[allerhellsten]

Exactly this. To give you a datapoint from our properties: Our web site attracts 90% of the users, but only 60% of the actual traffic. In all metrics like retention, frequency and time on site, mobile leads by factors of 2-5.

Part of that is definitely self-selection, but as some people already said, other notable effects are push notifications, mindshare, loss aversion (you're on somebody's device already, so they can just as well use it) and partly better performance.

So much about the users, but Monetization is much better as well, mostly due to mobile ad-IDs, which especially on iOS lets you extract double the revenue per user due to targeting. Ad blockers are harder to bypass.

In the end, a mobile app will get you anywhere between 2-10x the revenue per user you attracted to your property, so that's why Reddit is pushing so hard.

To stay in Reddit's lingo though:

`LPT: https://old.reddit.com`

[GekkePrutser]

I understand, but they're also pushing many users away with this behaviour.

It's what I like about HN.. It feels like they don't even care how much users 'engage'. I bet they don't even run a report on it. They just let us do our thing here and not worry about it. As a user this is a much nicer experience.

[PakG1]

Easy for HN to do that. HN is not incentivized to make money. The people who run HN do not care if HN does not make any money. In fact, they have zero monetization strategies for HN.

[thunderrabbit]

Your answer reminds me; we are focusing on Hacker News as if it's its own thing, but part of the answer is right in the URL. HN is a part of ycombinator, which presumably pays the bills.

[quakeguy]

Sadly the grave accent is breaking your link ;)