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Apollo will close down on June 30th

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Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#901

Post by newZWhoDis »

devjab wrote: post #362
bogwog wrote: post #254

Earlier 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…

> Also, what's the deal with him not wanting to start a competitor? Would you want to moderate Reddit? I get that Apollo is in a good position to take their users with them, but it's not like it's going to be easy to build a Reddit when what you've made so far has been a frontend for Reddit and some mobile widget spin-offs. Many of us can make a frontpage for hacker news in a few hours, some might even be able to gro…

Many of us would prefer dang only removed spam, or moved off topic post to bantz

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#902

Post by anlaw »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #830
apozem wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My feelings exactly. We're all stuck with the official Reddit and Twitter clients now. They're not even good. We know they're not good, but they're now the only place to experience Reddit and Twitter. It's like enterprise software for a whole social network.

"We're" not stuck unless your career is in social media, in which case yes, they will still be the most popular sites and the best way to reach people. But for the rest of us, there's always a choice to foster a new community. Whether there is enough for that, and if a server is ready for that load, are big questions to answer though

And that’s fine. We need less low effort rage bait, viral influencer influence on the economy.

The reach of contrived political philosophy, fiat economic hustle, and pop culture gabber can be constrained; the obsolescence of /. , MySpace, and the like did not destroy reality. Now we know the outcome of the social media experiment. Utter dumpster fire.

It occurs to me people made a whole lot of small business work before handing sacks of cash to cloud SaaS

We need less adminisphere in all contexts so we can screw up again, let the wrong people helicopter us with banal AI bots, make lizard brain m sedate until it gets bored with AI bots. Then we’ll trot out a new copium for the masses and they can lean back again, super proud of their commitment to whatever hallucinated ideology they believe they’re serving.

All while waving off the ecological impact, because reality is just a big graph, mmmk

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#903

Post by DangitBobby »

willidiots wrote: post #887
dend wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no hand to overplay here anymore - the app is shutting down, and the author made it clear that is the intention. While the verbiage could've been different, that doesn't really matter. In these kinds of conversations Reddit folks could've asked for clarification, not assume bad intent (which they did, but then misrepresented). Apollo's leverage was "We help keep power users on your platform, and keep them hap…

In the game of Apollo vs No Apollo, agreed, the game is played out. Even if there's some eleventh hour agreement, reduction in API fees etc, the direction is clear - Reddit's killing these guys, just a question of when. But in the game of Christian vs Spez/Reddit Corp, I wonder about the wisdom of posting these recordings and going this nuclear on Reddit's brand. I suspect Reddit's got some good lawyers, whether you'…

Given how bad Reddit is at PR, this does seem possible.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#905

Post by DangitBobby »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #243
wolpoli wrote: post #29

> 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.

Not only do the receipts contradict the Reddit CEO, but even if they didn't, the Apollo dev is well within his rights to offer an ultimatum that either Reddit acquires his app, or he shuts it down. If he has enough leverage in that situation for Reddit to feel as if that's "blackmail," then it actually means that Reddit is the one blackmailing him with the pricing changes. On one hand they claim they need to increase…

It was the "go quiet" part, as in if they don't just buy him out he'll scream and cry to the public so they get really negative publicity on the API updates. To be clear, I don't think that's what he meant, but I think that's what the Reddit person thought was being said.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#906

Post by 1_1xdev1 »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #295
bogwog wrote: post #254

Earlier 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…

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…

He’s allowed to do whatever he wants (including not starting a competitor). But it’s bad from a negotiation perspective to let that out

Also bad from a business perspective. It likely would cost way less than 10m to build a competitor, functionality wise.

Reddit from 2017 or so is open source!

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#907

Post by raylad »

Why not point Apollo at a Reddit alternative, or use the open-source code for Reddit (or code like this https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit) instead of shutting it down?

If Apollo's users (or a good percentage of them) moved over to an alternative platform, that would be poetic justice, at least.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#908

Post by 8ig8 »

nkotov wrote: post #9

Bad move from Reddit's end. Apollo is one of my most used apps because I absolutely refuse to use the official app. Just like the new Reddit experience on desktop version, the mobile app is just as terrible. Clunky, slow, not user friendly. No thanks.

Where’s Graham’s take on this?

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#909

Post by inetknght »

willidiots wrote: post #883
zamalek wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The angle was " buy Apollo from me": > "If third-party apps are costing Reddit so much money, why don't they just buy them out like they did Alien Blue?" That was the point I brought up. If running Apollo as it stands now would cost you $20 million yearly as you quote, I suggested you cut a check to me to end Apollo. I said I'd even do it for half that or six months worth: $10 million, what a deal! And it would have…

Reddit would need to monetize those users, presumably by adding ads etc to Apollo, eventually turning Apollo into the Reddit app which already exists today (and which Apollo users don't want to use). Only the users willing to tolerate Reddit's enshittified UX would stick around. Reddit can just force Apollo to shut down and accomplish the same for $10M less.

> Reddit would need to monetize those users

Apollo already has monetized users with subscription costs.

Well, had monetized users.

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