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Don't Be A Free User

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Re: Don't Be A Free User

#61

Post by dasil003 »

phillmv wrote: post #50
Sukotto wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you backup your bookmarks on a regular basis using the handy export page http://pinboard.in/export/ You might also want to tone down the snark.

What snark? I'm being totally straight here. I love Maciej and all of his body of work and I aim to give him many of my dollars in the future - but this is something I'm going to nitpick on. The reason why I feel comfortable using Pinboard on a day to day has nothing to do with the fact that I've paid for it because it's just as fragile and likely to suddenly disappear. It has a high "hit-by-a-bus" factor. It's becau…

Startups disappearing one way or another is orders of magnitude more common per capita than bus pancakings.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#62

Post by gacba »

dman wrote: post #26

Google and Facebook are counter examples of how free can be resilient. I guess it depends on the vertical. If you are aiming to scale up to world scale being free is almost essential.

Google and Facebook are free because you are the product. They make craptons of money off of you using their service, selling your usage data, showing ads. That's completely different than Pinboard.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#63

Post by mitchellhislop »

viscanti wrote: post #54
gkoberger wrote: post #16

This article operates under the very incorrect assumption that paid services never shut down and free services are never carried on by their purchasers. See Flickr or YouTube or PayPal or Skype or Picnik or Grand Central or Picasa or Siri or mySpace or FriendFeed or FeedBurner or even pinboard's biggest competitor Delicious for examples of the latter. As for the former, there's an unlimited number of examples (for a…

The article seems to be in response to the recent Gowalla acquisition. If Gowalla had been successful and still used, it may have continued on. Facebook isn't shutting it down because it was a free service. They're shutting it down because it's unpopular and unprofitable. To use the Gowalla acquisition as evidence that companies acquire other companies just to shut them down is silly. All it shows is that a company c…

Not to nit-pick, but Facebook is not shutting anything down. They just hired the team, but did not acquire the users, IP, or really anything from Gowalla. Gowalla is shuttering Gowalla and joining Facebook. The fact that the founders are shuttering it and cashing out still proves your point, and I generally agree with it.

[the citation on this is an AllThingsD post - I just dont have it in front of me anymore]

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#66

Post by adambyrtek »

dotBen wrote: post #19
garrettdimon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the point is less about revenue being a guarantee that it won't happen and more about the fact that a lack of profit makes it increasingly likely that the product will eventually be shuttered because free isn't a sustainable model.

But that also doesn't really ring true either because a "lack of profit" doesn't necessarily mean that an acquiring party will shut said service down either. I doubt Friendfeed makes Facebook any money, and was clearly a talent acquisition (Bret is their CTO now) but they still keep it running. You're right that anyone using any tool/service with an unsustainable model needs to be cautious. But there's a lot more to…

They keep the lights on, but Friendfeed might be as well dead. The impression of activity is maintained by posts imported automatically from connected accounts, and the list of supported sites haven't been updated in years. For example, neither Rdio, Spotify, nor Grooveshark are available in the music section, same with Instagram and picplz in the photos section.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#67

Post by hyyypr »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #40
gkoberger wrote: post #16

This article operates under the very incorrect assumption that paid services never shut down and free services are never carried on by their purchasers. See Flickr or YouTube or PayPal or Skype or Picnik or Grand Central or Picasa or Siri or mySpace or FriendFeed or FeedBurner or even pinboard's biggest competitor Delicious for examples of the latter. As for the former, there's an unlimited number of examples (for a…

Delicious, for all intents and purposes, WAS shut down, and a new, barely related site was put up in its place. I was a Delicious user for years, with thousands of links tagged, and I continued using it for as long as I could stand under Avos, but the features that they cut and/or broke in the transition finally made me throw up my hands, give up, and switch...first to Trunk.ly, which Avos then bought and shut down (…

What exactly do you have against delicious' new interface ? I continue using it as I always did, and except for the design I barely see any difference.

Maybe I'm missing some key feature here ?

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#68

Post by jayeff »

_delirium wrote: post #25
garrettdimon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the point is less about revenue being a guarantee that it won't happen and more about the fact that a lack of profit makes it increasingly likely that the product will eventually be shuttered because free isn't a sustainable model.

That's the claim that I'd like to see some data to believe: are , in fact, paid cloud services more long-lasting than free or freemium services? My guess would be no, that a large number of them also go bankrupt, are acquired and shut down, pivot to other lines of work, or otherwise fail to stick around.

I'm with you on your guess. There are hundreds of reasons why a paid service may stop to exist. Still I would argue that running a paid service gives you more options compared to free/freemium: if you balance right you should not go bankrupt, it's cheaper to run (less users -> cheaper hosting and less support), better position to fend off acquisition or during acquisition-negotiations, easier to bootstrap.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#69

Post by kd1220 »

If you replaced "free software/service" with "person" then a sensible title could be "Don't Have No-Strings-Attached Relationships."

I think the author is giving bad advice. If you're using a free service that doesn't appear to have any revenue stream, then just assume it won't be around when you need it. There's nothing bad about using a free service. You don't have to bug the owners to monetize. It's a technological fling. Just like with interpersonal relationships, a company isn't going to tell its users "Hey, we're not going to be around in 2 years. This is just a temporary thing."

Maybe Gowalla just wasn't that into its users.

Re: Don't Be A Free User

#70

Post by drhayes9 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #58

This article brings up a good point: if you just found some super-cool free web application that you love? Odds are the only thing you're doing when you use it and recommend it to your friends is creating a nice resume for some large company to do a "talent acquisition" Large companies love this -- they find a couple of guys who are able to identify and engage audiences and then they kill their product and stick them…

Amy Hoy is a big proponent of bootstrapping. Her 30x500 class seems to rock (according to the sample materials she has out there), and she has some choice words on the subject: http://unicornfree.com/2011/fuck-glory-startups-are-one-long...
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