There’s a good chance we’re witnessing the real-time demise of one of the internet’s favorite social media platforms.rear Charge for API access And in an attempt to quell the ensuing protests through an interview with the CEO of Hare Brain, Reddit turned its iOS app icon into a nasty 8-bit monster.
Yesterday, iOS developer Benjamin Mayo said: tweeted Reddit has released a screenshot revealing to the general public that it has revamped its app icon. It’s standard practice for companies to tweak their designs to keep their brands fresh and mark new beginnings, but Reddit may have single-handedly created the ugliest app icon of all time — well, worse than Instagram replacing its Polaroid camera icon with a grotesque purple gradient. The new icon is a riff on his Reddit logo (his alien creature known as Snoo in an orange circle), but this time it’s inspired by retro video games. Reddit hasn’t changed app icons Google Play store (not yet).
Reddit’s old icon is now behind a paywall, indicating the company knows its new icon sucks. Her Reddit users on mobile can swap one icon for another through the app’s internal settings, but only her Reddit Premium his members can take advantage of the swapping feature. Reddit Premium is his VIP section of the platform, promising an ad-free experience for $6.99/month. Reddit is obviously trying to make more money Aiming for an IPO in the second half of this yearthis is a strange move for a veteran platform and could be a sign that the platform is in dire straits financially as it chases every last opportunity, big or small, to earn some extra cash.
A Reddit spokesperson told Gizmodo in an email that this was a temporary change when asked about the updated icon. The spokesperson also directed posts from the official Reddit account to the platform’s own subreddits, as well as to the subreddits of the pixel-based community that typically runs on the platform in the summer, his art his project, Place, indicating that the icon update was a promotion for the project. A spokesperson told Gizmodo that the app’s icon should be updated in the Google Play store later today.
Related: Reddit Ratings Fall Further, Fidelity Says
Reddit announced in April that it would charge companies for access to its application programming interface (API). Reddit did not disclose API costs after the announcement, but Reddit founder and CEO Steve Huffman said: new york times He said he thought it was time to “tighten up” at the company. Only after a conversation between Reddit and third-party app Apollo did it emerge that the discussion platform plans to charge $12,000 per 50 million requests to access its API. This is an unsustainable amount of money for most programmers.
Thousands of subreddit moderators then took the community private for at least two days to protest the news. Most have returned, but some have not—Some have become more creative with their strategies. all the time, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman fueled the flames by antagonizing the platform’s user base. Reddit claims the decision to charge for the API is aimed at preventing AI companies from collecting data from websites. That may be true, but it’s far more plausible that the platform has also viewed it as a viable revenue stream. When CEO Elon Musk realized he wasn’t making enough profit, Twitter did.
Update July 19th at 11:35am EST: This article has been updated with a comment from a Reddit spokesperson.
