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RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

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Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#21

Post by StavrosK »

whyleyc wrote: post #20
StavrosK wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, data time: I created a full-text-search bookmarking app called historious ( http://historio.us ). It started out as free for everyone, since I just built it for myself and people found it useful, but I quickly had to charge, after realizing that people had more than my 10-20 bookmarks (some people had 80 THOUSAND). I changed it to 2,000 free bookmarks, and unlimited paid, which worked well. Then I changed it to…

Thanks for providing an interesting data point. I had a few questions I was wondering if you might be able to answer ? 1. How did you deal with existing free users already exceeding your new limits ? (and how did they react) ? 2. Did you see a measurable increase in upgrades after doing this ? 3. Did you see a measurable decrease in free users of the service after doing this ? Thanks.

1. I store the limit as a field on each user's profile, so you get to keep the limit you signed up with (grandfathering). Users don't mind (obviously), and if I ever increase the limits, I just increase them for everyone. Storage is expensive, but it's not that expensive that I need to retroactively reduce old users' limits.

I have also needed to cull unused accounts (of free users who haven't logged in in months). This provided a great boost to the service (saved me from needing to keep upgrading the server for the past few months), but it has also produced a few false positives of people who hadn't used their accounts for a few months and came back. Luckily, I keep backups they can just restore.

2. The last limit change was a few days ago, so I haven't had a chance to gather significant data on this. I guess we'll know in a few months.

3. I will also track this, that is a good question. I anticipate that a few users will be deterred from using the service for free, but that might not necessarily be bad (I am not sure).

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#22

Post by freehunter »

namenotrequired wrote: post #12

I don't understand why people are willing to pay hundreds or a few thousands on a good computer and then expect everything on the internet to be free. I think people need to be more prepared to pay for good services. (Not commenting on the quality of the service in question, I haven't used it in a long time)

I, for one, shy away from paying for subscription content online because even some of the best merchants have proven time and time again that they are unable to properly secure my data. People paid money to Sony. People paid money to Dropbox. People paid money to LastPass. People paid money to Linode. And these companies have all let their customers down in security. Why should I believe RapidShare etc would be any better?

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#23

Post by Karunamon »

derekp7 wrote: post #17
Karunamon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If something is free, you're not the customer, you're the product being sold. A pithy saying, but not much more. I run a minecraft server for free, are you implying that I sell my players?

Out of curiosity, do you have a way of making money off your minecraft server (even if it's just enough to pay for bandwidth)? If not, then that saying still holds for commercial giveaways. Therefore it can probably be supplemented with "(community projects excepted)".

Donations, actually. It still operates at a net loss, but the costs are offset.

But to make it a bit more relevant, where would you put Canonical on this list? Ubuntu is given away for free, they don't sell their users (with the very arguable exception of the Amazon lens fiasco), yet they make their money by selling professional services (Landscape and the like).

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#24

Post by Retric »

tomku wrote: post #18
Retric wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most fansub groups stop when the content owners licence the product in the US or simply request that they do so. As to making money that's theoretically possible, but only in the spending all day helping a friend move for a beer is 'making money'.

I think your knowledge might be a little outdated. Now that streaming (and less frequently, retail) rights are being sold before the shows even air, there's very little mid-season dropping due to licensing - the groups that sub airing shows know that they're licensed, and they don't care. DVD/BD rip groups care even less, and they seem to use file lockers a lot more regularly than the actual fansubbers. As far as pro…

I have not looked into fan-subs in a few years so you could be right. However, I have not seen a significant increase in the amount of anime translated so are you talking about 'rights' or the 'option' to buy said rights. Because, it seems odd if companies are paying significant amounts of money for distribution rights just to sit on it.

PS: Though if there is some great streaming service for anime I don't know about feel free to fill me in on that one.

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#25

Post by mkeung »

StavrosK wrote: post #19
JohnTHaller wrote: post #11

All the free users are screaming about how this destroys RapidShare's reputation and how they'll never use RapidShare again. Here's the thing, though. RapidShare used to care about free users when lots of folks were using it to host illegal files since it would encourage people to pay for faster downloads. As RapidShare is focused more on legitimate files, they don't care about these free users since the free users c…

Okay, data time: I created a full-text-search bookmarking app called historious ( http://historio.us ). It started out as free for everyone, since I just built it for myself and people found it useful, but I quickly had to charge, after realizing that people had more than my 10-20 bookmarks (some people had 80 THOUSAND). I changed it to 2,000 free bookmarks, and unlimited paid, which worked well. Then I changed it to…

Do you mind sharing the average and standard deviation for the number of bookmarks? I know this sample is not representative of the general public but I'm still curious.

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#26

Post by StavrosK »

mkeung wrote: post #25
StavrosK wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, data time: I created a full-text-search bookmarking app called historious ( http://historio.us ). It started out as free for everyone, since I just built it for myself and people found it useful, but I quickly had to charge, after realizing that people had more than my 10-20 bookmarks (some people had 80 THOUSAND). I changed it to 2,000 free bookmarks, and unlimited paid, which worked well. Then I changed it to…

Do you mind sharing the average and standard deviation for the number of bookmarks? I know this sample is not representative of the general public but I'm still curious.

That would take a bit of coding, so I can't right now, but I'll see if I can hack something together later.

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#27

Post by rsync »

EwanToo wrote: post #2

If you're shocked, then you've not been paying the slightest bit of attention. Don't trust free services for anything important, and don't trust "unlimited" services, ever!

Agreed.

And while this is largely self evident to most people here, if you're looking for a deeper theoretical underpinning as to why this is the case, feel free to use this:

http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/11/flat-rate-stora...

... it seems we have occasion to repost this about once a week these days.

And since we're sharing anecdotes, let me tell you what we just did yesterday:

We sent out an email to every customer we have that is both 500+ days in arrears with billing and 200+ days idle with usage, and asked them, please, for the love of god, get in touch with us and let us know whether to close their account or input an up to date credit card or whatever.

We feel so strongly about our duty to safeguard data for our customers that even if they haven't paid a dime for 500+ days, and by many measures have clearly abandoned their account, we still keep them fully live, just in case.

The OP shows us what happens when your business model is a clownshow (freemium, ad supported, whatever) and our mailing yesterday shows what happens when you charge real money for real service.

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#28

Post by tomku »

Retric wrote: post #24
tomku wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your knowledge might be a little outdated. Now that streaming (and less frequently, retail) rights are being sold before the shows even air, there's very little mid-season dropping due to licensing - the groups that sub airing shows know that they're licensed, and they don't care. DVD/BD rip groups care even less, and they seem to use file lockers a lot more regularly than the actual fansubbers. As far as pro…

I have not looked into fan-subs in a few years so you could be right. However, I have not seen a significant increase in the amount of anime translated so are you talking about 'rights' or the 'option' to buy said rights. Because, it seems odd if companies are paying significant amounts of money for distribution rights just to sit on it. PS: Though if there is some great streaming service for anime I don't know about…

Crunchyroll[1] is the big name in streaming nowadays, and they simulcast a substantial portion of each season. Funimation licenses for retail, simulcast and library streaming, and I believe they do their streaming via Hulu. Anime on Demand is a newer player, and Neon Alley is a PS3-exclusive (for now) service run by Viz that airs dubs on a schedule like a TV station. Some of the older players (Sentai Filmworks does a lot of this) will split a license with Crunchyroll, so one has retail and the other streaming. I'd say that the English-language market has generally switched to streaming, and that DVDs and BDs are almost an afterthought now.

Edit: Almost forgot, a bunch of the Japanese studios just announced their own English-subbed streaming service named Daisuki[2], but it won't launch until April. Will be interesting to see what impact that has on the foreign companies.

[1]: http://www.crunchyroll.com/

[2]: http://www.daisuki.net/en/

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#29

Post by gwern »

xtc wrote: post #14

I had been a long-time premium user of Rapidshare through it's peak in 2007 to 2009 or so. Their service was wonderful (or so it seemed) until almost nobody used it anymore. The business model that Rapidshare held on to is clearly failing them as more and more users are switching to other sites that are either free or not that expensive (Mega, Mediafire, etc.)

Mediafire seems to be hitting the tubes, though. They used to be one of the best no-nonsense upload service (reliable, instant download, very rare CAPTCHAs, multiple concurrent downloads, no timeouts), but they've gotten much more aggressive about deleting files and putting in quite intrusive advertising-based CAPTCHAs - which broke bulk downloading tools like jDownloader, as I learned when I went to download a few hundred albums uploaded from Comiket 83 (I wanted to listen to them but also use them for a side-project on Touhou music statistics I've been working on).

Re: RapidShare will delete free users' data over 5GB tonight

#30

Post by derekp7 »

Karunamon wrote: post #23
derekp7 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, do you have a way of making money off your minecraft server (even if it's just enough to pay for bandwidth)? If not, then that saying still holds for commercial giveaways. Therefore it can probably be supplemented with "(community projects excepted)".

Donations, actually. It still operates at a net loss, but the costs are offset. But to make it a bit more relevant, where would you put Canonical on this list? Ubuntu is given away for free, they don't sell their users (with the very arguable exception of the Amazon lens fiasco), yet they make their money by selling professional services (Landscape and the like).

I would still place that as a community project (or community service project), which is used as a loss leader for their commercial (support) offering. And, according to recent controversy surrounding their desktop search, some would argue that they are moving to their users being the product.
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