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End of the Road for Xmarks

blog.xmarks.com

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Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#71

Post by user24 »

markbao wrote: post #39
wyclif wrote: post #5

Wow, xmarks is dead because they couldn't "find a scalable business model" with two million users. http://twitter.com/PinboardIN/status/25734453850

xmarks: @PinboardIN hey if you've got some good ideas, we're all ears! and, of course, pinboardIN: @xmarks the model that has worked well for us is 'charge people money for a useful product or service'

exactly. The hardest part is having the balls to charge for lemonade in the first place.

edit: source, patio11: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1668553

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#72

Post by mtr »

ajg1977 wrote: post #26

Man, I'm gutted. I use Xmarks every day to sync from my work & windows machines (Firefox) to my MacBook (Safari) and thus to my iPhone / iPad. I'd have happily paid $5 a month or so to use Xmarks and I imagine I'm not alone. It's really unfortunate that they won't even try the freemium, or (shock!) even the outright pay to play approach. I'm sure with two million users there would have been enough paying customers to…

I have a feeling that Xmarks is getting more press by saying that they will shut things down in 3 months versus them making an annoucement that they're shifting to a fremium model.

While it could backfire, the additional press coverage could be leveraged to a freemium model if they do it before everyone abandons ship.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#74

Post by twistedanimator »

buro9 wrote: post #65
ajg1977 wrote: post #26

Man, I'm gutted. I use Xmarks every day to sync from my work & windows machines (Firefox) to my MacBook (Safari) and thus to my iPhone / iPad. I'd have happily paid $5 a month or so to use Xmarks and I imagine I'm not alone. It's really unfortunate that they won't even try the freemium, or (shock!) even the outright pay to play approach. I'm sure with two million users there would have been enough paying customers to…

I honestly didn't know xmarks existed, I probably missed it because I used to be more of an Opera user before Chrome with only a fleeting interest in Firefox inbetween. Firefox I moved to because of Weave, and I only fully shifted to Chrome when the sync became full-featured. Xmarks may not be able to compete within a single browser, but the killer play is syncing across them. Having just read the feature list I woul…

If all you need is secure password syncing, you should check out LastPass (http://lastpass.com/).

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#77

Post by jonknee »

joshu wrote: post #60

2m users * 1% conversion rate * $10/yr = $100k = probably not enough for a VC-backed startup. My suspicion is that because users just used the browser's internal bookmarks they couldn't easily add affordances that would draw attention, leaving no surface on which to advertise. I guess this is one advantage that delicious had, although breaking the bookmarking paradigm to do so was very painful in other ways. I no lon…

That would be $200k, but still not enough to make your conclusion any different.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#78

Post by robk »

joshu wrote: post #60

2m users * 1% conversion rate * $10/yr = $100k = probably not enough for a VC-backed startup. My suspicion is that because users just used the browser's internal bookmarks they couldn't easily add affordances that would draw attention, leaving no surface on which to advertise. I guess this is one advantage that delicious had, although breaking the bookmarking paradigm to do so was very painful in other ways. I no lon…

Yep "probably not enough for a VC-backed startup" is the key here. This would have been a nice bootstrapped business. For them taking VC put them on a road that unfortunately wasn't the right one for them and forced them to swing for a bigger outcome than was possible. Sad.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#79

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

aresant wrote: post #24

"For four years we have offered the synchronization service for no charge, predicated on the hypothesis that a business model would emerge to support the free service." Not a bad hypothesis, one I see regularly but 90 days to close sure illustrates the downside and value of searching for that monetization model earlier rather than later.

I think it's a fairly shocking hypothesis.

My feeling was that the lesson from this is don't go into a business if you don't have at least a vague idea how you're going to make money out of it.

I love XMarks and I'll absolutely miss it (and would have considered paying for it) but this would seem to be niaivity in the extreme.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#80

Post by fady »

ajg1977 wrote: post #26

Man, I'm gutted. I use Xmarks every day to sync from my work & windows machines (Firefox) to my MacBook (Safari) and thus to my iPhone / iPad. I'd have happily paid $5 a month or so to use Xmarks and I imagine I'm not alone. It's really unfortunate that they won't even try the freemium, or (shock!) even the outright pay to play approach. I'm sure with two million users there would have been enough paying customers to…

you're not alone.. I would pay as well
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