4 ms·

Moral of the story: Don't sharecrop Building something on the web on your own platform means you own it, control it, and are not beholden to anyone or any comp

by milesf 10y ago

Moral of the story: Don't sharecrop Building something on the web on your own platform means you own it, control it, and are not beholden to anyone or any company provided you are reasonably within the law. Building an app for iPhone? You're sharecropping. Android App? Sharecropping. Facebook? YouTube? You guessed it. My friend Ryan Bates build railscasts.com but has been on hiatus for almost 4 years. Even so, his site still has value, and at any time he can pick it back up again and start rebuilding. If you love freedom, I don't know why you would pour your life, mind, and skill into anything that's sharecropping.

mooreds 10y ago
Hmmm. The trade-off that might cause one to "share crop" (which is a great analogy) is the reach one can get. It is a lot easier to build an audience on Twitter or Facebook than on the open web, because that is where the people are. Building an app for the iPhone or Android markets? That's where the people are (though fewer folks install apps than in the past). The key is to know that you will be forced to transition off that platform, and to build for that day. (Instagram lived through this, meerkat did not: http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189340/twitter-blocks-instagram-friend-finding-api http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189340/twitter-blocks-ins... )
- lj3 10y ago
  There's no trade-off. You can use platforms like facebook or twitter to increase your exposure and reach, but make sure the real content is either hosted on or duplicated on a site you control. That way, if one platform decides to kick you off, you're not completely toast. Unfortunately, that's not an option for iPhone app makers. Those people (and their incomes) are at the mercy of Apple.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    Doesn't FB specifically reward users who use its native (captive) tools? If so there's a reward to being a sharecropper and thus there is a trade off. Agreed that Twitter does not have such tools.
    - slouch 10y ago
      FB certainly shows posts with photo and video uploads attached to more users than text and link posts.
alaskamiller 10y ago
Lol, didn't even read the article and just kept repeating the same tired copy-pasta. Could have used another "if you don't pay for the product you are the product" just for old time's sake. The tie in to your friend's 4 yo website is pretty good, it also makes your point 4 years old. Meme guy played Facebook Page like it was an arcade game. Key actions were posting OC, sharing, and commenting. He paid for boost-ups and speed-ups, got pretty good and he accumulated a vanity score of 6MM likes. Problem is he opted to get rewarded by dropping in affiliate links. Facebook didn't like that and banned him access to his own Page accounts. But he can still log in for his profile account so he's in the nether-sphere of both active and ban. But that's not even the point of the article. The point is that Facebook doesn't manage it's community despite being the center hub of communities. As we go from 22 yo Marky Zuck's FB to 32 yo Marky Zuck's FB, there might be a trajectory change: add on more humans. But have you run a customer service team? It's hard. Have you staffed one? It's expensive. Built one up? It takes awhile. Have you considered the ramifications of actually listening and enforcing community policies rather than blanket outright ban? We here in Silicon Valley being engineers just opt to hand wave it away with dialog trees and a zendesk account. The last time Facebook dabbled in humans doing this kind of work they had to bring in Glenn Beck and others to ramble on and on. That's just part of it. They're going to have to keep doing lots of that to grow up. That's the difference. Facebook is going to have to grow up like Apple did by tacking on the additional 30k retail workers. Otherwise it'll just keep being a college dropout kid's wishful thinking.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
hkmurakami 10y ago
What if your land is barren and devoid of nutrients? Share cropping might be an attractive option then.
- milesf 10y ago
  Is the web "barren and devoid of nutrients"?
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    The earth may be a fertile place, but the plot of land I happen to own might be pretty barren (new domains, no audience yet, etc). I host my own blog and use a static generator for it, but I'm aware that this introduces a drop off multiplier. I'm happy to not be a sharecropper, but I don't fault those who choose to do so.
kiba 10y ago
If you have apps in multiple store, is that 'sharecropping'? Does the app really need to be hosted on a phone?
snowwrestler 10y ago
Of course it's better to control your own destiny, beholden to no one. But giving that as advice, without addressing how much harder that has gotten over the past decade, just seems out of touch. People use Facebook services to make a living because that's increasingly where their customers are now. Businesses need customers, and customers have migrated to a few platform providers. Telling people to stay away from those platforms is like telling someone to open up a retail store in the middle of nowhere.
enraged_camel 10y ago
Does Ryan have plans to get back into doing his rails casts?
- milesf 10y ago
  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Good question. Only Ryan knows.
rimantas 10y ago
So he depended on Rails. If RoR is no longer interesting, neither will be his screencasts.
facepalm 10y ago
I think it is not quite as easy as that. There are also stories of people who got shut down by PayPal. So at some point you'll be dependent on somebody, at least a payment processor - at least until Bitcoin becomes more prevalent... And what about the search engine - if you fall out of Google's Index, business will also be harder. There may be ways around it, like opening a physical shop where people can pay you in cash, but these are not automatically the better businesses to build.
imh 10y ago
If net neutrality goes the way it seems this week, sharecropping might become even more of a necessity.

by milesf 10y ago

mooreds 10y ago

Hmmm. The trade-off that might cause one to "share crop" (which is a great analogy) is the reach one can get. It is a lot easier to build an audience on Twitter or Facebook than on the open web, because that is where the people are. Building an app for the iPhone or Android markets? That's where the people are (though fewer folks install apps than in the past). The key is to know that you will be forced to transition off that platform, and to build for that day. (Instagram lived through this, meerkat did not: http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189340/twitter-blocks-instagram-friend-finding-api http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189340/twitter-blocks-ins... )

lj3 10y ago
There's no trade-off. You can use platforms like facebook or twitter to increase your exposure and reach, but make sure the real content is either hosted on or duplicated on a site you control. That way, if one platform decides to kick you off, you're not completely toast. Unfortunately, that's not an option for iPhone app makers. Those people (and their incomes) are at the mercy of Apple.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  Doesn't FB specifically reward users who use its native (captive) tools? If so there's a reward to being a sharecropper and thus there is a trade off. Agreed that Twitter does not have such tools.
  - slouch 10y ago
    FB certainly shows posts with photo and video uploads attached to more users than text and link posts.

alaskamiller 10y ago

Lol, didn't even read the article and just kept repeating the same tired copy-pasta. Could have used another "if you don't pay for the product you are the product" just for old time's sake. The tie in to your friend's 4 yo website is pretty good, it also makes your point 4 years old. Meme guy played Facebook Page like it was an arcade game. Key actions were posting OC, sharing, and commenting. He paid for boost-ups and speed-ups, got pretty good and he accumulated a vanity score of 6MM likes. Problem is he opted to get rewarded by dropping in affiliate links. Facebook didn't like that and banned him access to his own Page accounts. But he can still log in for his profile account so he's in the nether-sphere of both active and ban. But that's not even the point of the article. The point is that Facebook doesn't manage it's community despite being the center hub of communities. As we go from 22 yo Marky Zuck's FB to 32 yo Marky Zuck's FB, there might be a trajectory change: add on more humans. But have you run a customer service team? It's hard. Have you staffed one? It's expensive. Built one up? It takes awhile. Have you considered the ramifications of actually listening and enforcing community policies rather than blanket outright ban? We here in Silicon Valley being engineers just opt to hand wave it away with dialog trees and a zendesk account. The last time Facebook dabbled in humans doing this kind of work they had to bring in Glenn Beck and others to ramble on and on. That's just part of it. They're going to have to keep doing lots of that to grow up. That's the difference. Facebook is going to have to grow up like Apple did by tacking on the additional 30k retail workers. Otherwise it'll just keep being a college dropout kid's wishful thinking.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

hkmurakami 10y ago

What if your land is barren and devoid of nutrients? Share cropping might be an attractive option then.

milesf 10y ago
Is the web "barren and devoid of nutrients"?
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  The earth may be a fertile place, but the plot of land I happen to own might be pretty barren (new domains, no audience yet, etc). I host my own blog and use a static generator for it, but I'm aware that this introduces a drop off multiplier. I'm happy to not be a sharecropper, but I don't fault those who choose to do so.

kiba 10y ago

If you have apps in multiple store, is that 'sharecropping'? Does the app really need to be hosted on a phone?

snowwrestler 10y ago

Of course it's better to control your own destiny, beholden to no one. But giving that as advice, without addressing how much harder that has gotten over the past decade, just seems out of touch. People use Facebook services to make a living because that's increasingly where their customers are now. Businesses need customers, and customers have migrated to a few platform providers. Telling people to stay away from those platforms is like telling someone to open up a retail store in the middle of nowhere.

enraged_camel 10y ago

Does Ryan have plans to get back into doing his rails casts?

milesf 10y ago
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Good question. Only Ryan knows.

rimantas 10y ago

So he depended on Rails. If RoR is no longer interesting, neither will be his screencasts.

facepalm 10y ago

I think it is not quite as easy as that. There are also stories of people who got shut down by PayPal. So at some point you'll be dependent on somebody, at least a payment processor - at least until Bitcoin becomes more prevalent... And what about the search engine - if you fall out of Google's Index, business will also be harder. There may be ways around it, like opening a physical shop where people can pay you in cash, but these are not automatically the better businesses to build.

imh 10y ago

If net neutrality goes the way it seems this week, sharecropping might become even more of a necessity.