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

ca98am79.medium.com

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

#501

Post by elphinstone »

julianeon wrote: post #253
saghm wrote: 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…

You are absolutely right and that jumped out at me. I should also point out the obvious: if people were selling online assets making $9k/year for $9k, there would be a line out the door of people lining up to buy them. If anyone here is selling an asset that makes $X a year for $X, I'll buy it! I make my money back in 12 months and everything else is profit. So let's value it as it would be valued on, say, Flippa, a…

I doubt gray market sites have any kind of longterm value or predictable revenues. Who knows what kind of site it was, but to be valued so lowly the regulatory risk might be very high.

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

#502

Post by filleduchaos »

j3th9n wrote: post #379
__d wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a heap of family and friends who live in a different country to me. I'd love an old school Friendster / early Facebook-style social medium where we could share posts, but the tapping mechanic makes this impractical for me.

Maybe pay them a visit.

Maybe "get up and travel to a different country" is not as simple as it sounds.

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

#503

Post by mrsvanwinkle »

Heya. At first I wanted to pile on the negativity due to really. Really bad red flags from the title alone signaling slop, sociopathy (calculated sensationalism), sociopathy (guiltless artificial scarcity peddler), and some really big "Gretchen stop trying to make Friendster 2 happen" energy. But as a longtime HN lurker who lost my first account and now have to carry the "account created after 2022" stigma when I had been training GPTs in my own slop in 2018, I value a storied post history pre-dead internet and it may be your best investment yet. (also you have shared positive posts about some things I like).

So just wanted to say I am rooting for you and I may be able to provide some acutely specific but embarrassing input(s) about how a Friendster 2 can happen, based on my Friendster 0 experience (it is definitely not about breaking up in high school where deleting profiles sends the news rippling to the whole universe) (it may involve learning that Indonesian black hats were scary and many and also how the social graph was uncached and always computed server side per profile visit). Now that you own the "Friendster" trademark, I hereby greenlight your soci-emdash-ability to manipulatively hint at the "possibility" of restoring profiles via the Friendster archive project, but keep it as a possibility until you big enough the patent trolls be phone tapping (this is really weird)

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

#504

Post by hbn »

vector_spaces wrote: post #126

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 differen…

I don't see the issue with making a social network that's more focused on real-time, current irl connections. Snapchat has already used a similar model with decaying content to great success.

I think you're likely of a generation that's attached to the Facebook model where a social network is an ever-growing photobook/history of interactions with all your friends. Maybe that has a place, but I think it's worth being open to other ideas. And yes, maybe when someone dies, they're no longer part of this network in the same way they are no longer part of many other things in your life. I don't think that's inherently bad.

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

#506

Post by ertgbnm »

saghm wrote: 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…

Well did they sell the website too? Or just the domain? Because the domain doesn't generate ad revenue, the original website did. Like just because I sell the domain name for my blog doesn't mean you also get the content of my blog too.

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

#508

Post by mothballed »

phrotoma wrote: post #476
ca98am79 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious what you’d consider a better model for naming/ownership on the internet.

IIUC it's not the model of buying domains from registrars which stinks of crap, it's the buying from registrars by domain squatters who then flip them for a profit having provided zero value that bears a whiff of shite. These ticket scalpers of the internet who contribute nothing can well and truly fuck straight off.

Speculators provide time-allocation of resources. They're pretty critical part of market dynamics to help resources get sold and developed when they are valued most. That is, they prevent domains from being captured prematurely for lower value use. Society profits immensely from their contribution.

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

#509

Post by metabagel »

SamBam wrote: post #250
vector_spaces wrote: post #126

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 differen…

I think the tapping phones feature -- for initial friend creation, not upkeep -- is THE killer feature of the app. Do I want my teens on any social media apps? No. Would I let them be on Facebook of 2006, when you were just connected to your friends and family, and not influencers and "the algorithm?" Sure! That and early Instagram were great ways to keep up with real-life friends. If you made this as easy and pleasa…

I share vacation photos using Polarsteps. It’s quite nice.

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

#510

Post by 55555 »

mogrinz wrote: post #496
wongarsu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have a calendaring site (won't mention it here b/c I don't want to be seen as plugging it) that has been generating revenue from ads and subscriptions for 26 years now. At its peak, well over 100k/yr but now more like 15k/yr for the past 5 years. Still a very steady income b/c the site is sticky. The only expense I have is about $3k every 36/mo for VPS hosting. At this point the code base is so mature that I only d…

The main reason this is an issue is that it's a lemon market. Many sellers claim their sites will require "no time to maintain" and that future returns will likely continue, but it's often a lie and thus you don't get the multiple that is truly justified. Even without lies, no one knows the truth of your business like you do. The unfortunate result of this -- and I've been in a similar position in the past -- is that you are incentivized to lazily run things into the ground slowly rather than find a new owner who may bring new passion.
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