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The moral of the story is once again that focusing on user acquisition at all costs is an effective strategy. MongoDB disregarded reliability, Youtube disregard
by fvdessen 7y ago
The moral of the story is once again that focusing on user acquisition at all costs is an effective strategy. MongoDB disregarded reliability, Youtube disregarded copyright, Reddit faked comments, Facebook disregarded privacy. Yet they were all ultimately successful. Could it have happened differently ? Not so sure.
- BostonFern 7y ago"Move fast and break things." I'm afraid getting there first is pretty much imperative.
- Loughla 7y agoHonestly, I don't understand why this site seems to hate Zoom so much. They're doing what all of the large players have done in the past. Why aren't they being congratulated for their success? This is not meant to be snarky. They are literally living by the move fast and break things motto. Growth at the expense of everything else to win the market first, fix it second. How are they not the golden child of SV right now?
- jeltz 7y agoPeople hate those large players too. Just look at how much hate MongoDB got for ignoring both reliability and safety.
- kkarakk 7y agoIt's just 2020 speaking, people outraged on the behalf of users who honestly don't care and just want easy to use videochatting. This is just a symptom of ycombinator becoming a more widely known social network. All the malaises of social networks like pointless discussions about morality without any concrete solutions are coming along with that.
- divbzero 7y ago> pointless discussions about morality without any concrete solutions The correct response to many moral issues is not to create concrete solutions, but simply to stop people from doing bad things.
- rapsey 7y agoAll your examples have one thing in common, they are free to use. Frankly I think it's absurd to expect privacy and security while not paying for anything.
- c22 7y agoWhy is it absurd? If I accept a free food sample at the supermarket is it okay for the vendor to poison me?
- rapsey 7y agoThat is not a comparable analogy at all.
- c22 7y agoBecause privacy and security are less important than food safety? How about this one: I go to the library and borrow some books. This costs me nothing. The library publishes my name, birthdate, and reading list on their website. Is that okay?
- rapsey 7y ago> Because privacy and security are less important than food safety? Yes how is that even a question? > How about this one: I go to the library and borrow some books. This costs me nothing. The library publishes my name, birthdate, and reading list on their website. Is that okay? Your library is funded through your tax dollars. You are paying for it.
- c22 7y agoThe question was really whether that was your criteria for claiming my analogy was not comparable. Reading the rest of your comment, I see now that is not the reason. It seems to me whether or not you can get something for nothing is rather orthogonal to the question of whether it's absurd to expect privacy while not paying for anything. Are privacy and security less important than food safety? As I posted the question my immediate thought was, as yours, obviously, but the more I think about it the less I am sure. A single security breach in a critical information service could potentially have profound far-reaching effects possibly worse than a local case of food poisoning.
- rtx 7y agoIt could if your service is valuable enough.
- gfodor 7y agoAlmost certainly couldn't have happened differently, since we also have counterexamples of similar competing projects that called out privacy as a differentiator which all crashed and burned. If you want a privacy-focused product to win, you either need to find an audience who wants it and focus there, or, you need to do great on all the other fronts that lead to acquisition and keep the privacy stuff an internal priority, not a banner feature.