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I was a huge naysayer about the Facebook model that Joi espouses in your story. Facebook ended up being very successful with their users first approach surpris

by iaw 10y ago

I was a huge naysayer about the Facebook model that Joi espouses in your story. Facebook ended up being very successful with their users first approach surprising everyone. I suspect that in 10 years Facebook will be an exception rather than a rule.

harryh 10y ago
Instagram, WhatsApp, WeChat, Line?
- iaw 10y ago
  Fair point, although I'd replace WeChat with SnapChat (WeChat being created by Tencent). I don't think it's impossible to convert a large non-monetizing user-base into a profitable company (Google, Facebook, Snapchat, etc.) but I think that strategy is not a wise one for someone interested in building a sustainable company. There's a bigger reward to scaling before monetizing, but there's also a bigger gamble.
  - harryh 10y ago
    Ya, in general I agree with you. Just listing a few more exceptions to the rule. Also, I can't believe I left out SnapChat! Showing my age there aren't I?
    - iaw 10y ago
      SnapChat was what made me realize I was old. I never got the hang of the UI.
- chipotle_coyote 10y ago
  Up until earlier this year, WhatsApp actually had a for-pay business model: it cost $1 per year. They stopped charging in January, evidently, in theory to remove a barrier to entry. (Being owned by Facebook now probably helps them make that move, though.) I've wondered how Twitter would have been different if they'd taken a similar approach: $1 per account per year. They'd certainly be smaller than they are now, but I suspect they'd still be bringing in several hundred million a year before going the advertising route--the pursuit of which seems to be at the root of a lot of their questionable product decisions over the last few years. None of that's directly relevant to the article, of course, which is implicitly about better filtering tools. I continue to be kind of bemused that this is so difficult for modern services to figure out, given that LiveJournal essentially figured it out fifteen years ago. Yes, the two services aren't directly comparable, but it wouldn't be wildly difficult to offer controls over, for example, who's allowed to @mention you.
  - simonswords82 10y ago
    The problem is that Twitter delivers very little real value to the majority of the people who use it. If it was switched off tomorrow how many people would really miss it? I suspect the answer is just their core user base, which is a very small % of all accounts Twitter has. IMO had Twitter tried to charge their demise would have been even faster than the current slow but steady decline we're all watching.
    - chipotle_coyote 10y ago
      That's quite possible. But if you're not the kind of user who checks Twitter on a fairly regular basis--not necessarily more than once a day, but at least several times a week--you're probably not the kind of user who's bringing in much advertising revenue, either. Maybe making signing up free but requiring the $1/yr to be able to post, or to follow more than 50 people. It's possible none of that would work, either, but I'm confident in saying there are at least tens of millions of people who do get value from Twitter. They've chosen a business model where having "merely" tens of millions of users may not be enough to support them, but I don't think that points to an intrinsic flaw in Twitter's concept--just an intrinsic flaw in their particular monetization strategy.
  - johan_larson 10y ago
    The problem is that people treat free very differently from very cheap. Rationally, they shouldn't, but they do. So I suspect the number of users with the dollar-a-year plan wouldn't just be lower, it would be really dramatically lower. An order of magnitude, probably. Two, even.

by iaw 10y ago

harryh 10y ago

Instagram, WhatsApp, WeChat, Line?

iaw 10y ago
Fair point, although I'd replace WeChat with SnapChat (WeChat being created by Tencent). I don't think it's impossible to convert a large non-monetizing user-base into a profitable company (Google, Facebook, Snapchat, etc.) but I think that strategy is not a wise one for someone interested in building a sustainable company. There's a bigger reward to scaling before monetizing, but there's also a bigger gamble.
- harryh 10y ago
  Ya, in general I agree with you. Just listing a few more exceptions to the rule. Also, I can't believe I left out SnapChat! Showing my age there aren't I?
  - iaw 10y ago
    SnapChat was what made me realize I was old. I never got the hang of the UI.
chipotle_coyote 10y ago
Up until earlier this year, WhatsApp actually had a for-pay business model: it cost $1 per year. They stopped charging in January, evidently, in theory to remove a barrier to entry. (Being owned by Facebook now probably helps them make that move, though.) I've wondered how Twitter would have been different if they'd taken a similar approach: $1 per account per year. They'd certainly be smaller than they are now, but I suspect they'd still be bringing in several hundred million a year before going the advertising route--the pursuit of which seems to be at the root of a lot of their questionable product decisions over the last few years. None of that's directly relevant to the article, of course, which is implicitly about better filtering tools. I continue to be kind of bemused that this is so difficult for modern services to figure out, given that LiveJournal essentially figured it out fifteen years ago. Yes, the two services aren't directly comparable, but it wouldn't be wildly difficult to offer controls over, for example, who's allowed to @mention you.
- simonswords82 10y ago
  The problem is that Twitter delivers very little real value to the majority of the people who use it. If it was switched off tomorrow how many people would really miss it? I suspect the answer is just their core user base, which is a very small % of all accounts Twitter has. IMO had Twitter tried to charge their demise would have been even faster than the current slow but steady decline we're all watching.
  - chipotle_coyote 10y ago
    That's quite possible. But if you're not the kind of user who checks Twitter on a fairly regular basis--not necessarily more than once a day, but at least several times a week--you're probably not the kind of user who's bringing in much advertising revenue, either. Maybe making signing up free but requiring the $1/yr to be able to post, or to follow more than 50 people. It's possible none of that would work, either, but I'm confident in saying there are at least tens of millions of people who do get value from Twitter. They've chosen a business model where having "merely" tens of millions of users may not be enough to support them, but I don't think that points to an intrinsic flaw in Twitter's concept--just an intrinsic flaw in their particular monetization strategy.
- johan_larson 10y ago
  The problem is that people treat free very differently from very cheap. Rationally, they shouldn't, but they do. So I suspect the number of users with the dollar-a-year plan wouldn't just be lower, it would be really dramatically lower. An order of magnitude, probably. Two, even.