Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

waxy.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 264 posts

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#151

Post by Aeolun »

sirspacey wrote: post #132

Excellent, balanced post. We’re at the end of a grand experiment of “you can take VC money and deliver a tech with new values, one that people want.” The only people still claiming you can just haven’t run out of their last funding round… yet. We have 20 years of evidence on what tech businesses can be built on the Internet that make money. It’s narrow and mostly can’t solve the problems that remain. The escape hatch…

> X.com is probably the only & last experiment on whether switching to subscription rev is achievable at scale. Looks pretty clear so far that it’s not.

Twitter could. MuskX can not.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#152

Post by Kye »

warkdarrior wrote: post #145
Kye wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon and ActivityPub prove another funding model can work even up to millions of active users. There are plenty of criticisms people have for them, but they're beside the point: it works.

Who is funding Mastodon servers?

The people who use them. Some are funded in part or whole by the person running it, but most still have a Patreon or something like it.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#153

Post by FormerBandmate »

sirspacey wrote: post #132

Excellent, balanced post. We’re at the end of a grand experiment of “you can take VC money and deliver a tech with new values, one that people want.” The only people still claiming you can just haven’t run out of their last funding round… yet. We have 20 years of evidence on what tech businesses can be built on the Internet that make money. It’s narrow and mostly can’t solve the problems that remain. The escape hatch…

YouTube and Hulu did it very successfully. Twitter has just done it in a really stupid way, because their management values politics over the actual business of running a social media platform (moreso now than before, but still very much before)

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#154

Post by FormerBandmate »

Aeolun wrote: post #151
sirspacey wrote: post #132

Excellent, balanced post. We’re at the end of a grand experiment of “you can take VC money and deliver a tech with new values, one that people want.” The only people still claiming you can just haven’t run out of their last funding round… yet. We have 20 years of evidence on what tech businesses can be built on the Internet that make money. It’s narrow and mostly can’t solve the problems that remain. The escape hatch…

> X.com is probably the only & last experiment on whether switching to subscription rev is achievable at scale. Looks pretty clear so far that it’s not. Twitter could. MuskX can not.

Twitter Blue was a total flop before Musk. I'd bet Twitter's subscription revenue has grown astronomically (although not nearly enough to make up for $1.3 billion in stupid debt payments and a $3 billion shortfall in advertising revenue)

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#155

Post by omoikane »

Kye wrote: post #65

Makes me think about how Bluesky is also a Public Benefit Corporation and took $8m in funding.

I don't think Bluesky was launched with a manifesto, so the user expectations are different.

That, and the fact that the lifespans of new social networks appear to be getting shorter and shorter with each new generation. If Bluesky were to disappear in a few months, the general reaction might be "Oh no! Anyway, what's next?"

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#156

Post by Aeolun »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #96
mawise wrote: post #10

I started building an open source private blogging system[1] when my first kid was born, and it eventually evolved into the skeleton of a social network--but fully decentralized using RSS and self- (or paid-) hosting. I concluded the only way for a network to actually avoid selling out was for there to be nothing to sell. If I give away the software, and don't control the network then there is no need for users to tr…

Most of these platforms will never reach "popular" scale. You need to think about the killer article or feature.

> You need to think about the killer article or feature.

Well, no. I think the point is kind of that they don’t.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#157

Post by Aeolun »

Analemma_ wrote: post #150
Kye wrote: post #65

Makes me think about how Bluesky is also a Public Benefit Corporation and took $8m in funding.

I mean Bluesky is founded by Jack Dorsey, who made a fortune for shareholders with his last social media company by conning an idiot into paying way above market value for it. Of course it'll be hard to make that particular lightning bolt strike twice, but it's not like he doesn't have a good track record.

For investors anyhow. It could be argued that he ransomed his users.

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#159

Post by [deleted] »

Analemma_ wrote: post #150
Kye wrote: post #65

Makes me think about how Bluesky is also a Public Benefit Corporation and took $8m in funding.

I mean Bluesky is founded by Jack Dorsey, who made a fortune for shareholders with his last social media company by conning an idiot into paying way above market value for it. Of course it'll be hard to make that particular lightning bolt strike twice, but it's not like he doesn't have a good track record.

[deleted]

Re: The quiet death of Ello's big dreams

#160

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

Aeolun wrote: post #156
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these platforms will never reach "popular" scale. You need to think about the killer article or feature.

> You need to think about the killer article or feature. Well, no. I think the point is kind of that they don’t.

Then they will never get popular.
Post reply on HN