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Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme
21–30 of 146 posts
Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme
#22Invitation to the Sеx Club
http://dating.adaone.com
Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme
#23It's a hustle but not really a Ponzi scheme.
Yeah definitely more of a hustle than a Ponzi scheme. I would maybe call it a long slow bait and switch?
Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme
#24It's not really a ponzi scheme. You're not investing (uploading) your images with an expected return on that investment.
Sure - the title is crafted for rhetorical effect not literal accuracy. But it's comparable, in the sense that the "returns" for earlier customers (ongoing provision of storage service) are funded out of the contributions of later new customers, and when the supply of new customers runs out, the returns can no longer be funded and the system collapses. Edit: Also not that the phrase "is a Ponzi scheme" is often used…
I think accuracy is important. If an author isn't trustworthy or correct on this, then why should we listen to their other information in good faith?
I think it's not just new users. It's also new content/files. Existing users uploading more pictures can also generate revenue, right?
Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In my findings, the reason unlimited doesn't work is a small percentage of users (very small, like ~0.1%) who push it to the extreme. In other words, if your exhaust 50% of your resources to service 0.1% of your users, at a fixed subscription cost, the model doesn't work. How do you handle such users at MediaFire?
There's nothing you can do other than move away from unlimited storage. The model, as the OP states, works well initially, however over time, "power users" emerge to want to make use of unlimited. The only choice is to remove unlimited storage as a fixed subscription fee. You may have metered billing (unlimited storage but you are charged per GB) or to do away with unlimited storage all together. Keep in mind, that c…
Marketing wise, it's better for the business to market with "unlimited" than creating a limit, even if it won't affect 90% of the users. For users, it creates a different feeling of freedom, even if you never use that freedom.
Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme
#26Does anyone have any good suggestion on an automated way to back up my entire google photos collection? Currently I use Google Takeout and then upload a ton of zip files to a backup like Backblaze. But it's tedious as heck and has me maintaining scripts to manage it. Which is the worst because I touch it once a year so I forget everything. I'd pay money for a business that handles this. I just want my photos safe fro…
Check this thread out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/k5nzkj/google_p...
Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mathematically speaking, even though there is a recurring cost, if the cost goes down over time it's entirely possible for the cost to be finite overall. Simple example: If the recurring cost halves every year, and in the first year it's X then the cost to store it forever is 2X.
Just because it has halved every year for a decade doesn’t mean it will continue. Cf Moore’s Law
That’s why he said “mathematically speaking”
Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme
#28I launched MediaFire as an unlimited storage provider in 2006. While it is true that data accumulates as time goes on, it's not as big of an issue as described. Older data tends to be smaller, for example, photos were lower resolution. That is compounded by the fact that storage is getting cheaper. For example, the price for a 500GB drive in 2006 is the same as a 14TB drive price today. If your getting the same subsc…
I've long suspected that r/DataHoarder is why we can't have nice things, i.e. cheap online data storage that is slightly subsidized by the average user who only stores a little. Thanks for confirming from the point of view of a major storage provider.
When stock brokers were charging commissions this was their model too.
They would take the user profile of most of the users that gravitated to their specific sales pitch, and make a commission structure that worked for them and let that subsidize the outliers that traded different products like high volumes of sub-penny stocks. (There are some fixed costs to stock and options trading, which are now subsidized by selling data instead of charging commissions)
Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme
#29But isn't Google so profitable they can afford to lose money offering unlimited storage because that way they will attract more users than competing services.
Re: Unlimited is like a Ponzi Scheme
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a simple google search on terms "github google takeout photos" gives a link to a script https://github.com/TheLastGimbus/GooglePhotosTakeoutHelper plenty of other projects to use or get an idea for your own. Even if you are not a programmer writing a python script is not hard. The backblaze part you can automate with rclone or 10's of other commercial software or any from this page https://www.backblaze.com/b2/i…
Thanks. I've done all of that and is what I'm trying to avoid.
The organization and data which is in that takeout is a complete mess of years of design changes from picasa -> photos, empty folders, duplicate date folders, hidden old crap from your Google+ account (like banner pics) which you can't see anymore to delete, just stuff everywhere inside those zip files. $0.02 if you ever have to actually deal with them, add time to first normalize what you unzip.