Did I parse his usage statement correctly? Is he saying a typical reddit user only consumes 5000 API calls per _month_??? I find that VERY hard to believe.
And if this is somehow true then it doesn’t really paint a positive picture of Reddit’s business.
And this is about API calls, not user engagement. I can’t imagine that the difference between people who post and those who don’t, in terms of API usage, to be significant based only on how many API calls it takes to post a comment.
The median user of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, or whatever else, uses the app for on average ~five minutes a day. They just "check" it to see if there's anything interesting; they find that there's not; and then they close it. Or, they just decide to open one such app when waiting for a bus, and scroll until their bus gets there; then they open a different app while waiting for their lunch order to be made, then close that one when they get their lunch; etc.
Most people who "use" social media, are not addicted to social media, or even engaged with social media. They just barely use social media.
This group of people is why every single MAU figure is considered to be heavily inflated. All you have to do is open the app for a minute once a month and suddenly you're an "active user" for that month. Every social network has far, far fewer "actually active" users than they try to make it seem.
> And this is about API calls, not user engagement.
If you aren't aware: engagement drives linger time. The same people who create accounts, etc. are the people who spend hours on the app. People who just "poke their nose in" but don't engage almost always spend less time on the app. Degree of engagement with an app, can be used as a very reliable proxy (by third-party analysis firms who don't have access to actual usage-time data) for likelihood to spend more time using a given app.