Reddit, Inc. killed Apollo, an app with more than 1.5 million active users Here's the background story 👇🏻 Before everything, what is Apollo? 1. It's a third-party app that uses Reddit content and shows it in a fantastic UI. 2. People love using Apollo ❤️ 3. So much so that more than 50,000+ users pay a yearly subscription fee of $12.5, making a Monthly revenue of $55,000. 4. Christian Sellig is the brains behind building Apollo; he realized that people and content on Reddit are amazing. 5. But the app UI/UX sucks 🤮 6. Hence in 2015, he just posted it on a subreddit that anyone willing to try out a better Reddit, and since then, he has not looked back. But why did Reddit kill it? 💣 1. the story starts post-Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter and the announcement that Twitter will discontinue free API access and charge around $82,000 for business API. 2. This was just a way of saying they don't want to give access to their APIs now. 3. Along similar lines, Reddit followed suit a few days after this. They also announced that they would start charging for API access which was until then free. 4. This meant apps built on top of Reddit's API would need to start paying big $$$ to access these APIs. This is where the fallout started between Apollo and Reddit. What's the story? 1. After announcing the pricing, Reddit and Christian Sellig sat on the negotiation table to discuss how they could come to a discounted pricing - because, as per the proposed rate, Apollo had to pay $ 2 million while earning around $50k. 2. And then the talks started turning ugly. A Reddit employee told Christian that the pricing introduced by Reddit was a way to kill Apollo, as Christian has shared recordings where Reddit intimidates him. 3. After which, as a last resort, Christian proposed to sell Apollo to Reddit at a 50% discount at only $10 million. But Reddit was in the mood to kill it, and they succeeded. 4. Apollo is going to be shut down in July 😔 5. But this has made Reddit users angry, so much so that more than subreddits that have in total of 100 million users are going dark - making the subreddits disappear to show support to Apollo. What's happening now at Reddit? 1. After seeing things turning ugly, the CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman - did an AMA on Reddit stating that he would answer community members' questions on the recent pricing changes, but it was disastrous. 2. Basically, a CEO who was loved for building a fantastic product that people love has now in soup to maximize profits so that his company gets to IPO. 3. But Reddit being a community-driven product, should not have angered the users who make the product so unique! What are your thoughts? Who do you support? Reddit or Apollo? Share it in the comments 👇🏻 Liked reading it, do follow me @lets_dig_deeper for more such researched posts.