Apollo was already a nice app so why didn’t reddit just buy apollo and integrate ads into it and just keep the features that made everyone happy.

  • PrincipleOfCharity@0v0.social
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    2 years ago

    It is not super clear whether Christian would have sold Apollo to Reddit. I know he mentioned them buying it from him for $10 million, but he has also said that he wouldn’t sell Apollo to someone who was just going to mess it up because he cares about it. Reddit would have definitely made it a shell of what it currently is.

    He was pretty much asked this question in a recent interview.

    NP: If they’d offered to buy the app from you, would you have sold it to them?

    I guess it depends on the stage. I mean, I’m just some guy, so if the number was high enough, sure. Absolutely. At the stage where it was clear that they weren’t interested in having third-party apps around anymore, just because of the pricing and some of the API changes around explicit content or whatnot, if that was the point where they said like, “That being said, we would like to maybe work with your user base or take your user base and figure out a way to make them happy in the context of the official app and work with you and your app through an acquisition,” I honestly would have listened to that.

    Prior to that, it would have had to have been a pretty good number, just because I love building Apollo and being so in touch with so many people through the community. It would have to be a big number, losing such a big part of your life and what you do every day. There’s an emotional penalty to losing that is hard to quantify with money, as superficial as that sounds.