Shu also tells me that RIF was paying a “sizable revenue share” to Reddit beginning in 2012, which was during Yishan Wong’s tenure as CEO. Shu says he says initiated the talks with Reddit to create the agreement, which allowed for the licensed use of Reddit’s trademarks. (At the time, the app was called “reddit is fun.”) Shu says Reddit terminated the agreement in 2016 — which was the year after Huffman took over as CEO.
Holy shit the lede was a little buried from the title.
RIF had a revenue-sharing agreement with Reddit starting in 2012, and they had a working model to ensure that Reddit was compensated - and profited from - the API usage. RIF voluntarily worked out a deal to share it’s revenues back to Reddit. That deal was terminated after Spez took over as CEO, under his watch, and that cancellation is big enough that it absolutely would have gone via the CEO for approval. Spez decided to turn down the revenue share agreement with RIF, only to come back seven years later and complain like Reddit was somehow being taken advantage of due to the costs of app API usage.
What an absolutely meaty disclosure: the same problem Spez is complaining about now is a problem he personally caused shortly after rejoining Reddit.
OOOOHHH… I remember the name change. (I use/d RIF for the extent of my Reddit tenure) didn’t realize it was a revenue share. I thought (or gathered) that Reddit wanted the “Reddit” app to be the only one named that on the Play Store…
That was basically the motivation at the time. Sync was also affected, which used to offer the app under the label “Reddit Sync” (its original selling point was that you could download a large cache of Reddit to the app for offline viewing and “sync” it up later) and is why the subreddit is still called /r/redditsync.
It used to have a Snoo icon, too, and had to replace it with the (in my opinion much more clever) up and downvote arrows that form an S shape.
Spez: “we don’t need their money!”
Also spez: “why aren’t we making any money‽”
So… Spez lied again. Please raise your hand if you’re surprised?
Also they had a revenue sharing agreement that Reddit terminated in 2016 after Spez became CEO again?
Also they had a revenue sharing agreement that Reddit terminated in 2016 after Spez became CEO again?
That part is easy to understand, RIF licensed the Reddit name and logo and called itself “Reddit Is Fun”, then Reddit bought AlienBlue, made it their own app, and didn’t want to license the name to Reddit Is Fun anymore.
Reddit bought AlienBlue, yes, but it didn’t turn it into their own app. Their app doesn’t even closely resemble AlienBlue. I still have no idea why they purchased it since they never used it.
Maybe it was an acquihire, looking to hire a team capable of building a new Reddit app.
Little of column A, little of column B. I think they were hoping that offering the official Reddit app under the “pedigree” of the (at the time) most popular third party client would convince users to stick around even after seeing how shitty it was. Especially after Alien Blue did spend a little bit of time itself being “the official Reddit app”.
It was ruined because they just had to insist that the official app match the design language and have all of the feature bloat of New Reddit, which is ultimately what made it such a a mess. They were looking to sell the idea of New Reddit through the app in addition to the site, and were probably afraid that the app continuing to provide the cleaner, better experience of Alien Blue would drive people away from New Reddit.
Whaaaat? Spez wouldn’t just go on the Internet and lie, would he?
Of course not! Only a deranged individual who is completely divorced from reality would do such a thing!
I’m really glad the media is covering this and exposing the blatant bullshit he is spewing. Not like it’ll change anything — and Reddit is dead to me — but hopefully this continues to chip away at whatever valuation the site has left.
Spez saying someone didn’t want to work with Reddit == they didn’t want to submit to Spez’s terms unquestionably. If you recognize Spez as a power blinded person you can translate his speech into what he meant very quickly.
That RIF is fun had a revenue sharing agreement explains why they were able to keep Reddit in front the apps name when other 3rd party apps couldn’t. Corporate Reddit sounds like a nightmare to work with.
Yo shoutouts to the Verge’s journalists. Theyve been documenting this whole debacle its crazy. Usually news articles arent that relevant in my day to day life so im surprised theyve been watching every development.
cus Reddit generated all their content lol
its almost like spez wants to kill reddit. kind of hard to lie in 2023.
Dude is just all in on being a jerk. Her needs to cool it.
I feel like he’s collecting bad will, so when he’s fired (paid a healthy severance), they can roll back 5% of unpopular opinions for the “community”. Reddit can get fucked.
I thought that was Ellen Pao’s job.
What’s this glass cliff doing here?
