Will plan my way out of reddit.
Apollo will close down on June 30th
291–300 of 1001 posts
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#292[deleted]
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#293Reddit 16-year club member here. Reddit has made the the most tone-deaf decision in their entire 17 year history. This will be a future case study on how to self-immolate your entire community.
15-year-club here: This time it feels more being about Reddit itself than about specific persons, like with Ellen Pao. Just the vibe I'm getting.
Anyway, I quit cold turkey end of last year after being a daily user for those 15 years. Definitely right move.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#294This is absolutely nuts. The only reason I was still using Reddit was because of the Apollo app. Best of luck to you in the future Christian.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#295In this situation, do you hire someone to negotiate with or for you? I'm thinking the intention here was to sell the company for $10 million and that came across as a threat because of the language that was used. You would not record the call [1] and then publish it if you actually were blackmailing them for $10 million. I'm not faulting the guy here at all, I just think it comes down to lack of experience in dealing…
Yeah this guy didn't handle this situation very well. I don't know if it would've been possible to save Apollo for reddit, but that call didn't help at all. Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a competitor? That's like his only bargaining chip in this situation, and he's just throwing it away because he feels overwhelmed and wants to make iOS widgets. I totally sympathize with him and how this situati…
Why should he be forced to do something he doesn't want to do?
He's made it abundantly clear why he doesn't want to do that, who are you (or anyone else but him) to say "No you're not allowed to have opinions, you MUST create your own alternative"?
> I've received so many messages of kind people offering to work with me to build a competitor to Reddit, and while I'm very flattered, that's not something I'm interested in doing. I'm a product guy, I like building fun apps for people to use, and I'm just not personally interested in something more managerial.
> These last several months have also been incredibly exhausting and mentally draining, I don't have it in me to engage in something so enormous.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reddit should try honestly. "We are losing lots of money, we need to start making money, reddit gold isn't bringing in enough revenue to pay the bills. 3rd party apps don't show ads, which costs us a lot of money every month. Keeping the 3rd party APIs up and running also costs us money. Because Reddit needs to stop losing money, we are closing down 3rd party apps." I don't know what why it is so hard to say that...
Reddit had an easy way out for the issue of 3rd party apps not showing ads, they already have a paid subscription which removes the ads on the official clients, so they could have made the API exclusive to users with a subscription. People would have been upset, but not this upset.
Exactly. In fact, Spotify works exactly like this: you can use any third-party client you like, so long as you have a Spotify Premium paid subscription. If you have a free account, you need to use the official clients with ads.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#297RIF has now announced they will also be shutting down on June 30th
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditisfun/comments/144gmfq/rif_wi...
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
I'm aware it's a private company. Employees have been issued stock options and/or RSUs as part of their compensation package for years now which would make them shareholders.
> Employees have been issued stock options and/or RSUs as part of their compensation package for years now which would make them shareholders.
Well, no, options don't make them shareholders unless they're exercised. RSUs don't make them shareholders at all, because they're not actually stock (they're stock units).
Reddit's cap table is probably a mess at this point, so I imagine that some current employees are also shareholders, but I don't know if all are, and RSUs don't make them shareholders.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Folks - if you want Apollo to survive, go make it known you are willing to pay $5 a month for access. I know it's popular to hate on Reddit right now - and for good reasons , but folks, Apollo made a business decision that was unsustainable and entirely dependent on the good will of another (untrustworthy) 3rd party company. It seems foolish to just shut down out of spite. The support for Apollo seems very strong - h…
Right now, I would only pay for a subscription if there was a way for reddit to get none of the money.
I can understand that position in this case but really the idea of passing the cost along to provide a high quality experience seems nice. Like imagine a third party YouTube client where you pay the UI developer to make a UI that doesn't urinate in your breakfast cereal. You get a better experience and they show you the YouTube catalog. Now imagine the same app has access to HBO and Disney and Netflix. I could see paying a premium for that because it separates the platform's incentives from the UI incentives, which removes the dark pattern incentives like promoting the platform's own content.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#300> Steve: "Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million." Steve: "This guy behind the scenes is coercing us. He's threatening us." I can't believe that CEO of Reddit was telling internal people that Apollo tried to blackmail Reddit for a $10 million payout when that didn't happen.
I've listened to the voice call [1] linked in [2] and I interpret it the same way that Reddit staff apparently did -- as a veiled threat. Here's why: Christian is saying during the call that if Reddit wants Apollo to "quiet down", then to "make it easier" on everyone, Reddit should pay Christian $10 million dollars. I agree that there is ambiguity to the conversation, but if you listen to the exchange in context ...…
Is it really a threat to offer to sell Apollo rather than face the public backlash that will happen by forcing it to shut down?