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Apollo will close down on June 30th

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Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#971

Post by brokenodo »

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’m a lawyer and listening to this call was absolutely painful. I like to think I’m a pretty decent negotiator, and agree that there was likely a few million here were this handled competently.

Don’t be afraid to bring people in when something is outside your area of expertise.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#972

Post by giarc »

rchaud wrote: post #506
giarc wrote: post #475

>Will you sell Apollo? >Probably not. Maybe if the perfect buyer came along who thought they could turn Apollo into something cool I get that it's something he built and loves, but if someone shows up with $1m and the alternative is to shut it down and get nothing. Then take the money even if it's not the "perfect buyer" and it won't be "cool".

No one is going to buy it, the API pricing makes it impossible to turn a profit.

I wouldn't be so sure. The app has been the talk of Reddit and many tech circles for a few weeks. Many are saying that without Apollo they won't use Reddit anymore. So if someone were to buy it and say "The same Apollo you love is now $9/month" I bet they could retain a number of users, specifically because there won't be other competitors (all competitors will be in same boat wrt to API pricing and not allowing ads).

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#975

Post by x86x87 »

annon wrote: post #947

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…

There are multiple solutions. This is one of them. Another one would be a bring your own api key and as a user be able to pay. Another one would be to serve ads in the feed for 3rd party api access and make it mandatory thay ads are not filtered out. Yet another one is to work w/ the 3rd party apps to display the ads.

Reddit is just a dumb corpo that doesn't understand why they have success. Watch them backpedal hard.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#976

Post by Exuma »

kats wrote: post #854
Exuma wrote: post #233

What did everyone think of that call? I'm not a client-facing person (a developer) so I might have been tongue in cheek myself as well. Not sure how any of that sounded threatening though...

He 1000% was threatening them. He asked for 10 million dollars to go away quietly, meaning not use his leverage on reddit (who all just took at face value that he's a poor victim). They didn't accept so now he's selectively releasing his secret phone recording and being very aggressive.

He very clearly is being sarcastic, because he knows the 20 million claim is bullshit. He's basically friendly teasing them because if it really WERE that high, then buying Apollo for 10 million might be a good idea, but it isn't and it's all bullshit, so he knew they wouldn't. That's why he says "It's mostly just a joke"

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#977

Post by throwaway1777 »

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…

Funny, everyone was pissed at the Apollo developer before Reddit announced these changes. Now the anger has completely shifted.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#978

Post by ilikecode »

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…

Source on the CEO making a claim of a threat in public?

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#979

Post by thal3s »

Joeri wrote: post #938
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.

It depends on what sort of community you follow. The ML and tech podcasting communities have largely moved over. The politics, journalism and celebrity part of twitter hasn’t moved over. The corollary to that is that much of the vitriol and random toxicity also hasn’t moved over. I have a more vibrant and more interesting mastodon feed than I ever had on twitter. And my twitter feed now is a wasteland, stripped of th…

> I have a more vibrant and more interesting mastodon feed than I ever had on twitter.

Exactly! I can comment on a post and have real engagement with someone which hasn't happened in years on Twitter.

Re: Apollo will close down on June 30th

#980

Post by sebastialonso »

wvenable wrote: post #912
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…

That's ok, you've certainly used their services for free, as most of us, and they don't owe you anything.

I get the feeling that some people are trying to spin this into a crusade of sorts, I fully get this feeling from your words.

And there's nothing inherently wrong with that I guess, but look a the big picture as well: you've used the services of a private company for years, paying zero cents. They made a business decision after potentially delaying it for years, and you rant about control. This outrage makes little sense, we don't own Reddit, never had. We're just making noise because some of us confused private property for their own.

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