51–60 of 101 posts
For anyone interested, the Knight Foundation helped fund EveryBlock with a grant that required them to open source their code. http://code.google.com/p/ebcode/ The grant required that they open source it at the end of the grant period so I wouldn't be surprised if the source code was not current but for anyone who would like to keep it alive, this would give you a major head start. Also, it appears someone already di…
Also, a fork: https://github.com/openplans/openblock
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Getting tired of this response. I'm dealing with this issue right now with Snip.it. They were clearly in talks with Yahoo! about being purchased (and potentially others as they were putting out surveys every few months about usage and purpose that I filled out each and every time), but didn't inform any of us that the site would literally be shut off late one day and we would be unable to retrieve (or even look at in…
Getting tired of this response. Understood, but the problem seems to be growing lately in the sense of "shoestring funded" startups going for broke. When it finally becomes apparent that the business can't continue there are not always a lot of resources left for a graceful shutdown. My opinion is that the "you owe it to your users..." idea is dangerous. That line of thinking could eventually lead to a class action l…
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Users, please don't become highly dependent on "free" sites with no obvious or proven business model.
Why should a user know about a sites business model? To an average joe you letting me sign up and do stuff is all I know. While "giving a week" isn't a rule, it sure sounds like it might be the nicer thing to do. You spout your answer like its the obvious and "derrr" response, but in all reality its not the users responsibility to provide longevity. And lets face it, we (startups) would be totally f'd if users didn't…
I'm curious how many of the people reading this thread have ever actually used Everyblock (and if so how often)?
I think the last time I checked it was six months ago, when Adrian left and I was curious to how the site actually looked. To my surprise, the site seemed to have thrived in appearance ...the navigation had been cleaned up, more data sources had been added, and users were participating in discussions. I signed up as a user but didn't stay around...I think the site failed to become a "sticky" place. There was not enou…
I'm working on a related side project and I'd definitely be interested in hearing those thoughts...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should a user know about a sites business model? To an average joe you letting me sign up and do stuff is all I know. While "giving a week" isn't a rule, it sure sounds like it might be the nicer thing to do. You spout your answer like its the obvious and "derrr" response, but in all reality its not the users responsibility to provide longevity. And lets face it, we (startups) would be totally f'd if users didn't…
[deleted]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting tired of this response. I'm dealing with this issue right now with Snip.it. They were clearly in talks with Yahoo! about being purchased (and potentially others as they were putting out surveys every few months about usage and purpose that I filled out each and every time), but didn't inform any of us that the site would literally be shut off late one day and we would be unable to retrieve (or even look at in…
Getting tired of this response. Understood, but the problem seems to be growing lately in the sense of "shoestring funded" startups going for broke. When it finally becomes apparent that the business can't continue there are not always a lot of resources left for a graceful shutdown. My opinion is that the "you owe it to your users..." idea is dangerous. That line of thinking could eventually lead to a class action l…
At one of my previous positions, I was laid off and provided zero notice beforehand. They cut off my access in the middle of a production deploy and it failed in the middle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Getting tired of this response. I'm dealing with this issue right now with Snip.it. They were clearly in talks with Yahoo! about being purchased (and potentially others as they were putting out surveys every few months about usage and purpose that I filled out each and every time), but didn't inform any of us that the site would literally be shut off late one day and we would be unable to retrieve (or even look at in…
Getting tired of this response. Understood, but the problem seems to be growing lately in the sense of "shoestring funded" startups going for broke. When it finally becomes apparent that the business can't continue there are not always a lot of resources left for a graceful shutdown. My opinion is that the "you owe it to your users..." idea is dangerous. That line of thinking could eventually lead to a class action l…
The point I'm making isn't that free should stay free, but that if you know that something is going to happen to the service, your users deserve as much of an exit strategy as you do. I knew those surveys I took meant something, whether the site would be shut down or that they were using this data in meetings with potential investors. In one I wrote that I wanted to know whether or not I should be concerned and if I should be looking elsewhere.
As someone that used the site multiple times a day and relied on it only because the userbase was growing (evident by the number of people following me increasing exponentially each week), I didn't expect to be left out in the cold. If traction had slowed, I would have gotten the hint, but things seemed to be going somewhere and they were still actively working on it.
This seems similar to EveryBlock's situation in that the problem wasn't that it wasn't useful and growing, just that it wasn't in line with the parent company's vision. Selling it would have made more sense, just as with Snip.it, telling users the site would be shutting down at the end of February would have made a lot more sense than just putting up a static page apologizing and offering very little in the way of "moving on".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users, please don't become highly dependent on "free" sites with no obvious or proven business model.
Why should a user know about a sites business model? To an average joe you letting me sign up and do stuff is all I know. While "giving a week" isn't a rule, it sure sounds like it might be the nicer thing to do. You spout your answer like its the obvious and "derrr" response, but in all reality its not the users responsibility to provide longevity. And lets face it, we (startups) would be totally f'd if users didn't…
You make a good point, and I did not mean that as the "obvious" response, I meant it as a simple counter-response. As I kind of mentioned in my other comment, I think there can be many cases where the startup that is shutting down is going to be unable to afford a graceful wind-down, for various reasons.
Startups and Users are basically at-will employers and employees in a sense. Either can leave the other unexpectedly at any time, and I think it would be wise to approach things with the understanding that neither should expect the other to "just be there".