7 ms·

Dear Mark Zuckerberg (2012)

77 points by martinesko36 9y ago

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
Two months later, Caldwell launched App.net [1], a subscription-based ersatz Twitter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net
- Raed667 9y ago
  I think that the idea is nobel but it misses a core concept of how users interact with their platforms, they don't want to pay money. Sometimes I see comments on HN about how that person would gladly pay for an ad free version of the service but experiences have shown over and over that it just doesn't work.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > users...don't want to pay money I don't think this was as obvious in 2012.
    - olympus 9y ago
      Yes it was. The options were to pay money for a lower populated platform (App.net), vs a higher-populated platform for free. The only benefit was that App.net claimed it was going to be nicer with your data. Everything else was worse. App.net couldn't compete against Twitter with only one pro and several cons. It's only hope was to survive long enough until Twitter's investors got tired of sinking money into it and pulled the plug. Unfortunately for App.net Twitter managed to turn a profit.
    - mehrdada 9y ago
      It was just as obvious in 2012, if not more. It's just that they worked hard on pulling off a small but surprising crowdfunding/preorder-like campaign among a specific group right after they were pissed at Twitter for restricting client apps (betrayal) and basically pulling the plug on the protocol idea in favor of an ad business. Their approach, however, by building a paid Twitter clone as the "killer app" of their platform, which isn't a very useful use case when you have free Twitter, awfully reminds me of what Dennis Ritchie wrote in Anti-Foreword of Unix Haters Handbook[1]: "Your sense of the possible is in no sense pure: sometimes you want the same thing you have, but wish you had done it yourselves; other times you want something different, but can't seem to get people to use it" They really wished they owned Twitter, and they did it their way, although if they really were Twitter owners, they too would have likely opted for the proven, lucrative, and more straightforward ad business over the protocol business at that point. Criticism aside, it was probably worth trying anyway, and the fact that they raised funds in their initial campaign ($5/user if I remember correctly) was not easy to pull off and surprising. [1]: https://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf https://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf
    - spullara 9y ago
      It was obvious ever since the internet started.
  - hbosch 9y ago
    App.net was something I loved paying for, though. It came with a block of cloud storage, an ad free social network, an API for devs to build on top of... those three ingredients alone were fertile ground for developers to make some very engaging, unique apps. It also felt much more communal. I was a fan and definitely miss App.net
  - flukus 9y ago
    Normally that would be the end of the story. Users won't pay for something, there is no market and in turn there is no product. VC money distorts this, they create the product get their users and then try to monetize it. By this point the only thing of value (defined as something people are willing to pay for) they have is their users data. Take out the VC money and these problems might solve themselves.
  - exclusiv 9y ago
    So true. And as much as techies think people care about their privacy they care more about free. Everyone's on the build on the blockchain, distributed this, privacy centric next gen app kick but these things don't move the needle, they're just nice to haves. I like the riches in niches but even there it's increasingly more challenging getting a share of wallet because consumers are getting incredible value from services like Netflix/Spotify/Office/etc. They've been programmed for free or subsidized.
  - dingaling 9y ago
    The problem with offering any free tier is that it lets people keep their wallet in their pocket. It's impossible to determine but as a thought experiment imagine if the only way to subscribe to Facebook after the .edu phase was to pay $1 / £1 / €1 per year. Overall revenue would be lower but they wouldn't have to maintain enormous sales and ad-tech teams. app.net flunked IMHO because noone understood what it was, not because it required payment.
  - stesch 9y ago
    I wanted to give app.net my money but they didn't want it. We Germans aren't big fans of paying by card. I asked them if the offer other payment methods. A year later they offered BitCoin. No, thank you.
- elgenie 9y ago
  There's a non-resolving link to join.app.net in the post. It seems like it was already active or, if not, launched within a week of this post.
mattsfrey 9y ago
The proliferation of these so called "prophetic" articles coming out now amuses me greatly. Am I really alone in thinking FB was cancer from the get go?. Was Snowden and PRISM not enough? Why is this new CA crap even news? I feel like the signs and warnings have been there the entire time, finally mainstream outlets take it seriously and make an issue of it all, and therefore now it's a big deal. SMH
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  People don’t care about surveillance if it doesn’t impact take them.
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  Many criticisms of FB's business model and practices in the past were immediately downvoted on HN and other forums. Articles that were critical of FB or Zuckerberg were flagged frequently and sometimes even HN moderators deleted comments critical of FB. It's not that people weren't critical, but during the heyday those voices were suppressed. Now that sentiment has slowly shifted, these articles are seeing traction
  - mattsfrey 9y ago
    Interesting points indeed, especially as I see my comment being downvoted :)
  - wizardforhire 9y ago
    This exactly! I've been very surprised by the Facebook lover's faction on hn and definitely refrained from posting anything anti Facebook as a result. zer00eyz's comment above is already getting down voted and it's the truth!
    - wizardforhire 9y ago
      Whoops meant to pro Facebook faction! I Can't believe I didn't catch that sooner! But in hindsight I guess either one works.
drewblaisdell 9y ago
Unrelated to the article content, but what ever happened to Dalton Caldwell? I was very into the Dustin Curtis/svbtle hype in 2009-2013, and remember reading Dalton's articles from way back when. Is he blogging elsewhere now or has he dropped off?
- jimbru 9y ago
  Dalton is currently a Y Combinator Partner (http://www.ycombinator.com/people/ http://www.ycombinator.com/people/).
mzuvella 9y ago
Facebook stock price quadrupled by the end of 2013.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jondubois 9y ago
> The executive apologized and said he would take my feedback under consideration. Wow software 'entrepreneurs' are really pathetic sometimes. This is not the normal cutthroat business that normally happens in the real world... So the Facebook executive apologised for giving OP a generous offer to buy their startup which Facebook doesn't even need anymore? Sounds like charity to me. OP is a spoiled brat in my opinion. Based on my experience, what should have happened is the executive should have laughed at him all the way to the door for being so foolish/arrogant. Now you understand why Facebook is full of entitled jerks... They acquihired them.
- jondubois 9y ago
  I didn't realise that OP works for YC now. This explains why Facebook execs treated him so nicely. It just shows the double standards people have in the industry when dealing with financially well connected people vs regular people.
jacquesm 9y ago
Here is the thread on HN when the article originally appeared: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325231
elgenie 9y ago
$FB closed at $21.50 on the day this article was posted and at $153.03 yesterday. The stock price at the time was being beaten down by concerns over whether the company would be able to adapt to a shift to mobile, and not any issues with how tactfully (or not) acquihire offers were being made.
jamescyber 9y ago
After Facebook now Namo App user data is not safe — Big privacy Concern After the viral exposure of loopholes in the Aadhaar security system in January’17 now it’s all about the Namo app it is being claimed that the application shares private information of its users with third party companies without their consent. Read it : https://www.ica.in/newsroom/namo-app-sharing-user-data https://www.ica.in/newsroom/namo-app-sharing-user-data

77 points by martinesko36 9y ago

Two months later, Caldwell launched App.net [1], a subscription-based ersatz Twitter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App.net

Raed667 9y ago
I think that the idea is nobel but it misses a core concept of how users interact with their platforms, they don't want to pay money. Sometimes I see comments on HN about how that person would gladly pay for an ad free version of the service but experiences have shown over and over that it just doesn't work.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > users...don't want to pay money I don't think this was as obvious in 2012.
  - olympus 9y ago
    Yes it was. The options were to pay money for a lower populated platform (App.net), vs a higher-populated platform for free. The only benefit was that App.net claimed it was going to be nicer with your data. Everything else was worse. App.net couldn't compete against Twitter with only one pro and several cons. It's only hope was to survive long enough until Twitter's investors got tired of sinking money into it and pulled the plug. Unfortunately for App.net Twitter managed to turn a profit.
  - mehrdada 9y ago
    It was just as obvious in 2012, if not more. It's just that they worked hard on pulling off a small but surprising crowdfunding/preorder-like campaign among a specific group right after they were pissed at Twitter for restricting client apps (betrayal) and basically pulling the plug on the protocol idea in favor of an ad business. Their approach, however, by building a paid Twitter clone as the "killer app" of their platform, which isn't a very useful use case when you have free Twitter, awfully reminds me of what Dennis Ritchie wrote in Anti-Foreword of Unix Haters Handbook[1]: "Your sense of the possible is in no sense pure: sometimes you want the same thing you have, but wish you had done it yourselves; other times you want something different, but can't seem to get people to use it" They really wished they owned Twitter, and they did it their way, although if they really were Twitter owners, they too would have likely opted for the proven, lucrative, and more straightforward ad business over the protocol business at that point. Criticism aside, it was probably worth trying anyway, and the fact that they raised funds in their initial campaign ($5/user if I remember correctly) was not easy to pull off and surprising. [1]: https://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf https://simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf
  - spullara 9y ago
    It was obvious ever since the internet started.
- hbosch 9y ago
  App.net was something I loved paying for, though. It came with a block of cloud storage, an ad free social network, an API for devs to build on top of... those three ingredients alone were fertile ground for developers to make some very engaging, unique apps. It also felt much more communal. I was a fan and definitely miss App.net
- flukus 9y ago
  Normally that would be the end of the story. Users won't pay for something, there is no market and in turn there is no product. VC money distorts this, they create the product get their users and then try to monetize it. By this point the only thing of value (defined as something people are willing to pay for) they have is their users data. Take out the VC money and these problems might solve themselves.
- exclusiv 9y ago
  So true. And as much as techies think people care about their privacy they care more about free. Everyone's on the build on the blockchain, distributed this, privacy centric next gen app kick but these things don't move the needle, they're just nice to haves. I like the riches in niches but even there it's increasingly more challenging getting a share of wallet because consumers are getting incredible value from services like Netflix/Spotify/Office/etc. They've been programmed for free or subsidized.
- dingaling 9y ago
  The problem with offering any free tier is that it lets people keep their wallet in their pocket. It's impossible to determine but as a thought experiment imagine if the only way to subscribe to Facebook after the .edu phase was to pay $1 / £1 / €1 per year. Overall revenue would be lower but they wouldn't have to maintain enormous sales and ad-tech teams. app.net flunked IMHO because noone understood what it was, not because it required payment.
- stesch 9y ago
  I wanted to give app.net my money but they didn't want it. We Germans aren't big fans of paying by card. I asked them if the offer other payment methods. A year later they offered BitCoin. No, thank you.
elgenie 9y ago
There's a non-resolving link to join.app.net in the post. It seems like it was already active or, if not, launched within a week of this post.

mattsfrey 9y ago

The proliferation of these so called "prophetic" articles coming out now amuses me greatly. Am I really alone in thinking FB was cancer from the get go?. Was Snowden and PRISM not enough? Why is this new CA crap even news? I feel like the signs and warnings have been there the entire time, finally mainstream outlets take it seriously and make an issue of it all, and therefore now it's a big deal. SMH

adamnemecek 9y ago
People don’t care about surveillance if it doesn’t impact take them.
TAForObvReasons 9y ago
Many criticisms of FB's business model and practices in the past were immediately downvoted on HN and other forums. Articles that were critical of FB or Zuckerberg were flagged frequently and sometimes even HN moderators deleted comments critical of FB. It's not that people weren't critical, but during the heyday those voices were suppressed. Now that sentiment has slowly shifted, these articles are seeing traction
- mattsfrey 9y ago
  Interesting points indeed, especially as I see my comment being downvoted :)
- wizardforhire 9y ago
  This exactly! I've been very surprised by the Facebook lover's faction on hn and definitely refrained from posting anything anti Facebook as a result. zer00eyz's comment above is already getting down voted and it's the truth!
  - wizardforhire 9y ago
    Whoops meant to pro Facebook faction! I Can't believe I didn't catch that sooner! But in hindsight I guess either one works.

drewblaisdell 9y ago

Unrelated to the article content, but what ever happened to Dalton Caldwell? I was very into the Dustin Curtis/svbtle hype in 2009-2013, and remember reading Dalton's articles from way back when. Is he blogging elsewhere now or has he dropped off?

jimbru 9y ago
Dalton is currently a Y Combinator Partner (http://www.ycombinator.com/people/ http://www.ycombinator.com/people/).

mzuvella 9y ago

Facebook stock price quadrupled by the end of 2013.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jondubois 9y ago

> The executive apologized and said he would take my feedback under consideration. Wow software 'entrepreneurs' are really pathetic sometimes. This is not the normal cutthroat business that normally happens in the real world... So the Facebook executive apologised for giving OP a generous offer to buy their startup which Facebook doesn't even need anymore? Sounds like charity to me. OP is a spoiled brat in my opinion. Based on my experience, what should have happened is the executive should have laughed at him all the way to the door for being so foolish/arrogant. Now you understand why Facebook is full of entitled jerks... They acquihired them.

jondubois 9y ago
I didn't realise that OP works for YC now. This explains why Facebook execs treated him so nicely. It just shows the double standards people have in the industry when dealing with financially well connected people vs regular people.

jacquesm 9y ago

Here is the thread on HN when the article originally appeared: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325231 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4325231

elgenie 9y ago

$FB closed at $21.50 on the day this article was posted and at $153.03 yesterday. The stock price at the time was being beaten down by concerns over whether the company would be able to adapt to a shift to mobile, and not any issues with how tactfully (or not) acquihire offers were being made.

jamescyber 9y ago

After Facebook now Namo App user data is not safe — Big privacy Concern After the viral exposure of loopholes in the Aadhaar security system in January’17 now it’s all about the Namo app it is being claimed that the application shares private information of its users with third party companies without their consent. Read it : https://www.ica.in/newsroom/namo-app-sharing-user-data https://www.ica.in/newsroom/namo-app-sharing-user-data