> Friendster was the first social network
Friendster was not the first social network.
sixdegrees.com had it beat by 5 years.
I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
61–70 of 648 posts
Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
#62I tried to search for Friendster in the App Store and didn’t see it among the first few results. Instead, App Store was returning a sponsored ad followed by normal results for all other kinds of similar annd less similar apps. Instagram, Snapchat, Yubo (never heard of), Monopoly Go (mobile game related to the board game Monopoly), BeFriend (never heard of), Tinder, Friendly Social Browser (never heard of), Facebook,…
Odd, Friendster was the first non-sponsored result for me in the U.S. store.
Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
#63I 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…
Wait Kim and Selena are irrelevant? I guess I'm not keeping up with the times
Yeah that was the most out of touch HN comment I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Persistent irrelevant celebrities are a real thing, but those two wouldn’t crack the top 500.
Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
#64I 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? Hav…
I can only imagine someone looking over my shoulder on vacation to see what I'm posting: "oh, you have a 'close friends' group; why am I not in it?"
Arbitrary labels are great ... until they're not.
Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't worry, Facebook already has Fading Connections You can be married to each other and your posts won't show up on the other person's feed (there's a post on HN about this)
What in the world lol
Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
#66> 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 boun…
I imagine that $9k ad revenue is a site that had an actual user base. And that the guy taking over the domain is going to just put all ads and no content, like he had on Friendster.com. And if so, the expected ad income is probably much lower.
Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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? Hav…
I can only imagine someone looking over my shoulder on vacation to see what I'm posting: "oh, you have a 'close friends' group; why am I not in it?" Arbitrary labels are great ... until they're not.
Arbitrary labels make it really easy to give groups of close friends silly in-joke names rather than "close friends"...
Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
#68>I don’t really care about making money from [$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) .
"no ads" - it is explicitly stated on the website and app store page
Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
#69I 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? Hav…
I completely agree. Circles were great. Unfortunately, they're one of the things that killed Google+. I remember reading an article from one of the creators of Google+ years and years ago. They talked about how asymmetric friending (Alice adding Bob to one of her circles didn't add Alice to any of Bob's circles) prevented the viral network effect that Facebook was able to achieve.
It's a damn shame. I feel like Google giving up on Google+ and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes.
Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
#70Why no android app?
Why no website as well? Can't use it from a laptop, it's a bit strange for a social media, many don't like typing on a phone.
That's a great question, since the genesis of this was the domain name, which no one using the app will care about or visit. That is, the only thing that was actually needed here was the trademark, it appears.