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I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

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Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#42
post #29

> He said he would sell it to me for $40k. I offered $20k, which he refused but he said if I had any domain names generating ad revenue, we could do a deal of domains and cash. He said he would accept a lower amount if I paid in Bitcoin. > So we worked out a deal where I gave him $20k in Bitcoin and a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue, and he gave me the domain friendster.com. Now I was the owner of…

If you had a steady investment opportunity with 10% return (about in line with long-terms stock market returns), $9000 per year indefinitely is worth the same as $99000 now (in an idealized finance world. In the real world you can't invest $99000 and withdraw $9000 per year because withdrawals during downturns will take out too much. But it's a quick way to calculate equivalent values).

That's obviously an upper bound, because those domains won't make $9000/year forever. But valuing them at $10k if they make $9k/year is equally unsound. Not to mention the domain is worth more than its ad revenue. You could also end up selling it to a company that came up with the name and saw that the domain is available for purchase for some reasonable 4-5 figure amount (like in the example of this very article, where someone buys a domain for a five-figure amount)

Obviously there is a lot we don't know (is the $9k pure profit or are there substantial costs? How likely is the domain to sell?), but it sounds like the seller got the better end of the deal. He got more than $40k in value, in return the author got a deal he could afford

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#43
post #39

Bought Friendster, posted about it on Medium. Can't wait for the Justin.tv live stream!

lmao i cannot stand medium. the amount of articles i've clicked into on medium that start with

"in todays fast paced business environment.."

the incentive structure on medium is so busted. just people churning out half-working insights to look good for job interviews or promotions, it's like the worlds laziest portfolio. it straight up isn't any sort of bastion of knowledge-share.

makes things like https://beej.us/guide/ an absolute treasure

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#45
post #9

Why no android app?

The main functionality to add friends is that you need to use the phones physically touching feature of iPhones. This doesn't exist in Android afaik. The guy wants people to meet in person rather than doing social media the normie way.

https://developers.google.com/nearby no?

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#46

I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant…

I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Have at it. Or share with multiple circles or everyone / global.

Its a damn shame Google nerfed it after forcing it on people who werent asking to be forced into it. Google Plus was a very tech heavy Social Media platform, if Google had half a brain they could have built their own serious LinkedIn alternative.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#48
on the fading connection and monetization - you could let people pay to re-up the connection from fading as opposed to meeting in person again first, and its makes them really think about whether meeting in person is worth happening again or would ever happen again, is the connection itself valuable in another way any way

on instagram, there is a social disincentive to unfollow people and you can also make someone else unfollow you in a couple ways (the button that does just that, as well as blocking someone for a second and unblocking them), doing these actions has a real cost to confrontation. people you thought you would never see again will see you again and say "I thought we were following each other???? oooo :O ... ooooh >:O"

you are making that activity a first class citizen, with no presumption of ill will behind it, this has value to it

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#49

Nice. Quick hypoyhetical. Meta offers $1bn in 5 years time when you have 2m users. Will you sell? If so this is a meta-or-dead social network. Making it federated etc. would make me trust it more.

Anyone will sell any project for $1bn, absurd take.

I'd probably sell any project of mine for $1m, I'm very cheap.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#50
>I don’t really care about making money from [$project], but I’d like it to eventually pay for itself.

Warning bells. Slippery slopes. I think we should know by now that social networks do not mix well with the advertising business model. It would have been nice to see that eventuality ruled out explicitly here (PS: for the future as well as just for now).

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