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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

#611

Post by andirk »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #498
breezywheezy wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s nothing of value buying nothing of value. If you only see dollars and not the utter nonsense you’re either young or not very bright.

> It’s nothing of value buying nothing of value Doesn’t that make it fine? If I trade three acorns for a crayon drawing of a squirrel, that’s a nothing burger. If I bought those three acorns for a million dollars, then someone might have a legitimate gripe with my choices.

Value is in the eye of the beholder, as you clearly understand. The commenter is not familiar with how trade works. Personally, for such I transaction I will need to audit to ensure the projected value is accurate.

Also, do you have a sample of said squirrel drawing? I have a squirrel book that might pair nice with it.

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

#612

Post by andirk »

Very cool! If not for the $, for the fun. And you met your on OkCupid, so you can be the cupid this time.

- Make a blog about this on the domain. I'll follow!

- What do the logs say re: traffic? I see lots of links to the domain from articles about social media c. 2012

- What's your tech stack??

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

#613

Post by andirk »

vector_spaces wrote: post #126

The 'tapping phones' gimmick strikes me as something that sounds cute but will become an annoying chore that one should be able to opt out of. Particularly given various unintended side effects -- I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network. And either way, it's not the core feature that will draw users to the site If you want to differen…

Heck no. There was this app "Bump" that exchanged info between 2 bumping phones. Google bought it and immediately buried it forever. There's ZERO reason exchanging info is still a chore. There are currently bumping features baked in to the OSs, so there is value.

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

#615

Post by Suppafly »

55555 wrote: post #510
mogrinz wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a calendaring site (won't mention it here b/c I don't want to be seen as plugging it) that has been generating revenue from ads and subscriptions for 26 years now. At its peak, well over 100k/yr but now more like 15k/yr for the past 5 years. Still a very steady income b/c the site is sticky. The only expense I have is about $3k every 36/mo for VPS hosting. At this point the code base is so mature that I only d…

The main reason this is an issue is that it's a lemon market. Many sellers claim their sites will require "no time to maintain" and that future returns will likely continue, but it's often a lie and thus you don't get the multiple that is truly justified. Even without lies, no one knows the truth of your business like you do. The unfortunate result of this -- and I've been in a similar position in the past -- is that…

>Many sellers claim their sites will require "no time to maintain" and that future returns will likely continue, but it's often a lie and thus you don't get the multiple that is truly justified.

This, the numbers they show are often a result of a pump that isn't sustainable. I've watched a bunch of youtube videos from people on the buying and selling side of things, and it's readily apparent that the values are temporary for most of the sites. The scam sites outnumber the legitimate long term ones and both are sold on the same platforms.

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

#616

Post by Suppafly »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #180
macintux wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> allow Bluetooth I'd have a hard time getting over my aversion to this. I automatically reject any app's attempt to find local devices, etc.

I can't imagine how it would be possible to detect a phone in close proximity without allowing this though

NFC?

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

#617

Post by JimDabell »

pbasista wrote: post #453
JimDabell wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good). I’ve worked on a platform for social media apps. When the social network had a native iOS app, a native Android app, and a PWA, users chose iOS about two thirds of the time, Android about a qu…

> People strongly prefer native apps to PWAs Such a conclusion cannot reasonably be made from the data you have presented. It merely means that your web app was not preferred over your native app.

> Such a conclusion cannot reasonably be made from the data you have presented.

I’m responding to somebody who presented the following with absolutely nothing to back it up:

> Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).

The stats I’ve seen point in the opposite direction and I see no reason not to share that. Why are you giving them a free pass to share their opinion with zero stats but pull me up when I actually base my opinion on real stats? Looking past somebody saying “a surprising number” to complain about somebody sharing actual numbers is bizarre.

> It merely means that your web app was not preferred over your native app.

No, I’m talking about hundreds of apps hosting a wide range of independent communities. It wasn’t a single app for a single demographic.

This should not be a controversial stance. Saying that people prefer native to PWA on the desktop is not a controversial stance and the advantages for native on mobile are even more pronounced. The very existence of the App Store came about because when Steve Jobs told everybody if they wanted to build apps for the iPhone they should be web apps, the market demanded native apps.

PWA uptake is dismal. People strongly prefer native apps.

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

#618

Post by JimDabell »

postalrat wrote: post #513
JimDabell wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good). I’ve worked on a platform for social media apps. When the social network had a native iOS app, a native Android app, and a PWA, users chose iOS about two thirds of the time, Android about a qu…

Could it be you are pushing your native app? Maybe for more control to advertising in your app, tracking, etc. Keep those nasty ad blockers out.

No. There were no ads, no invasive tracking, no obnoxious pushes to move people to native – we didn’t care which platform people used. People just genuinely prefer native apps to PWAs. This should not be a controversial statement.

If you say that people prefer native desktop apps to web apps, you’ll get a lot of agreement – people complaining about Electron, Slack using up all their RAM, etc.

If you say that people prefer native mobile apps to web apps – a setting where the advantage of native is even more pronounced – then all of a sudden you get a bunch of people who simply refuse to believe that this is true.

I’ve noticed a lot of overlap between the people who reject this and people who dislike the App Store for other reasons (e.g. locked down devices). I think the difference between accepting people prefer native on desktop vs mobile is not primarily driven by facts but by ideology. People who dislike App Stores are inclined to prefer PWAs and they prefer to believe everybody is like them despite it being pretty obvious this is not actually true.

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

#619

Post by JimDabell »

postalrat wrote: post #536
kube-system wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably just because social media consumption looks like this today: https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/07/23/11/newFile-3.jpg and not like this, anymore: https://headlineplanet.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/M...

How does that change anything? I think its more due to mobile sites acting like this https://www.reddit.com/r/TechNope/comments/urboo6/reddit_app... A user on a app is more valuable since you get a lot more data on them, and can stop their ad blockers.

That might be true for the tech giants but it’s not true in the typical case. In our case, we didn’t care which platform people used, and if anything, the owners of the apps preferred people to use the web because many of them were selling subscription services and didn’t want to hand over 15% to the app stores.

“Getting data on people” is just not that attractive for most apps. Are Reddit motivated by things like that? Sure. But it’s just not that valuable for everybody else.

You know what is attractive? Giving customers what they want. And customers want native apps.

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

#620

Post by JimDabell »

postalrat wrote: post #575
kube-system wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people are used to that now being the normal state of things, it's rare that they even try the browser -- I develop an application that is web only and typically used on desktops, and people incessantly ask me for "an app so they can use it on their phone".

They probably want an icon to open your app. They probably dont know the difference between an app rendered with a browser or a truly native app. In the past apple as made it difficult for users to know how to do this and users just know about the app store. Great for apple (walled garden) and social media apps (more tracking, unlimited ads) but not great for users.

> In the past apple as made it difficult for users to know how to do this

The mechanism to add a web app to the home screen has remained pretty unchanged from iPhoneOS 1.0 (2007) to iOS 18 (2024) – you tap the action button (sometimes called the “share” button despite it being a misnomer), then you tap “Add to Home Screen”. It’s the same as adding a bookmark, printing, or sharing the link with somebody.

That is the process they designed before the App Store existed when they were telling everybody if you want to build apps for the iPhone then they should be web apps, so I don’t think you can reasonably consider this process to be intentionally difficult.

This changed slightly in iOS 26 because you need to tap the meatball icon to bring up the menu and pick “Share…”, but given that this only happened six months ago, I don’t think that’s what you were referring to by “in the past”?

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