Killing the api was a massive mistake. They should have worked with appolo et al to broker a deal. They had a the best of both worlds, other people tackling the app development for them and they just needed to take a reasonable rent.
I'm actually curious if Reddit's going to be the first successful example of monetizing what is essentially a community into an IPO fast enough before normies get on it and start flooding it with their low-effort takes and celebrity gossip drivel.
I know this is possible to do by other communities like paid forums (SomethingAwful), or grow into an adjacent e-commerce supported community (e.g. bodybuilding forums), but is it possible to do it on Reddit's scale? We'll see.
I have no horse in the race either way, most of my posts on there are from the Reddit vs Digg era, so I'm not really invested.
Comments
Reddit is pulling out all the stops for their upcoming IPO and it still amounts to nearly nothing.
Bringing back r/place to juice user count, killing the API, destroying their mobile site, and that's just the start.
That's why they are only planning a "very small float", there's simply no interest.
It seems even at just $5 billion, the valuation is too rich.
I'm not surprised they made this deal, but $60M feels low for the cost of killing their 3P APIs.
I can only assume the price is because the license is non-exclusive and they think they can get other big fish to bite.
They can offer higher quality and more timely data than scrapers can, so there is a value proposition there.
Killing the api was a massive mistake. They should have worked with appolo et al to broker a deal. They had a the best of both worlds, other people tackling the app development for them and they just needed to take a reasonable rent.
I'm actually curious if Reddit's going to be the first successful example of monetizing what is essentially a community into an IPO fast enough before normies get on it and start flooding it with their low-effort takes and celebrity gossip drivel.
I know this is possible to do by other communities like paid forums (SomethingAwful), or grow into an adjacent e-commerce supported community (e.g. bodybuilding forums), but is it possible to do it on Reddit's scale? We'll see.
I have no horse in the race either way, most of my posts on there are from the Reddit vs Digg era, so I'm not really invested.