Valid point. My proposed free-tier would make them no money.
However, by charging a reasonable amount of money for the API, they could make way more than they are right now. Christian noted that Reddit makes about $0.12 per user per month. If they would charge say $0.99 for an average user, they’d have to run no ads and make 8 times more money per user than using their own app.
It’s not clear why they don’t just serve ads in the API and require them to be displayed, or implement profit-sharing with 3rd party devs (as in, they pay reddit a portion of their income from ads/subscriptions). The only clear reasons would be for control and to pump up numbers for the IPO.
Isn’t it possible all of the tracking and telemetry still wouldn’t be included and they want that information too? There’s probably a few things at play, some I can’t think of. Either way none of it seems to be with good intentions.
Good point. They wouldn’t be able to see what posts you’re looking at and how long. However, they would still see all the posts you interact with (upvote, comment) and build a profile based on that data. Surely that must be enough to serve somewhat relevant ads?
From a silo-based business plan’s perspective, that doesn’t make sense. Why would you invest time and effort in supporting someone else having direct access to your users? Better to just nuke all the third party apps, and regain full control. The users are just a nuisance, never mind the third party app developers.
Yeah. They want to kill the third party apps so everyone has to use the ad-supported Reddit app.
Valid point. My proposed free-tier would make them no money. However, by charging a reasonable amount of money for the API, they could make way more than they are right now. Christian noted that Reddit makes about $0.12 per user per month. If they would charge say $0.99 for an average user, they’d have to run no ads and make 8 times more money per user than using their own app.
It’s not clear why they don’t just serve ads in the API and require them to be displayed, or implement profit-sharing with 3rd party devs (as in, they pay reddit a portion of their income from ads/subscriptions). The only clear reasons would be for control and to pump up numbers for the IPO.
Isn’t it possible all of the tracking and telemetry still wouldn’t be included and they want that information too? There’s probably a few things at play, some I can’t think of. Either way none of it seems to be with good intentions.
Good point. They wouldn’t be able to see what posts you’re looking at and how long. However, they would still see all the posts you interact with (upvote, comment) and build a profile based on that data. Surely that must be enough to serve somewhat relevant ads?
They’re likely more interested in control than revenue.
It’s got bespoke tracking and mining. Fuck that shit app and spez
From a silo-based business plan’s perspective, that doesn’t make sense. Why would you invest time and effort in supporting someone else having direct access to your users? Better to just nuke all the third party apps, and regain full control. The users are just a nuisance, never mind the third party app developers.