Thousands of subreddits chose to go dark in an ongoing protest over the company's plan to start charging certain third-party developers to access the site’s data.
Wow. Front page of huffpost.com right now. Interesting…
But Huffman says the “pure infrastructure costs” of supporting these apps costs Reddit about $10 million each year.
Eh, so although, according to him, the third party apps cost Reddit 10 million per year, he still decided that 20 million a year from a single third party app developer is reasonable? I think he needs to learn some basic math…
I don’t think they seriously expected any third party apps to agree to the costs. They just wanted a plausible excuse to funnel everyone into their own app for data collection and advertising revenue. That’s my best guess anyway, another business decision for the IPO.
I’ll admit I’m not entirely well versed in this, but what development? Is the API being continually worked on? I’d imagined it was relatively stable, especially given how awful Reddit has traditionally been with any kind of feature development.
Hell, they couldn’t even make their own app, they had to buy Alien Blue and then drive it into the ground for $$$
So bad the article did not put that number into context.
They’re just presenting one-dimensional claims by the CEO. The overall infrastructure cost tells you nothing about gains or cost or losses due to API users.
Eh, so although, according to him, the third party apps cost Reddit 10 million per year, he still decided that 20 million a year from a single third party app developer is reasonable? I think he needs to learn some basic math…
I don’t think they seriously expected any third party apps to agree to the costs. They just wanted a plausible excuse to funnel everyone into their own app for data collection and advertising revenue. That’s my best guess anyway, another business decision for the IPO.
Well there is also human cost for development, PR etc, which also probably costs a lot
That would be where that 10 mil figure would have come from.
No. $10mm/year for cloud spend is totally reasonable for a website the size of reddit. Honestly it’s lower then I would expect.
Yeah, is not the cost he’s charging 3rd party, it’s the expected lost ad revenue.
I’ll admit I’m not entirely well versed in this, but what development? Is the API being continually worked on? I’d imagined it was relatively stable, especially given how awful Reddit has traditionally been with any kind of feature development.
Hell, they couldn’t even make their own app, they had to buy Alien Blue and then drive it into the ground for $$$
So bad the article did not put that number into context.
They’re just presenting one-dimensional claims by the CEO. The overall infrastructure cost tells you nothing about gains or cost or losses due to API users.