> Given what we know about user behavior on the Internet, Reddit is almost certainly on the downward slope of this weird Laffer curve, well beyond the point of "optimally effective" nagging.
If your internet bubble is largely composed of power users who have such a deep disdain for pop-ups that they will refuse to engage with this sites, you might think that.
But looking at Reddit's growth numbers lately, it appears their gamble has clearly paid off.
The key to understanding this is this: Mass-market, advertising-supported websites don't cater to picky power users. They cater to whoever they can get to sign up. If someone refuses to use a site because they refuse to sign up or install the app, then that's a positive, not a negative, for their numbers. They only want the users who will accept the conditions of the website.
The problem with this strategy is that it's easy to add so many nags that many more users will bounce away from the site than will install the app, or otherwise engage at all. Given what we know about user behavior on the Internet, Reddit is almost certainly on the downward slope of this weird Laffer curve, well beyond the point of "optimally effective" nagging. Add even more, and you become just another Experts-Exchange that no one cares about all that much.