They have big enough followings if they made their own app or even their own instance of a federated site they would be able to migrate most redditor.s.
This is like asking why Logitech doesn’t make their own CPUs. The skillset required to make a popular front-end client are vastly different from building and maintaining a good backend system, not to mention the costs are vastly greater. It makes much more sense for the creators of these apps to take their skills in building front-ends and applying it to an existing succesful backend like Lemmy/the Fediverse.
They did make their own apps.
Reddit isn’t an app, though. It’s a website. Totally different beast, with totally different needs, and totally different expenses.
Sync and boost are doing Lemmy apps, others might follow as the fediverse grows
RIF dev is working on an app for tildes
I mean there’s no reason to split up the communities further. Instead of then having a separate platform for Apollo, Sync, Boost etc, it just makes sense to make new apps for services that can talk to each other, like in the Fediverse.
I’m talking about their own reddit app. Without lemmy. For someone like christian from Apollo he already has a built in user base why not convert it to a social media platform.
Truly, an XKCD for everything.
We all know what you mean but for clarification: rif and appolo are apps. What you’re talking about is the reddit service/website/backend.
I’d suggested the same thing. They could develop a plug-in system that would allow their apps to interface with any service the user likes: reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Lemmy, Mastadon.
The answer is time and money. The makers of these apps have fulltime jobs. The apps are a hobby that probably barely covers its own costs.
When announcing the API changes, reddit dragged it out not giving any meaningful info until a month before enacting it. A month isn’t enough time to build a service like reddit. Lemmy for comparison has been in development for years and is still pretty bare-bones.
From what I’ve heard many of the app devs are re-doing their apps to work one of the federated services, but it takes time.
A service like is not cheap or easy. It’s requires a lot of server hardware, bandwidth, and money. As far as I know the devs are lone-wolfs. Also many of the users are cheap and like paying for stuff. Reddit has been around for 15 years and still isn’t profitable.
I heard someone approached Christian with that idea already, but he is wasn’t really interested.
Setting up the whole ecosystem is hard - most of the app developers are very good with front-end and user experience, but setting up a robust, scalable backed is a completely different skill set.
how would that be different from just creating a another Lemmy instance and also the user base of a single app isn’t quite enough for something completely separate like that
That’s like asking why an Auto Part manufacturer doesn’t just make their own car. It isn’t nearly that simple.
