Other people are saying "ads," but the story is probably more expansive. Mobile apps have better hooks for pulling people back into the app, like popup notifications. Reddit has natural lifecycle points where they can do this: when people respond to your comments or comment on your posts. They could also notify users of events like their yearly Secret Santa. I wouldn't be surprised if their engagement numbers were much better on mobile: since they can draw users back into the app with notifications, they have better ad views, more people buy Reddit Gold, more people comment (which leads to other people having content to read), etc.
This is correct. It's about retention more than monetization.
With the app, you can not only send notifications, but you also have the app icon which reminds people of the apps existence. Even little things like "badging" (when the app icon shows a dot or number to indicate new notifications) and even that can have a noticeable impact on retention (we're all programmed to click into anything with a notification).
Also, they can recommend better content for you. I don't know if this is still possible and whether reddit does it, but an app used to be able to get the list of other apps installed on the phone, and many companies used that as an input into their recommendation systems (along with your location, etc).
Also worth mentioning that there is no official API for Reddit's chat feature. You have no choice but to use the website or official app if you're on mobile and want or need to use their chat.
Also the chat feature is extremely watered down and doesn't even have support for attaching images. But that doesn't matter if someone on Reddit chooses to contact you via chat and you want to respond. It compels you to use their platforms instead of a third-party client.
If you always use third-party clients or old.reddit.com you'll never even know that someone tried to contact you via chat, which makes it somewhat ineffective at getting people to stop using those.
> With the app, you can not only send notifications, but you also have the app icon which reminds people of the apps existence.
This is exactly why I don't want to install the app. All of these things seem designed to steal my attention and direct it towards stuff others want me to focus on rather than what I want to focus on.
While having a mobile App store is probably a net good, in a lot of ways I wish Steve Jobs' initial vision of having the iPhone run WebApps and just improving the OS level support for improved hooks and functionality with actual websites was the way the world went.
The apps would never have gotten as good and stuff like Uber might never have happened. But it also would have kept Facebook and Reddit and all these other sites focused on making you visit because you want to visit rather than because you're being skinner boxed and nudged into visiting by overbearing tracking technologies.
I believe Apple is going to be allowing push notifications from the web soon, and you can also "Add to Homescreen" a webpage, and it acts like an app, so we might finally be seeing a needed shift away from the app store.
Apple added push notifications to safari, but only on desktop. That tells you that they deliberately do not support this because they know a lot of apps could be pwa’s otherwise.
Heard from where? Many people are clamoring for this, but other than wishful thinking I’ve never heard any compelling claims that Apple actually has it on their roadmap.
I, for one, would love to see support for push on mobile web on iOS. But I’m not holding my breath.
There's probably a suffering PM there whose bonus depends on juicing these horrible metrics rather than making their product wonderful. I myself dabbled in product management but got so turned off to it from the constant focus on addiction metrics. 7-day Retention! 30-day Retention! Daily Active Use! Daily Sessions Per DAU! Eyeball-share! Get their contacts! Spam them with E-mail! Spam them with notifications! Red badges on the app icon! Get them back in the app! I felt like a drug pusher, not someone building something great.
(Mentioned in another comment somewhere else in this thread). In the long-term, yes, but retention and monetization can diverge in the short-term. Classic example is showing fewer ads (better user experience, better retention... but much less monetization). Of course, in the long term, you'd still need to monetize that retention somehow anyway.
I don’t see how. Can you explain how a company makes revenue purely by retaining users? I think they still need a monetization scheme separately. [edited for clarity]
Very true and not actually pedantic. Retention is a pretty solid predictor of monetization, esp in the long-run. But in the short-run they can diverge. For example, decreasing ad units per page could drastically drop your monetization, but be great for longer-term retention.
Yep, I think ads is just another way of saying monetization. The app has lots of annoying notifications like "You might like...", "You got 100 upvotes", etc which, when you engage with more, they make more money through ads, coins etc.
Your attention, retention and engagement is a lot easier to manage and increase through an app than it is through website.
Instead of direct monetization, they probably measure by engagement. If a service has a permanent presence on your device, you get a LOT more engagement and recurring visits than a web version. Websites on mobile are one-time, visit-and-forget/move on things.
I'd love to be proven wrong though; what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage?
Also not to be underestimated is that a mobile app will always have better UX than a website. Think of the subtle things like page transitions. Navigating Reddit still causes full-page reloads, whereas on the app it's a much more organic process. Speed is also an important factor.
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.
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.
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.
HN has ads on its front page. Not many of them, and they are quite hard to spot at a glance (mixed in with the content, not clearly marked as such) but they're there.
AFAIK, the only ads are the ones described in the FAQ:
> A regular "Who Is Hiring?" thread appears on the first weekday of each month (or Jan 2). Most job ads are welcome there. Only an account called whoishiring is allowed to submit the thread itself. This prevents a race to post it first.
> Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down and fall steadily. Only one is on the front page at a time.
I'm not sure either of those qualify as ads in the sense we're talking about Reddit ads -- the first one doesn't bring in any revenue to HN (or cost "advertisers" any money); the second one seems like it's a perk for "graduating" YC and it's unclear whether it's something HN makes revenue from, either.
There's currently one on the frontpage for GiveCampus, shown below a regular story:
14. The Haunted House – Privacy on Google Street View (harpers.org)
8 points by b0b10101 1 hour ago | flag | hide | 1 comment
15. GiveCampus (YC S15) hiring Sr Engineers who care about education (lever.co)
1 hour ago | hide
Distinctive features: no upvote button, no point value, no flag link, no comments.
Right, I included the Haunted House entry (a regular story) for contrast.
The job posting is certainly "sponsored content", a privileged post put there at the behest of a third party, which blends in fairly well with neighboring posts yet isn't subject to the normal rules. I don't know if money actually changes hands to put it there (maybe each YC company is granted a posting there, or maybe they have to pay for it), but in other respects it's straightforwardly an ad for a job.
All that said, I have no problem with it being there.
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.
> what websites see daily, recurring, long time active usage?
Reddit
Do you really think that people would stop going to reddit if they used the site instead of the app on their mobile?
(But, of course, the people more prone to recurring visits are more likely to install an app.)
> mobile app will always have better UX than a website
And again, it's reddit we are talking about here. The app experience is just horrible.
They really hurt their own monetisation by making the subscriptions too expensive though. They more than doubled in price recently. It's not worth the price anymore for me.
They also keep adding new stupid in-app notifications (I have OS notifications blocked for them) which ironically you have to use the website to disable. "Trending" stuff in subreddits you're not even in and suggested subreddits and garbage like that. I assume that rubbish does become an OS notification if you let them.
Those kind of “nagifications” are among my biggest pet peeves on the modern internet. Almost every social platform these days abuses the notifications icon to show you a bunch of not-actually-a-notification garbage to boost your engagement. LinkedIn is especially egregious in this regard.
Their mobile website is terrible and intentionally crippled... I've found that when I'm having lots of meetings–whether it's sales, recruiting, or looking for work–being able to quickly pull up profiles of people I'm talking with while on the go is useful.
That said they badge the notifications icon in the header of the desktop web version as well–just now mine had 8 unread "Notifications", 7 of which were suggesting I congratulate acquaintances for work anniversaries or telling me about trending posts. Why can't that just be in the feed? Maybe because I don't actually ever scroll through the feed, because I don't care about the garbage people post on LinkedIn.
Yelp doesn't let you see more than a few photos in mobile web; if you switch to desktop view you can see all the photos but of course all the dimensions are janky.
This one in particular drove me up the wall when they started doing it, because, for at least a year, the Yelp app was so buggy (on my phone at least) that it was essentially unusable. I wanted to keep using Yelp on the web, but because it was so crippled I switched to using Google Maps as my default review-searching app. The Yelp app works on my phone now...but I never reach for it.
reddit notifications are useless now. I do use the app but all notifications are off. I only look at that in app notification thing if I recently posted and am expecting replies.
There are so many mobile apps out there that are little more than wrappers around the mobile site -- but it's vital that they be apps for precisely this reason. Neverthless, as a user, it drives me crazy; I just want to access the site in my browser.
What we are starting to see is web push notifications becoming fully supported by browsers, and I think it's only a matter of time before iOS and Android start allowing app-like websites to notify users without them having to download a full-fledged app.
It would be interesting to see what this does for the iOS and Android development landscape. They're in a golden age now where every major property needs both a mobile site and a dedicated app on both platforms. But if the mobile site can handle more features that were previously the sole provenance of native apps, that seems likely to shift the landscape.
Android support for browser notifications landed in Chrome mobile about five years ago. (And yes, that included support for Android versions that were old even then.)
iOS still has no support, and nothing even on the horizon, as far as I know. Apple is intentionally holding back the open web. I find this infuriating.
The constant nagging to "download the app" is worse. Notifications can be left off, for a website or an app - this constant install-app-nagging is unavoidable now.
It absolutely IS possible to add the feature, as opt-in like with app permissions, and e.g. with some user-initiated event like audio already does.
The REAL motivation here is money, forcing users to use the appstore, instead of the web which is an open protocol.
And reddits App-nag setting is not a permanent choice. When you disable it that's a localStorage thing only, so if you sign out, clear caches, sign in elsewhere, still nags you.
This is true. I usually remove all cookies and data from my devices every three of four days - it just seems tidy to do so, even though I usually open a private tab for following links. There is the slight annoyance of logging back in to a few web sites and turning off notifications. That is definitely an opportunity cost, since it takes a little time.
They support web notifications in safari in the desktop. Whatever annoyances would be caused on mobile are also present there. I am convinced the only reason we don’t have push notifications on mobile safari is because it would enable people to write pwa’s instead of apps.
I'm personally not a fan of notification spam either, but I would assume that notifications via mobile browsers would be opt-in. Is that a bad assumption?
I can't imagine user-hostile features like silently allowing websites to spam you would drive browser share in a wanted direction. That's like expecting people to use your website because you sell their information.
I don't want the trend of browser-as-operating-system to continue.
Aside from the shabby technological issues involved, the applications themselves these pseudo OS features are put to generally are opposed to some of the things I value highly: privacy and stability, for example. Most applications don't need a social component or to harass me to re-engage, to utilize hardware or other software services on my device, or even to export/share data with other applications.
As far as the technology itself: the platform is generally a terrible technology for even the dubious purposes it is usually put. It's clunky, and even with things like wasm the development story for the platform is, at best, terrible. Also, in my experience, the quality of development in the web sphere is generally (not always) poor compared to similarly complex projects in other areas/applications.
If an app is on the Web, it's my choice whether I use it or not. I don't need Apple's permission and I don't need to pay them for using it.
Also, Apple's stubborn insistence on lock-in (and lock-out) is really annoying if many of your contacts are not on Apple platforms.
There are clearly trade-offs, and there is a lot of valid criticism of the Web, but I'm really glad that the Web exists as a sort of operating system that guarantees some freedoms that native platforms are increasingly taking away from us (although not all of them are as paternalistic as Apple).
Why's that? At least on Android you're free to choose another browser that doesn't support notifications, if they bother you so much. Or you could just turn them of.
I appreciate a platform that doesn't add these kinds of misbehaviors in the first place. It means I have less to watch out for or worry about in the future.
Fortunately Apple can't prevent PWAs from telling users that Apple is the reason they can't have good things. I'm disappointed however in Apple also blocking PWA's from the App Store.
Despite what many might think, everything doesn’t need to be an “app,” PWA or otherwise. Reddit is literally a message board, one of the earliest types of website. It doesn’t need my location — ever. Email works just fine as a notification, if I want it as a “push” notification, I could VIP-enable the notification email address in Mail. Does Reddit need my accelerometer? Or direct access to my camera or microphone? Or address book? Or graphics APIs like Metal?
Nope. It’s just a message board. Sell contextual ads for the different subreddits, don’t bother tracking people, and be done with it. Of course that would likely require a significantly smaller workforce.
Well, good. Being spammed with notifications is the primary reason I refuse to install many apps. Sure, you can turn it off but they really make you hunt around for it.
Yes, that's one big reason I avoid installing apps. But the requests are also a pain. Can I permanently opt out of all requests across all sites, and never see a page ask again?
Reddit doesn’t care about being less intrusive. If they did, they could stop the aggressive app-nag today. A PWA doesn’t instantly make them want to be subtle.
it's more expansive, as in more data that can be mined for adverting purposes. I got a presentation from Reddit a few of years ago on their ad-platform and it was terrible (for enterprises). Their sales team were hyping big changes and things that were coming including geo-location, strong user profiling etc.
This was pre-redesign and it became clear what they were doing and their roadmap of features all were to grow the ad business. Mobile makes sense as it's how their key audiences consume content and it enables stronger profiling, richer engagement and better ad-targeting due to persistance.
The mobile app allows reddit to mine user behavior (every outbound link click is tracked, even on the desktop website) and then they're able to link your device profile, to content you consume and engage with. This can be used for ad-targeting or sold to other data brokers to build a richer profile about ABC user with this device, across XY IPs, typically based in ZZZ location.
A guy I know worked for a PC manufacturer years ago. The offered a windows version of a machine, and folks asked why they didn't offer a linux version.
A linux version would cost more money, because they made a non-trivial amount of money by loading up the PC with shovelware.
I've seen this countless times at companies. The decision makers do not want to greenlight projects that do not make money, or worse that cost them money.
So I think if you follow the money you'll find a mobile app makes them more money.
Yes! And as a general rule, it's safe to assume their marketing department isn't interested in that issue. Marketing departments can't help but market themselves too, and if BS numbers make them look good even to the detriment of the company, it's almost a sure bet you'll see them do that.
