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The Last Goodbye

path.com

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Re: The Last Goodbye

#61

Post by hrktb »

pikzel wrote: post #58
GuiA wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes you wonder why smaller family or close-friends type social networks don't work. Because they are run by for profit companies, operating in a capitalistic framework. That is one of the core pillars of free software as envisioned by Stallman - software that can truly serve the needs of the people, because it is not subject to those pressures. A world where your girlfriend’s family could painlessly deploy their ow…

Yeah, I'm sure they would be able to deploy the service, have it secure and updated, having apps up to date on their new devices. Or maybe that takes time and effort, and people need to pay their bills.

I think for people don’t mind paying for things they actualy own.

For instance grand-parents don’t want to pay for instagram but will pay premium to have great pictures printed and framed.

Or pay to have their own domain name.

People pay for Dropbox or Squarespace.

I’d totally see my parents paying for a Synology if someone could install it and maintain it for around 10$/€ a month. Currently they pay for one time install fees + maintenance hours for their windows machine for instance, it’s not a big stretch.

Re: The Last Goodbye

#62

Post by cityzen »

sneak wrote: post #36
tosh wrote: post #30

Path in its day was way ahead in ux and detail compared to other social networks. Stickers and reactions on facebook came later and even then/now never were as 'finished' compared to what Path had. A great example of how the better product doesn't always win. There are just too many factors (like timing and network effects in this case).

Path was not better. They got busted repeatedly playing fast and loose with user privacy, and iirc their bad behavior was the proximate cause of Apple adding contacts permissions to iOS. Good riddance to these jerks. https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-user-...

Yes, the CEO was an ex-facebook d-bag. Playing fast and loose with user privacy is the name of the game in "growth hacking".

Re: The Last Goodbye

#63

Post by cityzen »

danieltillett wrote: post #48
hguhghuff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight is 20/20. I remember when zuckerberg turned down $1B from yahoo and I couldn’t believe how stupid and greedy he must be to turn that down.

Is his life that much better than if he had taken the money and run? I am a big believer that the best life is found at the upper, upper middle class level where you have enough money to do almost everything you want, but where you can walk down the street without bodyguards.

He didn't want money, he wanted power.

Re: The Last Goodbye

#64

Post by [deleted] »

hrktb wrote: post #61
pikzel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm sure they would be able to deploy the service, have it secure and updated, having apps up to date on their new devices. Or maybe that takes time and effort, and people need to pay their bills.

I think for people don’t mind paying for things they actualy own. For instance grand-parents don’t want to pay for instagram but will pay premium to have great pictures printed and framed. Or pay to have their own domain name. People pay for Dropbox or Squarespace. I’d totally see my parents paying for a Synology if someone could install it and maintain it for around 10$/€ a month. Currently they pay for one time ins…

[deleted]

Re: The Last Goodbye

#66

Post by overcast »

hguhghuff wrote: post #25
arbie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy that they turned down a $100M+ offer from Google in their first year.

Hindsight is 20/20. I remember when zuckerberg turned down $1B from yahoo and I couldn’t believe how stupid and greedy he must be to turn that down.

If someone offers you personally $1B, you take it, and go live the rest of your life comfortably without any worry of ever having to work a day ever again. Do you really think having $3B vs having "only" $1B matters in the grand scheme? I surely would prefer a billion over a potential xBillion. There is more to life than working your ass off. Zuckerberg wanted power, not more money.

Re: The Last Goodbye

#67

Post by oihoaihsfoiahsf »

robotsquidward wrote: post #56

Path has been used by my girlfriends family for the past six years as their familial social network. They all just follow each other and because they don't use it for anything else it's a perfect little community for sharing memories. It was hard for them to cope with the fact that it's all getting shut down after six years using it. Makes you wonder why smaller family or close-friends type social networks don't work…

Our family just uses a Google Photos album where we put pictures of ourselves and our son. We send the link to people who might be interested, and then they get notifications when we put in more pictures. The rest of our family often posts things to their own albums and we get notifications of that. And anybody can comment on any of the pictures. It's not perfect, but it's a reasonably good experience. I can only imagine it would be even better if there were a single album shared by the whole extended family.

Re: The Last Goodbye

#68

Post by TarpitCarnivore »

hrktb wrote: post #61
pikzel wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm sure they would be able to deploy the service, have it secure and updated, having apps up to date on their new devices. Or maybe that takes time and effort, and people need to pay their bills.

I think for people don’t mind paying for things they actualy own. For instance grand-parents don’t want to pay for instagram but will pay premium to have great pictures printed and framed. Or pay to have their own domain name. People pay for Dropbox or Squarespace. I’d totally see my parents paying for a Synology if someone could install it and maintain it for around 10$/€ a month. Currently they pay for one time ins…

Synology is heavily business focused, but I do feel they're making steps towards competing with the bigger companies by offering smaller scale options. They now have Chat, Drive, and Moments which all do things like Slack, GDrive, and Timehop and with apps. Obviously the main caveat is they're not as refined/full featured.

Re: The Last Goodbye

#69

Post by whywhywhywhy »

ulfw wrote: post #45
drcongo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my memory of Path is that they spammed all my contacts in the first week of having it installed and then I uninstalled it and never went near it again.

That's exactly how long it stayed installed on my phone and those of my friends who I helped originally sign up for it. I don't think they ever recovered from that incident. https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/7/2782947/path-ios-app-user-... I can't believe they somehow trotted along for another six years. Never seen anybody use it since.

Hard to find a mobile app these days that doesn't demand contact access, try using WhatsApp without providing it and it's a rough ride, I'm super reluctant to upload mine but that one was basically unusable without doing so.

How times change.

Re: The Last Goodbye

#70

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Deimorz wrote: post #28
village-idiot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was. Turns out that’s really hard to do.

Especially when you take a bunch of venture capital: https://ar.al/notes/ello-goodbye/ Note that that was written when they had taken $435,000 in VC, and now they're up to $11M: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ello-inc

Not exactly an unbiased take from Aral considering he tried to launch a social network where "you were not the product" around the same time too.
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