Time to rebuild the web? • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#421

Post by nickloewen » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 10:27 PM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #402

talmand wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the point being made might be more along the lines of owning software versus renting it. If you purchase software that your company relies on, it belongs to you. Regardless if that third-party disappears. You still have use of the software until you can determine if you need to replace it or if it'll still work out for your needs. Now renting the software as a service is a different matter. If the third-par…

Renting software as a service has made it possible for people who could _never_ previously have owned the software to own it in perpetuity, and receive product updates throughout the product lifecycle. Letraset's ColorStudio cost $1,995 (in 1990 money), and Photoshop 1.0 cost around $1,000. And that didn't even buy you the upgrade, which was quite significant when layers were two point0 upgrades away.

I’m not sure about this.

As an Adobe customer, the software I use has become more “affordable” because it is easier for me to turn up $45 a month for software than the $X000 that it would cost up front. On the other hand, I am paying for software I don’t use, because to get the few programs I need I have to get the “everything” bundle.

My suspicion is that Adobe software is cheaper now because a) it has that new feeling of “affordability” (which could also be done through an instalment plan) and b) demand has gone up more than production costs have, which was already happening before they went SAAS (iirc PS CS6 was hundreds, not thousands).

Not to say that SAAS doesn’t sometimes work out the way you suggest—I don’t know enough to venture an opinion on that—but as an Adobe customer I definitely don’t feel like Creative Cloud is giving me a good deal. It feels like I am getting slowly soaked, according to some careful calculation of just how much adobe can get from me before they push me away entirely. Their CC software manager also gets a lot more cursing from me than it does appreciation.

Maybe my opinion is wrong, but if it is, I think it is a real marketing failure on their part...

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#422

Post by twblalock » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 12:34 AM UTC

TACIXAT wrote: post #409

kristianc wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that the people watching the videos have repeatedly shown in no uncertain terms (even when given the option and it is made really really easy for them), that they don't want to pay.

Really? I absolutely will not pay 8$ a month to read the occasional NYT article. I will not pay 4$ per episode of TV shows I watch (I have tried this multiple times and it sucks). I would absolutely pay 5 to 25 cents to read an article. I would absolutely pay 1$ per episode. Unfortunately, no one is offering their content at these realistic price points. Nor could they with credit card processors taking 30 cents per…

Facebook had revenue of about $40 billion in 2017. Facebook has billions of users, so if every user gave Facebook a dollar a month, that could add up to about as much as they made last year. (I don't think every user would do that, especially the users who live in developing countries and can't afford to spend a dollar, but let's use the best case for the sake of argument.)

What happens when a startup decides to take on Facebook by offering a social network that focuses on protecting user privacy? We would want that startup to succeed, but how could it ever get there by charging a dollar a month? It would start with a small number of users, so the total dollars per month would be small. If Facebook was only charging a dollar, this startup couldn't charge more than that -- a social network that has fewer of your friends on it than Facebook and costs more to use is not a very attractive.

In other words, I think the subscription model would make it difficult for social media startups to succeed.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#423

Post by misrab » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 12:56 AM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #105

I don't believe the problem lies in any technology. We don't need blockchain, it's not JavaScript minification, it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. It's the business model. No amount of tech is going to change that. If you want to change the situation, start social media businesses with a different business model.

One could argue the business model was tailored to prevalent tech when many of the giants emerged. Ads were perhaps a lot easier than data encryption, distribution, and secure payments back then.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#424

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 2:27 AM UTC

icc97 wrote: post #401

dredmorbius wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right on avatars. Goofy as they are, they seem to matter. It somewhat hurts HN as well, IMO.

Even Facebook allows avatars. The ability to express yourself in all it's unprofessional ways is important. It's a way to show you're not Facebook. Each topic is built up from the colours of the people that participate there. Individual expression is allowed. Then it's just up to the forum owners to decide what crosses the line.

Yes, there's that. But I'm referring to the visual connection and neurological wiring. There's something about label + picture that transcends just one or the other.

I've developed my own set of, ugh, "collateral" -- avatar, icon, hero -- which seem to work well across several sites. I find the anchoring works pretty well. And see the same for others I follow, again, both over time and sites.

Mostly: G+, Ello, Twitter, Mastodon.

Reddit, HN, and Metafilter would be exceptions.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#425

Post by KajMagnus » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 3:12 AM UTC

jen729w wrote: post #389

KajMagnus wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Open source StackExchange :- ) There's Talkyard, which looks a bit like StackExchange. ... Minus the single-sign-on part though. I'm developing it. Here's an example StackExchange discussion, copied to Talkyard: (CC-By-SA license) https://insightful.demo.talkyard.io/-7/how-do-i-get-myself-o... 2. Single sign-on, and (as you wrote), "using the credentials of the original forum" : What about using Scuttlebut's ident…

And now that guy on the fishing charter can’t use it because he has no idea what that means.

Actually when one installs Scuttlebutt, one doesn't need to know about ed25519 key pairs. Instead one just downloads the software, picks a username and starts reading & posting. (As far as i remember.) The user interface makes everything fairly simple.

Distributed community discussion/chat clients, with universal single-sign-on, could maybe be equally simple?

Two tricky tech things could be 1) how to share one's key, between all one's devices. And 2) how can all one's browser tabs, and discussion apps, get access to the key, once it's installed on localhost? without being able to steal the private key.

(If one is a Scuttlebut developer, though, then one might need to know about ed25519 identities.)

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#426

Post by TeMPOraL » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:05 AM UTC

kristianc wrote: post #402

talmand wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the point being made might be more along the lines of owning software versus renting it. If you purchase software that your company relies on, it belongs to you. Regardless if that third-party disappears. You still have use of the software until you can determine if you need to replace it or if it'll still work out for your needs. Now renting the software as a service is a different matter. If the third-par…

Renting software as a service has made it possible for people who could _never_ previously have owned the software to own it in perpetuity, and receive product updates throughout the product lifecycle. Letraset's ColorStudio cost $1,995 (in 1990 money), and Photoshop 1.0 cost around $1,000. And that didn't even buy you the upgrade, which was quite significant when layers were two point0 upgrades away.

> to own it in perpetuity

Nah, you "own" it only as long as your rented keys are valid - what that means depend on implementation, and can mean anything from "you get to use the latest version for which you paid in perpetuity" (quite rare; notable example: Jetbrains), through "you can use only current software, as long as you pay, with forced upgrades, and only as long as we think it's not yet time to arbitrarily cut you off (and only as long as we're in business)" (the common way), to "software? what software. it's in the cloud, you have no say in anything, it's a service that works only as long as we care to provide it" (becoming the norm).

I suppose it's kind of like renting vs. buying a flat/house - the former is definitely much cheaper on a month-to-month basis, but you're subject to random landlord whims, and ultimately, you're just paying for a service - so when it ends, you're left with nothing.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#427

Post by haZard_OS » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:26 AM UTC

wernercd wrote: post #392

jasode wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's the trend of turning software into services. [...] But it also makes you no longer in control of your data, and the code that runs on it. The availability of your work becomes completely dependent on business decisions of third parties, which can - and frequently do - disappear suddenly. Here's a thought experiment I'd like people to ponder: Suppose we had this decentralized hardware utopia where every homeowne…

One thing I've heard harped on recently is how common the Pareto type distributions are. "80% of the work is done by 20% of the workers". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle Where this comes into play with regards to your thought experiment... is how the larger the playing field, the fewer the large players are - they tend to get "concentrated". Plenty of Facebook alternatives exist... but why go to them?…

I may be accused of nitpicking here but the Pareto Principle is, although related, distinct from the Pareto family of distributions.

I don't intend to derail the conversation so, rather than typing out an explanation of obscene length, I will refer all interested parties to the following:

Pareto Principle https://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-the-paret...

Basics of Pareto Distributions https://actuarialmodelingtopics.wordpress.com/2017/05/21/par...

https://subversion.american.edu/aisaac/notes/pareto-distribu...

Example of some limitations in the application of Pareto Distributions https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0504217.pdf

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#428

Post by dorgo » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 4:46 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #422

TACIXAT wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I absolutely will not pay 8$ a month to read the occasional NYT article. I will not pay 4$ per episode of TV shows I watch (I have tried this multiple times and it sucks). I would absolutely pay 5 to 25 cents to read an article. I would absolutely pay 1$ per episode. Unfortunately, no one is offering their content at these realistic price points. Nor could they with credit card processors taking 30 cents per…

Facebook had revenue of about $40 billion in 2017. Facebook has billions of users, so if every user gave Facebook a dollar a month, that could add up to about as much as they made last year. (I don't think every user would do that, especially the users who live in developing countries and can't afford to spend a dollar, but let's use the best case for the sake of argument.) What happens when a startup decides to take…

I think the lock in effect of social networks is orthohonal to monetarisation model. It is difficult for social media startups to succeed regardless of how they (or facebook) make money.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#429

Post by vbezhenar » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 6:21 AM UTC

annabellish wrote: post #417

vbezhenar wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May be that's a consequence of poor society I'm living in, but if I learned any lesson about life, it's that most people won't pay a penny if they can get away with it. You won't make a profitable business believing that some people will recognize the need to pay, because they won't.

This is a compelling thought, but the evidence doesn't seem to back it up. What we actually see in the real world seems to be the opposite - people absolutely _will_ pay for things they could get for free so long as it isn't less convenient than not paying. Given that the act of making a payment is an inconvenience in and of itself, this does suggest it's _harder_ to get people to pay for a service, but the success o…

I've heard that in western countries there are people who track torrent users and threaten them with blackmailing letters. So people are afraid to use torrents to download pirated movies. If that's true, it can be a reason of Neflix success: fear, not convenience.

In my country nobody cares about torrents and I don't know anyone who's using Netflix. There are some people, who don't know how to properly use computer, I can imagine that they could pay for something like that, but that's because they have no other choice, not because they like to pay.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#430

Post by ace_of_spades » Tue, Apr 17, 2018, 7:03 AM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #105

I don't believe the problem lies in any technology. We don't need blockchain, it's not JavaScript minification, it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. It's the business model. No amount of tech is going to change that. If you want to change the situation, start social media businesses with a different business model.

To repost an older comment of mine suggesting a new business model:

Mhh, why not go with a kickstarter style payment scheme? Have a campaign to fund the operating budget, another one to fund feature a and another one to fund feature b. You get user aligned prioritization for free while users are happy to be able to choose their level of support. Can’t believe I haven’t seen this model in action, yet!