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*I don’t mind a site charging a nominal fee for API access. Either to cover the cost of API service itself, or more importantly to encourage API developers to be efficient when making API requests. But that's hundreds to thousands of dollars a year, not millions.
Important caveat about the title from the article.
Is there a reasonable model for commercial sites to survive if their APIs are free?
Ads, like Reddit does and reddit makes a ton of money. If they weren't trying to make nft integrations or new TikTok and just had the staff it took to keep the lights on, it would be a stable successful business.
But the greedy execs want more money so they act like they have no choice but to squeeze the users for everything they can. This is their choice, not a necessity.
Exactly this. They keep repeating that they aren't profitable. But the key question is: why do they need 2,000 employees? IIRC, before they were acquired by Facebook, Whatsapp managed to handle a billion+ users with 50 people.
If I write a third party app, then I can filter out any ads you pass me, or I can make it easy for a user to do at arm's length from me by allowing plugins. This is exactly what's happening with reddit third party apps.
I don't think it's as black and white as you're making out.
Well if you violate TOS then your API key gets revoked. If apps want access then they can play by the rules; I think that’s fair enough.
Now, what’s fair when it comes to ad placement is a whole other can of worms…
I would expect that not filtering ads (unless the user pays the content site) could be an enforceable stipulation to anyone using the APIs, no? I would also think that ads could be served through the common "get new posts" API in an opaque manner pretty easily.
Firstly, to enforce that reddit now has to police everyone who uses their api, and engage in the inevitable game of whackamole. Charging (a reasonable price!) for API calls and letting the third party app make it back in ad or subscription revenue is a much more sensible way to work. Everyone benefits, and reddit don't need an army of people hunting down TOS evaders.
Secondly, I know I didn't see any reddit ads when I was using Boost for Reddit, so it's actively happening. I was seeing Boost's banner ad down the bottom of the app when I wasn't on my home network.
Lastly, I'm not convinced that surviving on ad revenue is a viable model after seeing dozens of companies go under, if fail to escape the red, either trying to get by on ad revenue or trying to switch to subscription modles because it wasn't working.
To be fair, I don't think any of us know reddit's costs nor its revenue. We do know that the current CEO says that they are "not profitable". But let's just pretend for a minute that if reddit did what you say (scale down, stop the NFT TT bullshit) that they'd be a 'stable successful business'.
Ask yourself: Would YOU want to work for a company that's just eeking by, with limited growth or upward potential for your personal income? I sure as hell wouldn't. If reddit 'tried' to act like a co-operative they'd quickly lose the limited talent they do have to be replaced by "digital babysitters" who have the skills to reboot a server when it hangs and not much else. They certainly ain't going to attract the devs who can actually CREATE the mod tools that we've been after for YEARS.
At some point we need reddit and other sites like it to be profitable so that they can attract talent to continue to develop and expand the features of the site or else some other company will come along and do exactly that, putting reddit out of business.
Does reddit need to become profitable solely off the backs of API calls, no; which is why I'm here (and you too I assume) but we cannot pretend that any of this work is either easy or free to produce.
I don't think any of us know reddit's costs nor its revenue
Spez said this week that reddit is making less than 1 billion in revenue. That specific wording, combined with the size makes it pretty easy to assume they are making hundreds of millions in revenue.
Would YOU want to work for a company that's just eeking by,
Reddit is one of the largest sites on the internet. It's not just eeking by
But yes, in a small tech org that was paying well and working at the scale of Reddit? Of course I'd work there. I've worked at every where from startups to FAANG, it doesn't have to be a hyper growth unicorn to be a great place to work and good for your career.
At some point we need reddit and other sites like it to be profitable
They would be profitable if they cut 90% of their staff that work on bullshit like the redesign and NFTs and just had a core DevOps team and a features team. No reason they need to have more than 10 engineers. The site was 95% finished in 2016. All they need is some mod tools.
to develop and expand the features of the site or else some other company will come along and do exactly that, putting reddit out of business.
Ironic you're saying this on a site we chose to migrate to that has less "features" than reddit.
The obvious answer is "charge a reasonable price".
Many services like AccuWeather do that, including having a limited free tier for experimentation or niche applications.
The real problem though is that the value of the data isn't just the cost of storing and making it available - in many cases its strategic. This is why e.g. the Google Maps API gives you pre-rendered map tiles and curated results, but you don't get access to the raw data.
I think that's reasonable, which is why I'm wondering how "all APIs must be free" works.
Ads and also offer an ad-free option that gives you an API key. So, if you want to use a 3rd party app to skirt ads you'd still have to pay the website. I think charging the user is a much fairer system than charging developers for API access.