Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

End of the Road for Xmarks

blog.xmarks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 111 posts

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#91

Post by dillydally »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #79
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.

It was founded by Mitch Kapor. I think he knows a thing or two about starting companies...

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#92

Post by japherwocky »

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 cannot comprehend how they aren't even going to TRY to charge for ANYTHING.

How the fuck do they think this whole cash flow thing works?

2 million users, and they don't even put out a god damn paypal donation widget? Show ads? Freemium anything? Charge something outrageous, lose 90% of your 2 million users, and you'll still have a significant monthly income.

This is just the stupidest news I've heard in a while. Zero respect for these guys, they clearly don't have even a shred of business sense.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#93

Post by joshu »

jonknee wrote: post #77
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.

oops. indeed.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#94

Post by mitjak »

sjs wrote: post #57
mitjak wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto here but I can't think of a way to bring those bookmarks over to Safari to sync with the iPhone, aside from using Xmarks. Any ideas?

Instapaper. I know that's kind of a cop-out but incidentally it (and Google) have killed my use of bookmarks apart from a relatively svelte bookmarks bar. Instapaper is my reading queue, Google is my long-term memory. Bookmarks are more like shortcuts for me now. The nice thing is that I can "bookmark" any link from any browser that I use, as well as twitter and RSS. And I have them instantly on my iPad, phone, noteb…

What do you mean by Google? Google Bookmarks, the Chrome sync? Google Notebook? :)

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#95

Post by raganwald »

japherwocky wrote: post #92
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 cannot comprehend how they aren't even going to TRY to charge for ANYTHING. How the fuck do they think this whole cash flow thing works? 2 million users, and they don't even put out a god damn paypal donation widget? Show ads? Freemium anything? Charge something outrageous, lose 90% of your 2 million users, and you'll still have a significant monthly income. This is just the stupidest news I've heard in a while. Ze…

Zero respect for the people behind the service, really? I have zero respect for your comment but I stop well short of saying I have zero respect for you.

Things are probably not that simple. They have investors. It may not be a case of "Hey, we can make a business that pays for three guys to eat." Perhaps their investors need to see a certain minimum return or else the investors would rather close up shop.

Maybe they have a better buysiness idea and it's better to close this one and put 100% of their energy into the new idea. Have you heard of justin.tv? IIRC, a large number of people on reddit were criticizing Justin and his partners for selling their previous startup on eBay. They got some money and started again with a blank piece of paper.

I am not saying that you're wrong about what to do given the information you have. I am saying that (1) It is difficult to be absolutely certain that they are making the worst possible business decision in this case given how little we know, and (2) Even if they are making the worst possible business decision, how does this extend to having zero respect for the complete human beings who laugh, love, play, and built something many people value?

p.s. The company is for sale. If you have an opinion of how it ought to be run, there's no better way to make your case than to buy it for a fire sale price and run it. In all honesty, I would be absolutely delighted if you were to make a go of it. That would be a very inspiring story.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#97

Post by gvb »

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…

Years ago, I bookmarked expansively. I found I never used most of the bookmarks and many of the bit-rotted silently so that, when I did try to follow a bookmark, it no longer worked.

I found googling worked better than maintaining personal bookmarks, so Google has become my "bookmark" service.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#98

Post by aberkowitz »

adambyrtek wrote: post #64
aberkowitz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't the Pinboard folks buy out Xmarks?

What would they do that? The fact that Xmarks is closing doesn't mean they would have sold it for a few bucks. Not to mention that Pinboard is run just by two guys, as far as I know without any external investment.

I admit that I did not investigate it thoroughly enough. As you concluded, they may not have the money or the man power to acquire Xmarks. Ignoring these vital issues, it appears that they have the necessary passion and expertise in bookmark management.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#99

Post by raganwald »

raganwald wrote: post #95
japherwocky wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot comprehend how they aren't even going to TRY to charge for ANYTHING. How the fuck do they think this whole cash flow thing works? 2 million users, and they don't even put out a god damn paypal donation widget? Show ads? Freemium anything? Charge something outrageous, lose 90% of your 2 million users, and you'll still have a significant monthly income. This is just the stupidest news I've heard in a while. Ze…

Zero respect for the people behind the service, really? I have zero respect for your comment but I stop well short of saying I have zero respect for you. Things are probably not that simple. They have investors. It may not be a case of "Hey, we can make a business that pays for three guys to eat." Perhaps their investors need to see a certain minimum return or else the investors would rather close up shop. Maybe they…

p.p.s. I was exaggerating when I said "zero respect for your comment." I was just trying to make a point about the difference between criticizing someone's point and criticizing them personally. But now that I think about it, I was a little rude. I apologize.

Re: End of the Road for Xmarks

#100

Post by random42 »

EvanMiller wrote: post #83

Lessons learned: 1. Adding a feature to someone else's product is a risky business model. If it's popular, the product-maker will implement your feature, at which point your goose is cooked. 2. Adding a free feature to someone else's free product isn't even risky. It is among the surest methods of losing money. 3. Know when to sell. The missed opportunity here was search. With their data and methods, Xmarks was able…

I do not necessarily agree. There are a _lot_ of good _businesses_, which basically _fill the gap_ in other product.

xMarks is not like an cut-n-paste iPhone app (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html), which becomes _useless_ after the vendor decides to implement the feature, rather a decent service (Chrome/Mozilla sync does not solve the syncing problem across browsers/iPhone/iPads etc.) which could not its business model.

Post reply on HN