There must be some huge incentive for Reddit to push users toward the mobile app. Most likely, the app allows for higher or more accurate monthly active user counts and enables more targeted advertising, both of which are critical to increasing advertising revenues.
Reddit is in a difficult spot because they're mostly an ad-supported business but their users are vehemently opposed to advertising and any forms of tracking. They have to tip-toe around all of the advertising and user tracking that they do. Strangely, their users mostly seem to give them a pass on the tracking. Their users are relatively trustworth, viewing Reddit as far more trustworthy of a company than Facbeook, despite the two companies having largely similar business models.
"Reddit, the investors who bought the product" are in a difficult spot. And certainly haven't shown an overabundance of creativity in monetization approaches.
Suffice to say, you probably don't deserve a "front page of the Internet" tagline if your first display is a redirect request to your app.
Mod tools and the data on what works is the untapped resource.
Every other major data or tool set for moderation is behind an NDA.
As the saying goes: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
There must be some huge incentive for Reddit to push users toward the mobile app.
- Ad-Targeting: a mobile app has a lot of data points to create a unique "finger print" for each user.
- Conserving resources: a well designed mobile app can really save a lot of bandwidth and server resources for an online platform like Reddit.
(I also hate the pervasiveness of identifiable tracking but that's a whole different rant.)
You don't need to perfectly A:B test your two different offerings if that means preventing users from using the product in a way that best suits them. Stop putting shit behind "read more" buttons just because you want to see if people are actually reading your articles. Stop breaking things into multiple screens just so you can track your damn funnels. Better MAU _tracking_ (not even better MAU) does nothing for user experience and pursuing that at the expense of everything else is just plain foolish.
1. How well is this working for them 2. If the answer to 1. is "not very", how long will they stick to this strategy.
They've been going at it for a couple of years now, so I imagine they're approaching the moment when they have to reassess how well things are going.
I wonder if we'll see a change of direction any time soon.
From what we hear, the app isn't even that well designed. It seems that many users are still using unofficial clients because the app can feel heavy and sluggish, with only a barely acceptable UX.
Google is notoriously bad at indexing the correct time a Reddit thread is posted.
I have no clue why this is, I assume perhaps it is seeing a different date somewhere on the page (e.g. the "recently viewed threads" box).
It doesn't seem to be directional either. That is, it's not just old threads pretending to be newer, but new threads also sometimes appear older.
This is why I don't attribute any malice to the issue.
One of my favorites is how it’ll load a basic profile with just your name, 0 karma and no subs when the site seems to be overloaded.
It's possible to visible quarantined or even banned subreddits through their AMP pages. From there you can still view deleted videos and other content through the autoplay "previews".
I've come to the opinion that it's impossible for any free social media platform to avoid this unless the people running it are doing it as an act of charity. If you want to make money, you either make users pay or you sell access to / information from the userbase itself.
Like... How bad can they fuck this up?
Does anyone know a way on ios to forcibly redirect all reddit links to old.reddit.com?
My number one gripe right now is when using Google to search for stuff on reddit and use the time filter ("last week"), Reddit does not accurately report dates, and you get 4 year old threads showing up as "last week".
As long as Reddit maintain their API and keep it free, I'll keep using Reddit. If they ever drop it, there's not much chance I will.
So why does Reddit use AMP at all? I can only understand AMP being good for some news site where it gives you them a mobile site design "for free".
The managers at Reddit, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the preferred experience of a Google user searching for content on reddit should redirected to their wonky app. And if they don’t have the app, they should be punished with modals upon modals. “Reddit looks better in the app!” Oh, you disagree? Well press this tiny button to indicate your unsaved preference and we will allow you to view a preview of the thread you came for. But…if you can find the illusive button which shows the whole thread, we will grant you full access — after asking you to install the app again!
It’s enough to make the designers of the Get Smart door scene collapse in embarrassment knowing that their parody has become the reality of every unsuspecting person who just wants to browse Reddit.
And while I have you here, please tell me what’s going on with the Reddit’s scroll positioning when navigating out of the site. Just by clicking a external link in a thread, you’ve not only lost your position, navigating back to Reddit will tease you with the last version of the page before everything refreshes back to the top.
And God forbid if you keep a tab open up for too long, encountering the most obnoxious error screen imaginable. “Ouch! Something went wrong. Refresh!” Yeah, something did go wrong. You broke your site. You killed the golden goose. You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy Digg, not join them. Bring balance to the force, not leave it in darkness.