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Cover is joining Twitter

blog.coverscreen.com

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Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#61

Post by jacquesc »

yukichan wrote: post #31
pvnick wrote: post #30

I see a lot of undeserved negativity here for what I'm sure is an exciting time for the Cover guys. Let's not piss on their parade. I say congratulations, I hope you guys made a bit of cash, had a lot of fun, and I hope you enjoy working on interesting projects at Twitter!

An acquihire is not a success it's a failure, and instead of being excited, I'm sure the feeling is more like being resigned to at least having a place to go after closing the doors. It's sad too because their product is ace.

Yeah, it's really surprising to me since I had both my Mom and my sister independently recommend Cover to me.

I would put money on Cover being a WhatsApp success story in 3yrs. Oh well, there must have been some internal issues we don't know about.

Hope someone steps up quickly to fill the gap!

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#62

Post by sirkneeland »

kul wrote: post #57
sirkneeland wrote: post #52

If Cover gets pulled, I hope some people take a break from making Flappy clones and 2048 clones to make a Cover clone. Cover is (was?) a phenomenal addition to my Android experience.

Hi, I'm curious to know how it augmented your Android experience?

It was very useful for me to be able to go right from the lockscreen to the app i wanted without the intermediary step of going to the launcher.

It was also very useful how i could just drag a bit on an icon and get a peek of what the app is doing.

It was also useful how from any screen I could drag from the upper-right and get a sort of alt-tab list of recent apps that involved less tapping around than hitting the Android multitasking button and then which running app i wanted.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#63

Post by fancy_betta »

ggreer wrote: post #55
GuiA wrote: post #5

"For now, Cover will remain available in the Play Store while we focus our attention on our work at Twitter. If that changes down the road, we’ll provide another update here." tl;dr: Cover will die a slow, unmaintained death while the former Cover employees work on completely unrelated Twitter projects. Oh well.

This is yet another example of why all startups should have a responsible sunset pledge[1]. The pledge should contain something along the lines of, "If we shut down, we will make it possible to run an instance of our product." That means open-sourcing server code, writing some minimal docs, and probably building some data export APIs. I had the idea before starting Floobits (YC S13 yadda yadda), and of course, we've…

Cover didn't really have customers - their app was "beta" and was free. I don't know that they had any servers or anything is stored online, you don't create an account to use the app. The type of pledge you're advocating wouldn't really make a difference for this app, but I can see where it could be useful in other cases.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#64

Post by amiramir »

nilkn wrote: post #25

This is really disappointing news if this acquisition goes the way it's sounding. Cover was a great app and one of the reasons to use Android over iOS (along with Link Bubble, etc.). At the least, if it gets pulled or falls into abandon, that's opportunity for someone else to fill the spot. There are obvious ways to improve Cover (like picking a time interval for it to default to Work mode--it is pretty bad at detect…

As someone who had recently had to switch to an Android phone (Note3) I'd love to know of other apps beyond cover and Link Bubble that you like. Can you please expand on the "etc." in your first paragraph.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#65

Post by spigoon »

yukichan wrote: post #60
pvnick wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea how they feel about their acquisition and to project your negativity on their situation is a mean thing to do. For all you know they could be popping champagne bottles and eating chicken wings and you're being a debbie downer. Edit: http://i.imgur.com/ewXHcbp.jpg

I don't know how they feel but if they're popping champaign bottles after abandoning their product and their users then I don't give a shit how they feel. I do understand the situation better than most however because I've been there in a startup when the end is there and you're faced with acquisition to hire talent or closing the doors. You face it every day as time runs out and your runway shrinks. You face it a th…

Without knowing the founders' goal when they set out how can you reasonably conclude that they failed? They built a product that was enjoyed by thousands of users. I'd say they succeeded.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#66

Post by drdaeman »

Never heard of them before. Seems neat, but I was curious about need for so many permissions for a lockscreen and task switching app.

(Several minutes later) Installed it. It fired bunch of network connections right at the startup and doesn't even worked without registering with some cloud service telling me it needs one to just "install" (like I didn't install it already). I really don't get why such app would need cloud junk except for spying^W metadata analysis and/or advertising. Oh, right, an important feature to back up the fact I browse HN in the morning should work as an excuse.

Guess, nothing of value was lost, then.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#67

Post by revorad »

jboynyc wrote: post #3

A trope that refuses to die: "It’s been an incredible journey".

I swear term sheets must have a clause that requires you to use an acquisition blog post template.

"When we started FooBar.io $n years ago, we had $VISION_WITH_RAINBOWS_AND_UNICORNS in our young eyes.

...

It’s been an incredible journey and we are proud of what we've accomplished in the last $n years.

...

We were surprised when $BigCo approached us in the spring. But as talks progressed, we realised our magnetic fields were super aligned and in fact we are twins separated at birth, merely waiting to be reunited.

...

(Yes, we were building $mobifotosocioapp for Android, whereas BigCo is an ad retargeting corporation for iOS, so we may look very different, but actually it's turtles all the way down.)

...

With all the free snacks and Rifts now at our disposal, we can march forth with double the speed in achieving our real mission which was always actually about whatever BigCo's mission is right now.

...

None of this would have been possible without you, our amazing users. So, for you, we have a special something.

...

We won't simply admit that we'll be ignoring and soon shutting down your beloved app. Instead, let's pretend that everything's gonna be the same and we'll update you when "something changes" and give you ample time (at least 3 hours) to download your data in the extremely unlikely case that we pull the plug.

...

You guys are the best. Thanks for making us rich. Love from Jo, Flo, Beau, Mo and $obligatory_pet."

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#68

Post by cageface »

amiramir wrote: post #64
nilkn wrote: post #25

This is really disappointing news if this acquisition goes the way it's sounding. Cover was a great app and one of the reasons to use Android over iOS (along with Link Bubble, etc.). At the least, if it gets pulled or falls into abandon, that's opportunity for someone else to fill the spot. There are obvious ways to improve Cover (like picking a time interval for it to default to Work mode--it is pretty bad at detect…

As someone who had recently had to switch to an Android phone (Note3) I'd love to know of other apps beyond cover and Link Bubble that you like. Can you please expand on the "etc." in your first paragraph.

SwiftKey and Nova Launcher would be near the top of my list.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#69

Post by nl »

ggreer wrote: post #55
GuiA wrote: post #5

"For now, Cover will remain available in the Play Store while we focus our attention on our work at Twitter. If that changes down the road, we’ll provide another update here." tl;dr: Cover will die a slow, unmaintained death while the former Cover employees work on completely unrelated Twitter projects. Oh well.

This is yet another example of why all startups should have a responsible sunset pledge[1]. The pledge should contain something along the lines of, "If we shut down, we will make it possible to run an instance of our product." That means open-sourcing server code, writing some minimal docs, and probably building some data export APIs. I had the idea before starting Floobits (YC S13 yadda yadda), and of course, we've…

This is yet another example of why all startups should have a responsible sunset pledge

Why, exactly?

This probably won't be a popular view on HN, but I think a lot of people complain about companies shutting things down for the sake of complaining.

Cover was a free, beta application with a very limited number of users. There was no personal data saved by it and no future plans announced. For those users Cover will continue to work today like it did yesterday. And yet the top voted comment is complaining about it being shutdown. Pfft!

In general, customers want a supported product (eg, the endless complaints about every single startup bought by a larger company, even when they completely open source their product).

In most cases a pledge like this puts extra restrictions on what a startup can do. I'm not saying screw over your customers if you get bought, but making a pledge is completely different to building some kind of data export facility if it ends up being needed. Why take on challenges that you don't need?

In some cases (typically enterprise focused) some kind of business continuity plan is absolutely appropriate. In many consumer-focused app start ups? Not so much.

Re: Cover is joining Twitter

#70

Post by nl »

minimaxir wrote: post #10

An acquihire for a startup which had received $1.7M investment is probably not a great success.

The terms weren't disclosed.

The $1.7M investment was a seed round (in Oct 2013), with lots of individuals putting money in[1]. If it were bought for say $20M (who knows?) then I'm pretty sure those seed investors would be happy with their 5x to 10x returns (depending on liquidation preferences) in 6 months.

If it were bought for $5M, then not so much. But if it was only $5M on the table I doubt they would have sold that quickly.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/cover-android/

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