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I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

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Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#471

Post by mschuster91 »

QuantumNomad_ wrote: post #55

I tried to search for Friendster in the App Store and didn’t see it among the first few results. Instead, App Store was returning a sponsored ad followed by normal results for all other kinds of similar annd less similar apps. Instagram, Snapchat, Yubo (never heard of), Monopoly Go (mobile game related to the board game Monopoly), BeFriend (never heard of), Tinder, Friendly Social Browser (never heard of), Facebook,…

> I literally searched Friendster and the app is named Friendster but App Store gave me all kinds of other crap in the search result instead. Weird.

App Store search is fucked. Hilariously, Apple is at least non-discriminatory - try searching for any Apple app, and they will also be (at best) in the second slot after "sponsored" crap.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#472

Post by fluoridation »

Someone wrote: post #443
saghm wrote: post #29

> He said he would sell it to me for $40k. I offered $20k, which he refused but he said if I had any domain names generating ad revenue, we could do a deal of domains and cash. He said he would accept a lower amount if I paid in Bitcoin. > So we worked out a deal where I gave him $20k in Bitcoin and a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue, and he gave me the domain friendster.com. Now I was the owner of…

They said “a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue”, not “a domain that was making about $9k/year in profits”. Also, even if it were making about $9k/year in profits, if that comes with large costs (be it labor or dollars), it still might not be worth it. Let’s say it costs $100k a year to keep that site making $9k in profits. That would be 9% return on investment. Good but not spectacular. Add in uncer…

>Let’s say it costs $100k a year to keep that site making $9k in profits. That would be 9% return on investment. Good but not spectacular.

That's not investment, that's just the cost of upkeep. It's possible you simply cannot afford to keep up with that expense rate, but the fact remains that it's net profit. With a $100k investment and a yearly $9k profit, if you stop at the first year you lost $91k. With a yearly $100k cost and a yearly $9k profit, if you stop at the first year you earned $9k. No matter how you slice it it's a money-printing machine. The question is much it cost you to buy the machine, not how much it costs you to run it, because you'd be a fool to turn it off.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#473

Post by Broken_Hippo »

j3th9n wrote: post #379
__d wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a heap of family and friends who live in a different country to me. I'd love an old school Friendster / early Facebook-style social medium where we could share posts, but the tapping mechanic makes this impractical for me.

Maybe pay them a visit.

I shouldn't require international travel - over an ocean - to talk to my siblings on the internet on a social app.

Visits are great and all, but they require money and planning with more than one person. And I'm lucky - I can travel. Some folks can't go home - war sucks, poverty sucks, sickness sucks, busy work times suck, etc. If I were still in the US, I might not even get a chunk of time off work.

Travel is probably getting a little less likely considering the current situation with jet fuel as well.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#474

Post by matheusmoreira »

doug-moen wrote: post #268
matheusmoreira wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for long if Google has any say about it. Hardware remote attestation is here, and it's the number one threat to mobile computing freedom. The future is one where everyone can, theoretically, install anything they want, but they get banned from everything should they actually do so. Rooted system? Attestation fails. "Oh no, looks like someone tampered with the system". Can't access your bank account. Can't communi…

GrapheneOS already has their own attestation API that verifies the app is running on GrapheneOS. Since GrapheneOS is more secure than stock Android, security conscious apps like banking apps have a solid technical reason to use the API and support Graphene. We just need to raise the profile of GrapheneOS and convince more banking apps to use this API, if they are already using Google's attestation API. GrapheneOS's s…

> Since GrapheneOS is more secure than stock Android, security conscious apps like banking apps have a solid technical reason to use the API and support Graphene.

Corporations don't use such things for technical reasons. Their reasons are political. They want control. The "security" they talk about isn't the user's security, it's their own security from the user.

> We just need to raise the profile of GrapheneOS and convince more banking apps to use this API

And until they do, GrapheneOS is permanently at risk of being shut out of the market.

And even if they do, it just means we've become dependent on GrapheneOS. They won't trust our keys, only those of corporations. Our freedom is still compromised.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#476

Post by phrotoma »

ca98am79 wrote: post #475
jona-f wrote: post #459

[flagged]

Curious what you’d consider a better model for naming/ownership on the internet.

IIUC it's not the model of buying domains from registrars which stinks of crap, it's the buying from registrars by domain squatters who then flip them for a profit having provided zero value that bears a whiff of shite. These ticket scalpers of the internet who contribute nothing can well and truly fuck straight off.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#477

Post by elric »

vidarh wrote: post #61

> Friendster was the first social network Friendster was not the first social network. sixdegrees.com had it beat by 5 years.

It all depends on how you define "social network". We had BBS and forums that operated much like "social networks" in the mid 90s. I don't think being "the first social network" is particularly interesting or noteworthy.

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#478

Post by camillomiller »

codingdave wrote: post #462
jona-f wrote: post #459

[flagged]

Considering how little is actually interesting about the app aside from it using an old domain, my impression is that the entire post is just pseudo-marketing, attempting to encourage people to get back into domain name squatting.

Well this vibecoded chatgpt crap is quite clearly an attempt at making Friendster more valuable than 30k

Re: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it

#480

Post by ipaddr »

julianeon wrote: post #253
saghm wrote: post #29

> He said he would sell it to me for $40k. I offered $20k, which he refused but he said if I had any domain names generating ad revenue, we could do a deal of domains and cash. He said he would accept a lower amount if I paid in Bitcoin. > So we worked out a deal where I gave him $20k in Bitcoin and a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue, and he gave me the domain friendster.com. Now I was the owner of…

You are absolutely right and that jumped out at me. I should also point out the obvious: if people were selling online assets making $9k/year for $9k, there would be a line out the door of people lining up to buy them. If anyone here is selling an asset that makes $X a year for $X, I'll buy it! I make my money back in 12 months and everything else is profit. So let's value it as it would be valued on, say, Flippa, a…

There are tons of those offers. Carefull that 9k revenue doesn't come from $9000 of ads.
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