make money. But Apollo can offer a better experience because they don't have to sell ads, and if they get a large enough market share they can just start their own Reddit.. the codebase is not an effective moat.

> and if they get a large enough market share they can just start their own Reddit.

That assumes that Apollo is sufficiently profitable to host the necessary backend systems to support a reddit clone. This also means that they need to have moderators (and if they're volunteer moderates where back at the "reddit takes advantage of volunteer moderators" square). It also means that this instance would have the appropriate legal staff to be able to handle trademark disputes, DMCA claims, and assorted challenges to maintain itself in the face of trolls, unsavory content, and such.

The moat that Reddit has from such upstarts isn't that its hard to build an instance, or stand one up, or even maintaining a community there - but rather making sure that it stays up by following the assorted laws (GDPR, CDA, trademark, copyright, etc...) out while maintaining a sufficient income stream to pay the staff (and maintain advertisers if you're not going full subscription only).

Re: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

#19

Post by Nition »

asciii wrote: post #13
Nition wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine Reddit's response would be, we have to show annoying ads etc to make back the money we spend on infrastructure. Apollo simply uses our work for free, and so can offer an artificially better deal.

> our work A lot to unpack here.

Ah, well, I'm sure a real response from Reddit would be much more careful than I was to point to the costs of their infrastructure and away from all the work users do to generate content for free.

Re: Full Interview: Reddit CEO Steve Huffman Isn’t Backing Down

#20

Post by shagie »

noahtallen wrote: post #15
Nition wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine Reddit's response would be, we have to show annoying ads etc to make back the money we spend on infrastructure. Apollo simply uses our work for free, and so can offer an artificially better deal.

But it would be very simple for Reddit to require ads to be served in Apollo. They could say that in order to view a feed of posts at scale, you'll have to include ads that are injected into the feed. They could revoke the API token for any clients which don't do that. In fact, there are plenty of ways for Reddit to get their money back. Simply put, the Reddit CEO definitely wants to kill 3rd party apps. He just know…

Why not simply charge for the API, and let Apollo figure out a funding model that works for them. It could be subscription, it could be going with a different ad server.

Having Reddit need to do audits of clients (where the clients could do things like quietly reduce the number of ads you get if you've tipped $9.99 or more - or not serve ads if your ID is on this special list so that friends don't see the ads or use a developer special trial build) is impractical and would mean that its even more of a call of if the client is in compliance or not.

What's more, ads served by the API to a client that isn't controlled by Reddit are less valuable - Reddit would have less information about how much engagement they had with the ad.

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