A bit of a missed opportunity here. Apollo could have shown users a running total of the API bill that the respective user is incurring and exposed how much Reddit thinks each user is worth. Putting that number in front of users would cause riots IMO. And would have been a delightful goodbye kiss.
Apollo will close down on June 30th
891–900 of 1001 posts
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#892Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, buying 3rd party apps out makes absolutely zero sense when they can just ban them and improve their own client if that aligns with their business priorities. I stopped reading at that point. I probably would have laughed at the suggestion instead of taking it as blackmail though.
have you tried using reddit's own app? they couldve bought Apollo for $10m and made that the official app. lol
Didn't they do that with AlienBlue? I never used it so I have no idea how much of it is left or what they gimped.
Regardless, if they wanted to create a better app they'd do it. They don't want to.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#893Earlier 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...
Yeah. The wikipedia approach to an online platform seems ideal. Wikipedia is pretty fantastic. Signal is pretty great. I'm pretty happy with NPR. Archive.org makes me happy. Appeal to people with money (the professional class) and then beg. I feel like the next great social media platform will result from a rich person disillusioned by reddit (a Bryan Acton type) creating a platform resistant to "next quarters profit…
Although your examples are very centralized projects, your thoughts about the next social media platform is the desired way to go.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#894In 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…
It's certainly a strange call. Hey, you want to charge me $20 million per year, so why don't we make it easy and you just pay me $10 million to go quiet? It's really confusing. He wants Reddit to pay $10 million so he isn't "loud" with API usage? He wants them to buy and takeover the app? He's wants a payment to shutdown? Is he even serious about any of this? I get the impression he lacks the confidence to ask for a…
My understanding is that Reddit is saying that by not charging for the API they are losing $20M per year. So he said, well you can buy me out, and instead of doing a multiple of that $20M to be like $100M, he’s only asking for half of only one year’s worth of what they would lose. Clearly they don’t want to do that deal because the $20M figure is complete bogus.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#895I just came here because it hit 1337 comments. Nice.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#896Ok, here are the major threads. Others? r/ProgrammerHumor will be shutting down to protest Reddit's API changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36249958 - June 2023 (233 comments) Sync will shut down on June 30 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36248234 - June 2023 (88 comments) Join our CEO tomorrow to discuss the API - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36246937 - June 2023 (73 comments) Reddit is Fun…
Is this aggregation manual and do you find it rewarding?
I'm leaning towards automated, given that it includes the article "Redditor creates working anime QR codes using Stable Diffusion".
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#897Earlier quoted context omitted.
I genuinely don't understand the "pay me 10 million to save half on 20 million of costs" negotiation tactic... if they wanted to save money, why wouldn't they just shut down the API access?
They say somewhere that the 20m is from opportunity cost, so 10m for an app that's "costing" them 20m a year would be a deal.
Exactly. They’re not doing the deal because the $20M is complete BS.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#898In 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…
It's certainly a strange call. Hey, you want to charge me $20 million per year, so why don't we make it easy and you just pay me $10 million to go quiet? It's really confusing. He wants Reddit to pay $10 million so he isn't "loud" with API usage? He wants them to buy and takeover the app? He's wants a payment to shutdown? Is he even serious about any of this? I get the impression he lacks the confidence to ask for a…
So what he said rather poorly was:
1) ok so, according to you I’m costing you $20M/year in API load
2) How about you pay me $10M which is 6 months of your cost, and I turn off the $20M/year burden immediately.
3) you make your money back in 6 months and within a year are up $10M
The problem is Apollo does not cost Reddit $20M/year lol
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#899Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Yeah, Reddit needs to majorly up their game too. You strong arm your major customers right out of the gate. What a loss for both sides. You want the guy to pay $20 million and you just give him a call on the phone. Total amateur hour. This should have gone like, "Hey, in a few months we're rolling this out and wanted to give you a heads up so you know before anyone else, since you're a major API user. We wanted to of…
> Fly the sales team over to where he lives, wine and dine him, etc. This is what sales people do all day long for deals that are like $250k+. For deals that are $20 million a year you'll have all parts of the company bending over backwards trying to win that.
I pay Apple more than a million a month and I don’t even have a contact email.
Just saying, a Christmas card would be nice.
Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th
#900I don't understand. Why not using the Reddit app?
Because it’s a giant bloated spy machine ad-serving trash app. And Apollo is slick with excellent UX.
> giant bloated spy machine ad-serving trash app
That was an epic description. Like a Stephen Gaghan take on most (commercial) social media mobile clients.