This is kind of like the Twitter fiasco where in the eye of the storm a lot of loud people are pressuring more people to make this seem a lot bigger than it is.
Unless you have some alternative that has Reddit functionality, but can somehow operate without revenue, I'm just going to assume there isn't and Reddit will continue operating as normal.
Just doing the math $2.50 seems reasonable if you're going to redistribute the data to users while bypassing the ads.
I highly doubt it, most revenue comes from non nerds who don't use adblockers or third party apps that don't show ads. I would not be surprised if Reddit revenues increase with these move. It's the same story as Facebook and Instagram, the real money is from the eyeballs of the masses, not of the niches they started out with.
I remember people saying years ago that reddit's redesign is not a problem because it has API access and you can use third party clients...
The $7 is the current price, it does not reflect future changes. If the pool of potential customers is dry, they will try other means of increasing revenue, including increases of that price.
They might also turn the $7 into a requirement to watch YouTube at all, and show ads anyways.
Apparently yes, so assuming that Reddit doesn't change its mind, those apps either become much more expensive, stop supporting Reddit (and Twitter) or go away.
The pricing seems to be aimed at killing 3rd party apps, rather than making them partners. Reddit seems to be entering it's late-stage period. I wonder what will replace it.
I meant costs for their users. Reddit are covering their costs through ads and VC money. The users are creating the content on their platform that attracts more users. The users are the value to reddit.
No, that's not the thing, they are already a business. They sell three tiers of the app, one of which is a subscription. The current price of the subscription is $13/year.
> Additionally the outrage, as far as I am aware, has less to do with Reddit needing to make money rather it's way of going about making money is killing the user experience which kills the point of the website.
It's not killing the user experience, it's making the nice user experience "just" more expensive, which I covered in my first comment.
The problem with this change is not that Reddit has costs that they are trying to recoup. The problem for me is that much of the user-generated quality content that Reddit is trying to monetize was created, by users, under certain assumptions. Then those assumptions were changed for a short-term monetization gain.
If they initially said that they will be requiring sing-in to read comments, push app over browser, etc. it would be just fine (but then I suspect they would not have any quality content to monetize). Just my 2c.
Well, charging for it. Yes, they'd lose a big chunk of the userbase who value it a little bit but not really. But is it worth, say, $1/year to most users? Probably! And Reddit has 330 million users. Even if your conversion rate at that price is only 10% you should be able to run it for $33 million / year - it deals primarily with text, the software is relatively stable, it doesn't advertise. I suspect Reddit could be run very cheaply.
I know you're not saying this, but just to point out how absurd this price point is:
> Reddit generated $350 million in 2021, primarily from its advertising business
> Reddit has 52 million daily active users and approximately 430 million users who use it once a month
Are we really supposed to believe that Reddit is losing $500 * 400 million per year? Their total cost per user is probably something like $1/year. Twitch.tv which streams 1080p video prolly has costs of like $50/user/year. Insane pricing decision by Reddit.
So I guess no one has learned anything from the previous discussions on HN.
Reddit has hit critical mass and therefore has a substantial user base - start charging a monthly fee. Even at $1 a month, I'm sure they could be pulling in 6 figures every month.
Or perhaps I'm mistaken and all they need is more ads.
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