TechSoftwareAppsReddit’s doing a Twitter and killing off your favourite appsWant to make a third party Reddit app? It could cost you twenty million dollarsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
TechSoftwareAppsReddit’s doing a Twitter and killing off your favourite appsWant to make a third party Reddit app? It could cost you twenty million dollarsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Want to make a third party Reddit app? It could cost you twenty million dollars
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Christian Selig)
(Image credit: Christian Selig)
The news comes via Christian Selig, creator of the excellent Apollo app. Posting onr/apolloapp, he shared the details of a call he had with Reddit about their pricing. “Bad news for third-party apps,” he wrote. “Their announced pricing is close to Twitter’s pricing, and Apollo would have to pay Reddit $20 million per year to keep running as-is.” That’s much more money than Apollo could possibly hope to bring in, let alone pay out.
Why is Reddit playing hardball with app developers?
The short answer is money: Reddit doesn’t bring in as much money as it would like; Selig estimates that their average revenue per user is about $0.12 a month, a fraction of what other social networks bring in. That’s not a huge surprise given some of the really unsavoury subreddits the site still hosts, so perhaps Reddit thinks it’d be easier to squeeze more cash out of developers than sanitise the site.
Selig is clearly baffled. “With the proposed API pricing, the average user in Apollo would cost $2.50, which is is 20x higher than a generous estimate of what each users brings Reddit in revenue.” It’s also likely to be much more than app users would be willing to pay.
Selig has asked Reddit if there’s any flexibility, and was told no. Hopefully the publicity around his post will encourage the site to reconsider.
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