Alien Blue wasn’t rebranded. They bought it, called it the official app (with the name Alien Blue) for a little while, then launched their own app and stopped supporting AB.
Comment on Reddit: Return Of The Junk Stock IPO
phcorcoran@lemmy.world 6 months agoThe comparison is even more apt when you remember that the official Reddit app also used to be great and the most popular 3rd-party app called AlienBlue, which was purchased from 1 guy and rebranded a decade ago.
It’s pretty clear that the reason why the official Reddit app isn’t good is because a good experience for their users isn’t their goal.
DBT@lemmy.world 6 months ago
phcorcoran@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Oh I see; I knew they stopped supporting it after a while but I thought the official app was a descendent of that codebase
vjxtdibobyd@lemmy.world 6 months ago
If it was, it might actually be useable
SomeoneElse@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Yeah I paid for alien blue pro or whatever it was called. Then they killed the app and gave me a year of Reddit premium (my memory is shit, idk the proper name). After a month or so I switched to Apollo, Reddit’s app was just so shit. I left when Apollo died and now only use dystopia (an app designed for blind users) for the infrequent times I visit Reddit. No adds. It’s almost read only. But it’s ideal for visiting niche subs that aren’t on lemmy without giving Reddit clicks/seeing ads.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 6 months ago
You can also see this with the old website being much better than the new one and apparently there’s an even newer one that people who like the old new one generally hate.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 months ago
a good experience for their users isn’t their goal
They are in tension with the more pressing goal of extracting revenue. But how do you extract revenue from a site that’s mostly just “user content” + “ads” in an era when ad revenue is plummeting?
Maybe if they increase the prices on Reddit Gold?
Stovetop@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They got rid of Reddit Gold and other awards. It’s now “super upvotes” or something to that effect.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yep. The fact that the app is still so bad after so much time has gone by indicates that this is the desired product that the company wants to offer. And after realizing that they were still using users to better competitors, their solution was to destroy the ability to compete rather than improve the product.
They like the app as-is, with all of the terrible performance and UX that goes along with it. They’re getting user engagement metrics and other telemetry data, more control over ad delivery and the content users see (including astroturfed sponsored Reddit content), and more monetization.
Third party apps, like Apollo was and AlienBlue used to be before it, cared only about providing a good user experience. It just happens that users typically prefer experiences that aren’t trying to capitalize their every interaction, and companies apparently don’t like that.
dai@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’ve started using Geddit, a 3rd party app that doesn’t use the Reddit API. And it’s still better than the app they develop in-house.
I rarely visit Reddit, but when searching for something niche there always seems to be a few threads over there sadly.