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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

#121

Post by justinclift »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #103
mattmerr wrote: post #99

What does "a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue" look like? Is this domain one where people randomly stumble upon it and give ad views to a parking page? A website with regular use or other content that people visit for some purpose that is now under different ownership?

Probably a parked domain with ads that people stumble across. We used to call these guys cybersquatters.

They're still called cybersquatters, except for some unknown reason ICANN has decided to not actually do anything about them. :(

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

#122

Post by lokar »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #82
giancarlostoro wrote: post #46

Earlier 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…

It's a great idea in principle, but it requires some manual work, which most users aren't gonna bother with.

I don’t think it’s about the effort needed. The basic idea is just too complex for most people.

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

#124

Post by macintux »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #78
mjamesaustin wrote: post #13

This looks exactly like what I've been looking for. I love the idea of using phone proximity as the only way to add friends. I think it will be very important for the onboarding process to be effortless, so you should focus on that. Until you reach some kind of saturation, most people will be downloading the app because a friend wants to add them. Having a way to generate a QR download code on my phone when I "add" a…

I just signed up and it’s super fast. Download the app, put in your name, allow Bluetooth. No email, no password, nothing.

> allow Bluetooth

I'd have a hard time getting over my aversion to this. I automatically reject any app's attempt to find local devices, etc.

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

#125

Post by stavros »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #91
razingeden wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xitter was kind of doing the same thing: I can’t see anything my mom posts, but I definitely have to see everything Elon’s mom does.

> Xitter Is this an alternate front-end (Nitter) or shorthand for X/Twitter?

The latter.

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

#126

Post by vector_spaces »

The 'tapping phones' gimmick strikes me as something that sounds cute but will become an annoying chore that one should be able to opt out of.

Particularly given various unintended side effects -- I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.

And either way, it's not the core feature that will draw users to the site

If you want to differentiate as an alternative to toxic behemoth platforms, the framing of "Facebook but with chores" isn't it. The idea of spending time on the platform itself should be appealing -- I am not that interested in knowing how to connect with someone on the platform before knowing why I would want to be there in the first place.

See e.g. how Nextdoor doesn't lead with "you'll have to verify that you live in the neighborhood", instead it's "Connect to your neighborhood with Nextdoor"

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

#127

Post by alpinisme »

lokar wrote: post #122
TulliusCicero wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great idea in principle, but it requires some manual work, which most users aren't gonna bother with.

I don’t think it’s about the effort needed. The basic idea is just too complex for most people.

It would be easy to send a notification “you haven’t interacted with Sally in 6 months, so we’re removing her from your network. Click here to add her back” or something along those lines and nobody would be the least confused. They’d probably be annoyed often enough though.

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

#128

Post by angoragoats »

echelon wrote: post #101
viccis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What killed Google+ is the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. They had a brief window where everyone wanted to use it, and they kept it locked behind a hard to get invite system for months and months.

> the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. That's not it at all. Bluesky is simply just too political. X is too political. Bluesky is too political. When you focus on content and sharing and having a good time, then the network takes off. I'm not saying politics isn't important. I'm saying it can't become the miasma that pervades the entire service and makes the entire point of the social network c…

[flagged]

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

#129

Post by altairprime »

sikozu wrote: post #51
altairprime wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s app-only, right?

iOS only unfortunately. Big shame.

Not for the operators, I expect. If they flip a couple bits in the webserver I think they can lock the API down to require a device attestation, which would inhibit much of the API’s attack surface from being exploitable without a physical device that can afford to be console-banned (but I haven’t done my research to prove that yet, so grain of feasibility salt). Certainly in this day and age there is no desire to be “search engine optimized” by anyone using a social network for IRL friends, so they lose nothing by lacking a website. And there’s lots of small but nice services that are or have been iOS only (and a couple big ones that collapsed once they opened to other platforms). They’re explicitly selecting against the network effect already in favor of a nice experience, so it’s not like it matters if it grows more slowly. Are there drawbacks you see besides “requires an iOS device” that I haven’t considered?

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

#130

Post by aprilnya »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #55

I 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,…

When a new app is released, it takes a few days for it to get into search, for some reason. Pretty much every single time a new app releases I see a comment like this. Nothing malicious you just have to wait a bit.
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