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Apollo will close down on June 30th

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Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#941

Post by the_gipsy »

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…

Bad negotiation because the other end owns the platform, has all the leverage. Apollo simply cannot stand up and leave the table, which is what reddit predictably did.

Let that be the lesson: don't sink your time (and money) into building OSS (or a business) on top of a platform. It's like building on sand.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#942

Post by trebills »

ellisd wrote: post #118

Reddit 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.

100% in my experience the people that use Reddit the most (~daily) are the folks that are more likely to be done with Reddit for their stupid decisions.

I’ve only been using Reddit for an about 5.5 years, but when I first signed up I just didn’t use it because I used the website. Then I found Apollo and I became a daily user and it was my main social media.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#943

Post by canadaduane »

azemetre wrote: post #833
sh34r wrote: post #740

Reddit is Digging its own grave. Eternal September awaits all the old school forums that still remain. But perhaps that decentralization will be a good thing in the end. I think the network effects of Reddit are a lot easier to undo than that of Twitter. There is little core functionality that didn’t exist in forum software from the Naughties.

do you happen to know of general programming/computer science forums (not counting hacker news)? That's really my only interest, I enjoy TV and movies but like discussing those in person nowadays.

You might like https://lobste.rs

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#944

Post by Guest9081239812 »

MattRix wrote: post #937
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…

“ Is he even serious about any of this?” Not sure how people are misunderstanding him, he literally said he was joking… He knows it’s not a great deal for Reddit. His whole point is that the app isn’t actually worth $20 million a year, which is what they want him to pay. It’s not even worth $10 million. Not to him or Reddit or anyone else.

> His whole point is that the app isn’t actually worth $20 million a year, which is what they want him to pay. It’s not even worth $10 million. Not to him or Reddit or anyone else.

Right now there seems to be two options on the table.

1. The Apollo dev pays $20 million per year for API access.

2. Apollo shuts down and the users return to the official Reddit website/app for advertising.

If Reddit is refusing to lower their API pricing, doesn't this mean the users are worth $20 million? If the users were worth $1 million, then why wouldn't Reddit charge $2 million for the API and double their income on those users?

That being said, something else must be at play here. The users are not worth $20 million and Reddit refuses to take anything less than $20 million. If I had to guess, they want to boost metrics before going public and are willing to take a hit to their reputation to do so.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#945

Post by PrimeMcFly »

hnick wrote: post #859
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subreddits can't be destroyed, only made private, and then requested by someone else.

Can you script a mass-delete after privating (via API, while you still can)?

For subs you are a member of sure.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#947

Post by annon »

The solution seems so easy to me, just tie the API access to reddit gold. It wouldn’t be completely smooth sailing, there would still would be many upset users. At the same time though, they would pick up a massive number of subs.

The users that don’t value the apollo experience enough to pay for it would switch to the reddit app, driving more ad revenue. The users that do value the Apollo experience would still keep providing their content to the platform, in addition to becoming paid, direct, subscribers.

This really seems like an amateur strategy.. kill the massively popular apps with ridiculous pricing and unfair timelines, and hope that the users of this massive community organizing tool you control don’t use it against you? Cut off (and piss off) a big segment of your power users in hopes that a sizable chunk of them move to the native app?

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#948

Post by censor_me »

waif wrote: post #220
duckfruit wrote: post #39

This makes me indescribably sad. Apart from mourning the loss of a fantastic app by an awesome developer, to me it signals the end of a golden era of small indie client only apps. Since the APIs for the likes of reddit, twitter (RIP tweetbot) and others were available for free or a reasonable fee it spawned a whole cottage industry of developers who made a living selling alternate front ends for these services. These…

If the web collectively swings back in the other direction, to the fediverse or some other evolution, there will be a revival of small indie clients, and a revival of a better web in general. Twitter is in freefall and Reddit is on the verge of it, so it might not be a long wait.

[dead]

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#950

Post by Dalewyn »

duckfruit wrote: post #39

This makes me indescribably sad. Apart from mourning the loss of a fantastic app by an awesome developer, to me it signals the end of a golden era of small indie client only apps. Since the APIs for the likes of reddit, twitter (RIP tweetbot) and others were available for free or a reasonable fee it spawned a whole cottage industry of developers who made a living selling alternate front ends for these services. These…

>to me it signals the end of a golden era of small indie client only apps.

To me it signals you're a fairly new entrant to the intertubez.

Third party frontends for a given backend have existed since time immemorial, with or without sanctioned access to the backend's innards.

Alternatives to Explorer and Program Manager for a Windows shell are one of the older examples, more contextually relevant and newer examples would be programs like Pidgin and Trillian which served as third party clients for AIM, MSN, YIM, ICQ, etc.

None of this in any general sense is going away, though specific examples might.

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