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Apollo will close down on June 30th

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Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#911

Post by wvenable »

melvinmelih wrote: post #548
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #182

In 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…

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?

It's not a negotiation tactic. It is a joke because the numbers they are talking about are a joke. He's saying that if they think Apollo is can make Reddit 20 million a year then just pay him 10 million and they can keep the change. The truth is both sides know these numbers are b*llsh*t.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#912

Post by wvenable »

sebastialonso wrote: post #69

I see two pretty distinct issues here: 1) most people's favourite app is going to die, and 2) many subreddits will be negatively affected by this move: prime example is /r/AskHistorians. Personally, 1) is not really an issue and people are enjoying the outrage train, and that's ok and valid and whatever, but it's a third party app. It's a no-brainer decision to try to kill it if it's hindering your ability to make mo…

> Most people's favourite app is going to die

Why is this not an issue for user's protesting? I use Relay for Reddit on Android and I think it's absolutely the best way to view Reddit on mobile if you're a fan of old.reddit.com.

That app is going to die and I say screw them. I owe reddit nothing. If they want to turn the site into something that I don't want to use because it makes them more money that way. Good luck with that but I won't be around to see it.

I'd gladly pay for Reddit Premium (which has no ads) to continue to use 3rd party apps that I like. But it's not about the money or the ads -- it's about control.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#913

Post by dymk »

californical wrote: post #789
sharkjacobs wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s an anecdote. I was subscribed to ChatGPT Plus for a while, to get access to GPT4. I stopped subscribing after after I got GPT4 API access because I developed a little personal app which used the OpenAI API to just read and write directly from plain text files and that suits my workflow better than the ChatGPT website. But it sucks because I’m constantly thinking about how much I’m using, and how many tokens I’…

I had the same reaction when Kagi search changed their pricing to a fixed number 1,000 searches per month for $10. I couldn’t imagine trying to use search thinking “is this one worth searching for?” … I now pay $25 for their unlimited option even though I probably use less than 1k searches per month anyways

Which is why when designing pricing "per use" pricing models, prefer something like $0.0001 per search, or $15/month, whichever is less in a month

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#914

Post by onion2k »

melvinmelih wrote: post #548
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #182

In 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…

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?

if they wanted to save money, why wouldn't they just shut down the API access

They are. They're just pretending they aren't. No one is going to pay the amount they're charging.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#915

Post by guax »

kossTKR wrote: post #288
SkyPuncher wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Why would they? In fact, lots of people were already frustrated with the handling of "lifetime access" while having ads being pushed. A business, Apollo, made an offer (lifetime access) to gain marketshare. It worked as Apollo is the defacto Reddit App for iOS. Now they cannot…

Reddit is stupid, and the whole situation is bad, but shouldn't the man behind the biggest app for the biggest forum in the world, in the lucrative ios ecosystem have made himself wealthy enough so that 250k is close to nothing? Or am i misunderstanding how much money there is in this space? If he isn't "10+ million"-wealthy that's extremely disappointing for all solo devs out there in my eyes.

250k is just the cost of refund of subscriptions. There is further costs related to new business model and all the risk associated with a continued work relationship with a partner that just done you dirty. He can pay the refund, he understands it as not worth it and decided to not delay the inevitable and close shop. The thought is that it will not be profitable and any service offered after 30 days will only benefit reddit at his expense. It's the right call.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#916

Post by phs318u »

7jjjjjjj wrote: post #865
newaccount74 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon clients are a fun UI playground, lots of indie apps (at least on iOS). Unfortunately Mastodon feels a bit empty, there's not many people on it yet.

Mastodon doesn't have algorithmic recommendations, so you have to follow people fairly liberally to get a good amount of content in your feed.

This exactly. Furthermore, Mastodon rewards those that want to actively participate in communities. It does not reward lurkers who want to passively (doom)scroll.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#917

Post by soraminazuki »

Guest9081239812 wrote: post #557
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #182

In 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…

It's not strange at all. At least the Reddit CEO heard and understood perfectly well what the Apollo dev said in that call and there's a recording to prove that.

Your first sentence misrepresents what the Apollo dev said. Actually, it's the exact same misrepresentation that the Reddit CEO knowingly made in public.

First off, it's abundantly clear that the Apollo dev wasn't actually demanding money. It was a pointed statement that revealed the CEO wasn't being honest about the costs.

The CEO, in contradiction with publicly available data, claimed that Apollo was costing Reddit $20 million per year in lost opportunity. So the dev jokingly offered to sell Apollo for half that price. Then Reddit would be able to recoup the cost in half a year and gain an additional $20 million yearly. What a great deal, right? Except they both knew that the $20 million price tag was complete bogus.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#918

Post by e40 »

justusthane wrote: post #12

Apollo is such an incredibly high quality app — in fact, it’s so good that I haven’t had it installed on my phone in a couple of years because when I have it I spend way too much time on Reddit. The features, the polish, the customizability — everything about it is really top notch.

Totally agree. In fact, it was so good it allowed me to enjoy Reddit far more than I could have without it. And spend far more time on Reddit than I would have. Killing Apollo kills my desire to use Reddit.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#919

Post by evolve2k »

soraminazuki wrote: post #917
Guest9081239812 wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not strange at all. At least the Reddit CEO heard and understood perfectly well what the Apollo dev said in that call and there's a recording to prove that. Your first sentence misrepresents what the Apollo dev said. Actually, it's the exact same misrepresentation that the Reddit CEO knowingly made in public. First off, it's abundantly clear that the Apollo dev wasn't actually demanding money. It was a pointed s…

Yeah totally agree.

Further I wouldn’t be trusting a hot take from ~100 points GuestXXXXXX at this point of the PR dumpster fire cycle.

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