To be fair, the point of Apollo was to also make money. But it was to make money by selling you things that made a nice experience nicer. Reddit makes money by selling you stuff that makes a shitty experience slightly less shitty.
Yeah, but the Apollo dev didn’t have the huge server costs that Reddit has. I’m not defending Reddit at all, but this is just comparing apples to oranges.
Im a way, yeah. They clearly they made a shitty app to extract as much value from their users as possible. But my point was that Reddit has significantly higher costs than third party app developers (because they host the content), so the business model that works for third party app developers doesn’t work for them.
Looking at a third party app - made by someone who doesn’t have to bear the costs of running the site and can therefore make decent money on an ad-free experience - and a first party one which does have to recoup those expenses doesn’t really work. The financial models are just fundamentally different.
I don’t say that to defend Reddit. They’re clearly a shitty company headed by shitty people, and I’m sure they could’ve found different ways to make money. But yeah, their financial incentives for making an app are fundamentally different than those of other devs.
The goal of Apollo was to make a good app. The goal of the official reddit app is to show you ads and siphon money off you.
Spot fucking on.
Ever have a good app? Something you like using but it’s by a corporation but that’s ok, because it’s a good app and does what you want? And then they start adding more features to it, and it slows down, and it’s more annoying and it keeps offering services you don’t want, and it changes and it morphs and it becomes a shit app.
Hell I’ve watched Whisk become something I liked using to something worthless now it’s Samsung food… Switched to using CopyMeThat which actually also gets me recipes from sites that you can’t just read the recipes from, and that’s ALL it does (well recipe book/shopping cart/meal planning, which is what it’s designed for.)
I’m just sick of “How do we make more money” instead of just being an app that does what it says. Gaming is going down the same hole, sadly.
Different goals. The goal of Apollo was to make a good app. The goal of the official reddit app is to show you ads and siphon money off you.
I guarantee you a good chunk of that R&D money is for making ads more profitable and other monetization.
To be fair, the point of Apollo was to also make money. But it was to make money by selling you things that made a nice experience nicer. Reddit makes money by selling you stuff that makes a shitty experience slightly less shitty.
I said it before on Reddit and I will say it again here—
If Reddit has asked me for a premium subscription to use my favourite third-party app, I would have fucking paid.
Just bad business all around
Recently I stumbled on Relay, still going strong with a subscription model (because API fees).
That said, I refuse to return to that platform.
You can patch old third-party apps with ReVanced. That being said, they are unmaintained and will still eventually break.
Yeah, but the Apollo dev didn’t have the huge server costs that Reddit has. I’m not defending Reddit at all, but this is just comparing apples to oranges.
So the reason reddit struggled to develop a decent app is… because of server costs?
Im a way, yeah. They clearly they made a shitty app to extract as much value from their users as possible. But my point was that Reddit has significantly higher costs than third party app developers (because they host the content), so the business model that works for third party app developers doesn’t work for them.
Looking at a third party app - made by someone who doesn’t have to bear the costs of running the site and can therefore make decent money on an ad-free experience - and a first party one which does have to recoup those expenses doesn’t really work. The financial models are just fundamentally different.
I don’t say that to defend Reddit. They’re clearly a shitty company headed by shitty people, and I’m sure they could’ve found different ways to make money. But yeah, their financial incentives for making an app are fundamentally different than those of other devs.
Seriously. They still don’t have a way to increase the font size on the default app last I checked. How is such a basic feature STILL lacking?
Spot fucking on.
Ever have a good app? Something you like using but it’s by a corporation but that’s ok, because it’s a good app and does what you want? And then they start adding more features to it, and it slows down, and it’s more annoying and it keeps offering services you don’t want, and it changes and it morphs and it becomes a shit app.
Hell I’ve watched Whisk become something I liked using to something worthless now it’s Samsung food… Switched to using CopyMeThat which actually also gets me recipes from sites that you can’t just read the recipes from, and that’s ALL it does (well recipe book/shopping cart/meal planning, which is what it’s designed for.)
I’m just sick of “How do we make more money” instead of just being an app that does what it says. Gaming is going down the same hole, sadly.