*TIL that 70% of US traffic on reddit WAS from users on a mobile device
Until July 1 2023 🪦
Rip <your favourite 3rd party app>
I just don’t understand the thought process. They could’ve just shelled out $10M for Apollo and made that the official Reddit app. Then give users the choice of ads or pay for ad free experience.
so basically they’re making a massive gamble that most people will just switch over to their garbage app. Maybe they will, but for sure the power users, big sub moderators & regular posters are all coming to Lemmy. You know, all the people that made Reddit worth visiting.
Personally I think this will be the end of Reddit.
Well, Reddit did shell out money for a third party client. They bought the iOS app Alien Blue in 2014 and turned that into an official app before quickly abandoning it for their client in 2016.
They bought the app , and then destroyed it.
They should have learned for their second try, and just bought the app, then not destroyed it.
Realistically Reddit will survive, but it will be a zombie of its former self, kind of similar to how Digg is these days. Let's just hope it kills their valuation and /u/spez has to answer for it.
Relevant screenshot for those interested
US makes up just over 42% of total traffic, of which just over 70% is on mobile. No stats about 1st party / 3rd party apps usage.
The remaining 30% computer users might be me googling all my IT problems
Reddit is the new Quora or Yahoo! Answers
Quora is so disgusting. I thank reddit will become just like quora . Reddit + to read full answers , they show you related topic under question instead of the answers , etc .
Back when I used reddit... weird saying I know, I consumed Reddit on my phone, my ipad, and desktop in various combinations, pretty much constantly. Phone/ipad during work, and additional desktop use after. Desktop using Reddit Enhancement Suite (unusable without really), and Apollo for mobile. Spez made going cold turkey on Reddit stupid easy for this heavy user of over 10 years.
It's like going to your favorite donut shop every day for a decade, where your on good terms with the employees, but the boss is shit but you hardly ever see him so it's ok. Then one day, instead of the usual server, Spez shows up, and hands you your favorite donut with a scoop of shit on top, and says that's how they serve them now. Yeah, I'll go somewhere else, thanks.
Exactly why reddit wanted all 3rd party apps gone. All they could see was dollar signs going down the toilet.
Now they see it burning
They had dollars while you were on the toilet. Now it's flushed down the drain.
Worth mentioning that mobile ≠ app. Many people use Reddit in their browsers. Or the official app for that matter. This article doesn't really give those numbers which I'm sure unfortunately place the third party app users in a smaller minority. Still, I never used a third party app personally and I was still outraged enough at Reddit's behavior to leave. Hopefully more will follow suit.
Aren't they also pushing changes to have mobile browsers redirect to the app with no option for staying in the browser?
You can just enable "desktop site" checkbook in your mobile browser, it would send non-mobile user agent to the server. That's the only way a server can detect a mobile browser.
That would be a reasonable assumption to make, with one big caveat: reddit originally had no official app, so third-party apps were our only options. If we suppose that people rarely change their habits until they're forced to (a claim that seems almost self-evident to me), then it would be reasonable to suppose that a lot of users would still be using those same 3rd-party apps they started out with. Especially considering the official app was kind of crappy from its inception.
If third-party app users made up a large percentage of users, it might also partly explain why spez is so hellbent on his crusade.
Spez really killed the whole damn site, the greedy little pigboy
really makes you wonder how Swartz would feel about all this. what would he think of the fediverse? lemmy vs reddit?
I uninstalled boost today, can't wait for Boost for Lemmy. Although Jebora is pretty nice too.
I just deleted Apollo off my phone, so I guess I'm done with Reddit for the most part.
I haven’t had the heart to delete it yet, but I’m also pretty much done with Reddit.
I checked it out on desktop today. Top 8 hits in 4 of my favorite subs were busted bot reposts. It was a short visit.
That makes sense. I'm not sitting in front of my computer all day, but I always have my phone.
Switching my entire mobile usage over to lemmy is easily 90-95% of my social media time.
Well, not anymore!
I really hope it drops a lot, but it probably won't :/
I honestly don't care what happens to Reddit. I've found something new to occupy my time. If Reddit stays, goes, prospers, flounders, or whatever, couldn't mean less to me. At the end of the day, it's just a fancier bulletin board. Which have existed for 25+ years at this point. Look at Lemmy or other instances of the fediverse for example, it was able to quickly and effectively pick up the people flocking, and the experience is largely the exact same thing. It's a little buggier, but it's early days at this volume. And it doesn't come with any of the bullshit, you don't like your experience for example, you can quickly find another instance and carry on.
I will not sit at desk to read . Smartphone are just way better for this kind of task . Most people access the internet with a smartphone ,not a PC tower.
Yup. I work at a computer most of the day but there was no way in hell I was going to use my monitored work computer to browse Reddit.
I just wonder how much of a impact to daily engagement that the lack of third party will affect the company now. The blackouts were never going to be effective but combine that with a downward trend of engagement might be enough to fuck the leadership over.
Still, this seems like a nice place to be even if Reddit is forced to pull it's head out of its tech bro ass.
And apparently (was) almost 84% here in Canada!
not surprising, people have their phones on them much more often than their computers. Personally I browse reddit from my phone 95% of the time, only using desktop for the odd moderating duty.
This is true for most online platforms. I work in Online Education as a SaaS Admin for LMS system hosting and at a conference I went to 4 or 5 years ago the UAE did an in depth presentation on their online academic outreach program. The adoption of education on mobile phones was astounding and the only other platform that mattered metric wise was Window PCs and it was a distant second.
Not surprised, my personal browsing was almost entirely on mobile devices and 3rd party apps. My work browsing on computer is mainly for IT purposes and not logged in. Some subreddits are far better than the official support communities and they often come up early in google results.
I could never get use to the desktop layout.
I think you kinda need extensions to really make it work. New reddit was cancer. Old reddit with reddit enhancement suite and imagus (hover to show images) made the experience pretty awesome.
I believe it, when I first started using Reddit in 2008 it was almost entirely through desktop. By a few days ago, I had flipped to almost entirely using mobile. My habits changed a lot in 15 years
That’s gonna drop. Right?
Probably not by too much, realistically a lot of people are going to switch to the official app
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