[pyrelight]

I do wonder how much longer Reddit can continue. Based on the numbers I can find, it doesn't look like they're making very much in the grand scheme of things. The best estimate I found was $350M in 2021.

Their operational costs and overhead must be very high given the amount of traffic they get (~#18-20 worldwide according to Similarweb) and the amount of data they have to quickly serve. I can't imagine you are anywhere near break even with the infrastructure and operations they need plus company overhead.

If true, the API changes definitely seem like a way to try to generate a new income stream that doesn't "take away" something from the base platform that users used to have for free (like Twitter Blue).

Seems like a pretty safe play from an investor point of view until you realize that the third-party developers using the API in the first place to build alternative clients are not multi-million dollar companies that can afford the API rates. I don't know who out there is using Reddit data that could pay the proposed rates and still be profitable. There just can't be that many of them for this play to make sense.

It's easy to see what will happen. Taking away a method to access your platform that your users are comfortable with (i.e., BaconReader, Reddit is Fun, Apollo, etc) will lead to a good number of those users abandoning the platform, others moving to the official app begrudgingly, and the net effect will be that all of the users are unhappy and Reddit will likely not be earning enough from their API to make it all worth it.

And through it all their official app will probably stay untouched or barely updated.

Or maybe they'll buy the most popular cross platform client and retool it to be official.

I honestly don't know why they never tried to monetize their subreddits. Imagine a monthly fee for:

  - Additional moderation tools
  - Additional design tools (i.e., force old design forever)
  - Slotted template layout for more design flexibility
  - More moderator slots, more flair, etc
  - Built-in highlighted community member feed at the top of the subreddit -- who in the community is live right now on YouTube, Twitch or Reddit, etc. Imagine the Final Fantasy 7 Remake subreddit having some of the mod team do a live head-to-head speedrun race streamed live in the subreddit.
  - Custom emotes like BTTV/7TV on Twitch, etc).
  - Dedicated account manager to help handle brigading when the topic of the subreddit has a bad day in the news cycle and 4chan is bored and starts spamming the sub.

The larger communities would definitely buy into that.

Some of these features could also be added to a monthly user subscription too. For example, you could get a handful of awards you can give out to posts as part of your sub (like Discord Nitro gives 2 server boosts).

Official subreddits could also be a thing -- imagine Xbox paying a few grand to make it the official subreddit and gain direct access to Reddit Admins, better tools for managing customer complaints and support tickets directly from the platform, lots of user metrics and data, etc.

[ComputerGuru]

> Or maybe they'll buy the most popular cross platform client and retool it to be official.

They did that already. AlienBlue was then the Reddit iOS client that Appllo is now. Reddit bought it, gutted everything that made it good, then released it as the official iOS app.

[ravenstine]

Yeah, I call BS that people won't pay for anything on the internet. They'll complain if you charge $7 a month, yes, but if you charge $25 a month, then you will have a smaller sunset of customers who are less likely to whine like those who threw a hissy fit over blue checkmarks.