I'm pretty tired of the outrage headlines. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed, and willing to move on. I'm not interested in the web or official app, and while I really appreciate Reddit, I spend a lot of time on the site that could probably be spent elsewhere, and maybe this change provides the impetus for me to find healthier ways of using my time.
Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
21–30 of 85 posts
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#22The owner of this client should just try to replace underlying Reddit with something else. Someone tried something similar years ago they bought up all the popular twitter clients
I don't get this suggestion. Users of this app (myself included) want a different UI for Reddit. Changing the underlying store to something else would make it useless to me because I'm specifically using it to access Reddit. "Something else" wouldn't have the same communities and content that I want to view.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#23Everything built on hardware you don't own is doomed to end like that at scale, yes? When are we going back to owning your own fast, light, redundant hardware so you don't have to charge millions for free APIs that were responsible for all your growth in the first place?
I don't think Reddit's issue is the cost of operating the site but the pressure to generate bigger revenue for the IPO (or maybe more, a plausible story by which they could generate big revenue).
Of course costs play a part in how much revenue you need, but even in the realm of costs it's probably employees rather than servers that's dominant.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#24> Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month 900,000 total users, if they were all converted to paid users, would cost $1.89 per user, so Apollo could charge $1.99 per month. Or they could charge $2.50…
But they can't charge $2/mo. Not all of their users will pay. In fact, most won't, and many who would already paid for "lifetime membership" (Apollo Pro/Ultra) which they sold anywhere from $5-$50.
They'd probably have to charge $10-20/mo just to break even.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#25> Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month 900,000 total users, if they were all converted to paid users, would cost $1.89 per user, so Apollo could charge $1.99 per month. Or they could charge $2.50…
> if they were all converted to paid users
There's your problem.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#26Speaking as an Apollo user for five years, the official app is just terrible. From big problems like confusing/inconsistent navigation and missing video and text formatting options to annoyances like slow/delayed animations and janky scrolling, there's just a huge lack of thought or polish in Reddit's app. I think Reddit is just embarrassed that one guy can make an app that's so, so, soooo much better than their slow…
Thats because Apollo doesn't datamine you to oblivion, or madly optimize for engagement.
If Reddit adopted Apollo, they would slow it to a messy crawl in 6 months.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#27Am I the online who uses Firefox and old.reddit.com to browse reddit on my phone? It works pretty well.
I still miss i.reddit. I've been trying hard to get off of reddit entirely but it hard because the community and information subreddits provide is still very good. But the other day I noticed the reddit frontpage is just repeating posts if you continue to click next page...
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#28Speaking as an Apollo user for five years, the official app is just terrible. From big problems like confusing/inconsistent navigation and missing video and text formatting options to annoyances like slow/delayed animations and janky scrolling, there's just a huge lack of thought or polish in Reddit's app. I think Reddit is just embarrassed that one guy can make an app that's so, so, soooo much better than their slow…
They probably have totally different priorities. Apollos only goal is good UI/UX.
Reddits is tracking, Ad revenue, prioritizing cached content and who knows what other priorities have been pushed into it.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#29> Apollo made 7 billion requests last month, which would put it at about 1.7 million dollars per month, or 20 million US dollars per year. Even if I only kept subscription users, the average Apollo user uses 344 requests per day, which would cost $2.50 per month 900,000 total users, if they were all converted to paid users, would cost $1.89 per user, so Apollo could charge $1.99 per month. Or they could charge $2.50…
70% of 2.50 is $1.75 which would put them under with current mobile app store pricing of a 30% fee for subscriptions. $3.75 gets them closer but then margin is $0.125 which would total to $112,500/yr if all 900,000 users switched to paid which is highly highly optimistic.
Re: Reddit sparks outrage after it demands app developer pay $20M/yr
#30Similar post, 340 comments 9 hours ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36162235
Funny how HN selectively applies this rule. Third front page thread in two days without updates.