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Apollo will close down on June 30th

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Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#641

Post by goolz »

SheinhardtWigCo wrote: post #287

When your landlord raises your rent from $2000 to $8000, they're not really hoping to raise your rent. They're evicting you. I think the new API pricing model was developed with a single purpose: extinguishing third-party apps to improve the official app's install/usage metrics before their upcoming IPO.

This is certain. Can you imagine how embarrassing it must be? A solo dev did what you couldn't all because you were too busy force feeding everyone ads. I would love to know what these executives tell themselves to convince each other they are not the bad guys.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#643

Post by bl_valance »

Demmme wrote: post #290
mustacheemperor wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being caught in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer whose work has done a lot for the platform and who has the ear of a reasonably sized and loud portion of the community. I really hadn’t expected that. Corporate doublespeak is one thing, and management decisions aren’t necessarily always in the interest of their users - but such an egregious act is reall…

I actually believe reddit when they say the impact is small I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered anything besides their website. If the traffic to their site is primarily from the web (or web mobile or the official Reddit app), the client (3th party) users are only a loud minority. Of course I think the behavior is shitty but I don't think most people really care and reddit will not see any real impact…

I'm in the same boat tbh, website and app are good enough for me, I really don't understand the need for other apps.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#644

Post by spott »

IgorPartola wrote: post #459
dandellion wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hoping at least we'll start to see some alternative communities to reddit pop up. I've been on the lookout for new smaller communities for a few years now, but the only interesting things I've found are a couple of Discord servers. While they are nice, Discord has a very different vibe from public anonymous forums.

There are plenty of old school forums. Example: I recently got into leatherworking. There are a couple of subreddits for it but also a large and active forum at https://leatherworker.net/forum/ . Reddit has discoverability and single sign on for a bunch of forums. It also has some fun nice to haves like a mixed feed of all your interests. But old school forums tend to be less commercial and sometimes can be a lot mor…

The biggest annoyance I have with old school forums is the single threaded nature of them. Reading through an entire 200 post thread to see if anyone actually responded to the one question that was asked in the third post is just incredibly inefficient and annoying.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#645

Post by ryanmercer »

Seems foolish to build your company to be entirely dependent on the generosity of free API access, then rage quit when you have to start paying instead of, you know, charging your customers more.

Also I see no evidence that he was accused of blackmail. A linked comment in the Reddit thread states:

>Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million.

The linked comment is from "BuckRowdy", apparently not even an employee of Reddit and that is not "blackmail". To me that's "hey, acquihire me and my company for 10 million and then you don't have to do the work!"

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#646

Post by BashiBazouk »

DecayingOrganic wrote: post #525
mustacheemperor wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being caught in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer whose work has done a lot for the platform and who has the ear of a reasonably sized and loud portion of the community. I really hadn’t expected that. Corporate doublespeak is one thing, and management decisions aren’t necessarily always in the interest of their users - but such an egregious act is reall…

After carefully reading the comments and going back to the post, I take back my argument. It was flawed and did not represent the whole picture. I apologize for that. I think it wasn't a threat, but rather an unsuccessful attempt to sell Apollo before time runs out. I apologize for the confusion I created with my poor argument. I need to read more carefully. --- I initially clicked on this post fully prepared to be o…

From reading the transcript it reads to me that Reddit says Apollo is costing them $20 mil a year from lost opportunity cost, which I take to mean advertising/tracking et? The Apollo dev seems skeptical of that cost and is jokingly suggesting that if they cut him a $10 mil check, they can make it up in 6 months purely from getting that "opportunity" back with the added benefit Apollo just disappears.

I look at less of a threat and more of a calling the bluff...

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#647

Post by ryanmercer »

robbiet480 wrote: post #14

I just don’t see Reddit’s response here other than “yes, turns out we are the bad guys who have been continually lying and manipulating the situation for our benefit”. I wonder if they’ll see employees quit over this. How do you trust your employer after this? I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this. Just absolutely stunning turn of events, massive kudos to Christian for recor…

>I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this.

It's my understanding that Apollo users make up a fraction of a percent of active users. Reddit almost certainly doesn't care. Fact is they've taken in over a billion in funding and aren't really returning a profit, charging for API access starts moving them in the right direction though.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#648

Post by that_guy_iain »

robbiet480 wrote: post #14

I just don’t see Reddit’s response here other than “yes, turns out we are the bad guys who have been continually lying and manipulating the situation for our benefit”. I wonder if they’ll see employees quit over this. How do you trust your employer after this? I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this. Just absolutely stunning turn of events, massive kudos to Christian for recor…

> EDIT 2: Is spez (Steve Huffman, CEO and cofounder) going to lose his job over this?

Why would he lose his job? Realistically, it's a smart business move to monetise their users. It's Reddit, them being pissy about having to pay is part of the course. There is a reason they're the lowest valued social media users.

>EDIT 3: Christian says in the post the refunds will cost him personally about $250,000. Does he have a claim against Reddit for that money I wonder? I'm sure lawyers are looking closely at the agreements right now.

What would he have a claim for? He wasn't paying for the API. He could pay for the API and continue to operate. You can't sue someone because they stopped letting you use their services for free. You sure can't sue a business for asking your for-profit company to pay expenses.

Realistically, these app users would have made tens if not hundreds of thousands a month if they just added subscription model to their app and only had paying customers. These apps could still exist and be extremely profitable for a one-man apps.

Simple maths $5 a month subscription $2.50 to reddit $1.50 to apple and $1 to the app developer. Say 10% of their users convert which seems very reasonable considering the reception a price increase to $6.99 seem to get on the Apollo subreddit. That would have been $100,000 a month profit. But instead, they shut it down.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#649

Post by ryanmercer »

Demmme wrote: post #290
mustacheemperor wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really astounding to see the CEO of Reddit being caught in a blatant lie denigrating a third party developer whose work has done a lot for the platform and who has the ear of a reasonably sized and loud portion of the community. I really hadn’t expected that. Corporate doublespeak is one thing, and management decisions aren’t necessarily always in the interest of their users - but such an egregious act is reall…

I actually believe reddit when they say the impact is small I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered anything besides their website. If the traffic to their site is primarily from the web (or web mobile or the official Reddit app), the client (3th party) users are only a loud minority. Of course I think the behavior is shitty but I don't think most people really care and reddit will not see any real impact…

>I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered anything besides their website.

Same. I have never used anything other than old.reddit on a proper computer, with the exception being when I need to edit the new.reddit sidebars for subs I moderate, which I still do on a proper computer.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#650

Post by polytely »

Veen wrote: post #501
kojeovo wrote: post #330

Looking at #s on the app store / play store and it looks like RIF / Apollo usage is a drop in the bucket compared to the actual reddit app. I doubt this has any meaningful impact after all is settled. Just seems like a loud vocal minority.

Yes, but all the high-value content on reddit is created by a minority of users. The people who moderate reddit are a minority of users. The issue for reddit is that these are the same people as your "loud vocal minority" who use third-party apps. You know, the ones that do the work generates Reddit's value in the first place.

I'm pessimistic that it will matter, the power users will leave, the quality of content will drop, and the vast majority of users will be perfectly happy with the low quality content-slop that is left.
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