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AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

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Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#111

Post by mlyle »

logifail wrote: post #88
skrebbel wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow way to miss the point

My domain registration is just over 25 years old... I guess I'm also "legacy"? I don't think I'm missing any point, thanks.

> My domain registration is just over 25 years old... I guess I'm also "legacy"?

Mine too -- I mean, I had domains in 1994-1995.

Most people who have legacy AOL emails have them from more than 25 years ago-- indeed AOL was in decline by 2000.

And "protip: go back in time 30 years ago and tell your kid self how to get a domain name, and navigate internic's overcharging" isn't quite as practical to implement.

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#112

Post by Shared404 »

jacobgkau wrote: post #32

People usually mention Evernote when Bending Spoons is brought up, but I also know them as purchasing Meetup (after it was already sort of struggling) and, more recently, entering an agreement to purchase Vimeo (of which I'm a paid user). AOL was already a husk, and has been arguably since they got rid of the triangle logo. It was already owned by a private equity firm, Apollo Global Management, as a subsidiary of Ya…

> Apollo Global Management

Oh hey, the company that orchestrated my first layoff!

Highly recommend Plunder (ISBN: 978-1541702103) for those who want to learn more about the enshittification these companies bring.

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#113

Post by internetter »

A_Duck wrote: post #102
neom wrote: post #2

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_Spoons Interesting comment from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38968476

And clearly they're hard at work whitewashing that page... check the Talk Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bending_Spoons

Bending Spoons is correctly following the [[Wikipedia:Conflict of interest]] process. They are pointing out information which could be improved and are requesting an independent party confirm they are correct. They disclosed their conflict. All companies are allowed and encouraged to do this. Not many do.

Source: I'm a wikipedia editor unaffiliated with bending spoons.

Edit: I see another complaint about IP editing. I am looking into this.

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#114

Post by acomjean »

jacobgkau wrote: post #32

People usually mention Evernote when Bending Spoons is brought up, but I also know them as purchasing Meetup (after it was already sort of struggling) and, more recently, entering an agreement to purchase Vimeo (of which I'm a paid user). AOL was already a husk, and has been arguably since they got rid of the triangle logo. It was already owned by a private equity firm, Apollo Global Management, as a subsidiary of Ya…

Meetup.. the promise of meetup was the organizers pay a fee so the members don’t have too.

My partner organized one a decade ago.

I’m still a member of a couple but now they’re really going after group members with ads and upsells. It still works but has become kind of icky.

Bending spoons, the name just sends up red flags as parlor trickery.

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#115

Post by godzillabrennus »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #75
jrochkind1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like Bending Spoons is where old tech products go to die? I guess that's private equity for you.

Understandably people don't like Bending Spoons - they fired the whole dev team on Evernote, and the price has gone way up too.. but as a user I have to say Evernote the product has gotten better and better since the acquisition. They've improved performance and have great new features every month.

They've kept the product alive but I don't know that it's terribly improved... I've been a paid user since 2008. Switching would be painful for me given how familiar I am with it but I came close this last year when it stopped letting me stay logged in on multiple Mac computers at the same time...

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#117

Post by elAhmo »

Not sure how actively AOL is used, probably not really, but anything Bending Spoon touches is entshitified soon after. They most recently bought Komoot, and have already made questionable choices with a lot of firings and promoting paid plans. Same has happened to Meetup.

It is a sad reality that this company keeps buying good products and making it hostile for users who made it good, such as in the Komoot's or Meetup's case.

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#118

Post by bayindirh »

timmg wrote: post #105
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understandably people don't like Bending Spoons - they fired the whole dev team on Evernote, and the price has gone way up too.. but as a user I have to say Evernote the product has gotten better and better since the acquisition. They've improved performance and have great new features every month.

Wow, that's interesting. I was a very early Evernote (paid) user. But they lost their way sometime after they became a unicorn, so I bailed out. I had assumed, since they were bought, that it was just a way to squeeze money from existing users. I had no idea they were actually improving things.

I stopped using Evernote actively after they reduced a formatting bug for their exported notes from Important to Wishlist and then sold to Bending Spoons.

Bending Spoons not only fixed that particular bug, but added a lot of useful features from other tools like "Block based editing" from Notion.

They are actively improving the product in every way, and they record short monthly recap videos to talk about the improvements. They didn't milk and kill the product. It's an interesting watch.

For me, the ship has sailed unfortunately. I divided that Evernote corpus into two, and personal parts went to Notion and technical part carried to Obsidian, and converted to a digital garden.

I have no hard feelings for them, though. I wish them the best of luck.

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#119

Post by elAhmo »

stabbles wrote: post #46

They bought Komoot, laid off 80% of the staff, but they still did a major redesign of the app and website afterwards. I expected outages, but so far it works like before.

It was mostly a cosmetic redesign, no functionality has been significantly changed. Websites don't just stop working after people are fired immediately, but they slowly die or become home for parasites. Twitter is a great example of this.

Re: AOL to be sold to Bending Spoons for $1.5B

#120

Post by bayindirh »

echelon wrote: post #106
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Understandably people don't like Bending Spoons - they fired the whole dev team on Evernote, and the price has gone way up too.. but as a user I have to say Evernote the product has gotten better and better since the acquisition. They've improved performance and have great new features every month.

Have you ever tried Obsidian? I feel like it's capable of replacing the entire family of note and knowledge management apps.

I actively use Obsidian and Notion.

Obsidian is very good for technical and static knowledge bases. I use their publish feature for my digital garden. Having local markdown files and working on them is great. Obsidian is basically a secret sauce over markdown file format.

On the other hand, dynamic content lives much better in Notion. Databases, formulae, interconnection between other services etc. makes it a great project management tool for my life. However, due to the file format and everything can be interconnected forms both a walled garden and moat at the same time.

Both serve different niches and work very differently. So neither one is a silver bullet by themselves for all scenarios.

But Obsidian is a great knowledge management tool if used right, that's true.

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