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Milk Inc. to shut down Oink on March 31st

173 points by HectorRamos 15y ago

togasystems 15y ago
Glad to hear that Kevin Rose is sticking to his guns. I wonder if the Milk team will tackle a harder problem next time around. Edit: Kevin Rose said he would kill off any project that wasn't gaining traction and he did just that. This is what I was referring to.
- kappaknight 15y ago
  I wonder if the Milk team will tackle actual problems the next time around?
- LVB 15y ago
  "Sticking to his guns" is not the first phrase that came to mind after reading that he'd canned Milk Inc's flagship product after only three months.
  - speg 15y ago
    but that's not the point of Milk... Milk was founded on the idea of pumping out lots of small things and seeing if any of them stuck. If they kept Oink alive until it took off (if ever) they wouldn't be able to build the next thing.
- deleted 15y ago
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  - AznHisoka 15y ago
    you gotta look at the conversion rate as well. If only 500 ppl used Pinterest years back, but 200+ people continued using it daily after 1 month, that's shows the product has very good potential, even though the total # of users is weak. That means you just gotta figure out to get more traction. If on the other hand, you find out only 1 person is still using it after a month, that means it's a product fit problem, and sticking to your guns is probably futile.
  - delsarto 15y ago
    I think the guns the parent poster is referring to was the widely publicised statement that they would "shoot in the head" their projects if they weren't working. So they are sticking to that particular gun, as it were
    - togasystems 15y ago
      That is exactly what I was talking about.
jgrahamc 15y ago
I was an Oink user and deleted it a few weeks ago from my phone. It seemed like an intriguing idea (to see recommendations of things rather than places), but ultimately there are only so many photographs of beers, burgers and coffees that one can stare at. But I really do appreciate that they offer a way to download my data as I've done it and discovered a beer I'd forgotten about: http://www.meantimebrewing.com/our-beers/meantime-wheat http://www.meantimebrewing.com/our-beers/meantime-wheat
- jmathai 15y ago
  > ultimately there are only so many photographs of beers, burgers and coffees that one can stare at. Instagram hopes to prove you wrong.
pagehub 15y ago
Why would anyone bother committing to one of their products again if they just arbitrarily shut things down when they are working on the next big thing?!
- phereford 15y ago
  Agreed. If I were a user, I'd feel pretty burned getting attached to an application then have the company "shut down" to work on something better. Maybe oink just wasn't driving the engagement they wanted (or something).
- angryasian 15y ago
  yep never investing time into another Kevin Rose product. I loved pownce and i liked oink. Hes let me down too many times.
mmastrac 15y ago
As a founder of a company in the same space (chee.rs) I was surprised to see them pivot from the idea so quickly. Our internal analysis of share/engagement metrics was showing that our own users were way more engaged than Oink's. We were expecting that if they noticed us in the market they'd have been working on rev 2 of the product - gathering intel from products like ours and integrating it - rather than shutting it down.
- kappaknight 15y ago
  Since you guys are in the same space. What are you seeing that the rest of us are missing? Is there an actual business around the idea? Oink was maybe useful when items were attached to locations. As soon as people started like Macbook Pros and other free standing stuff, it became completely pointless for me. (Too cluttered and not enough recommendation value.)
  - mmastrac 15y ago
    We're pretty confident there's a big business in our space. chee.rs is focused on the positive experiences in our users lives, rather than rating every little thing. Users post what they love (it's freeform: it can be music, restaurants or just general concepts), and other users pile on with positive reenforcement. What we're seeing is that users get hooked on having a space dedicated to things that people like and spend hours at a time (literally - like spending 3+ hours on some nights) in the app just going through what other people like, and posting their own content from time-to-time. We've had a few businesses approach us cold after being cheered, asking if they could offer some sort of coupon, or other offer to users who cheer on their business. That's something we haven't really figured out how to run with and/or monetize yet. I can't really explain what gets these users hooked, but you can see the sort of engagement we're seeing here: http://chee.rs/1433322 http://chee.rs/1433322
    - darkane 15y ago
      Just curious. Why are you ruining such a good domain by redirecting to www.chee.rs?
shareme 15y ago
I have a question.. How ethical is this to set something up to obviously collect 'free data'?
zyfo 15y ago
A shame to see Oink getting shut down again.
- jonursenbach 15y ago
  Again?
  - alaskamiller 15y ago
    Joke is the music pirate club Oink was shutdown.
- aw3c2 15y ago
  Oink.me.uk/.cd getting shut down made me quit caring about commercial music. And seeing how Alan was declared non-guilty later made me really really angry (the most awesome music service was killed and there was no reason or legislation to it).
unohoo 15y ago
it seems like they intended to use oink for data gathering: from: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-milk-shutters-its-first-app-oink-after-just-over-3-months/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-milk-shutt... ------------------------- This is an interesting case. It seems like the group designed, built and shipped a pretty slick ratings app all in a bid to gather data. Rather than mine existing databases or pay other companies to license their information, they were able to garner attention via the app launch and gather their own. -------------------- if this is indeed the case, they should have been upfront about it. This is like taking users for a ride. 'Now that we have enough data, we're going to shut this thing down'
- sixQuarks 15y ago
  I don't buy that. Where did nextweb come up with the idea that the app was just an information gathering device? They "inferred" it from this quote: ------------ We are extremely grateful for all of your effort finding and rating the best things in the places around you. We’ve discovered thousands of awesome pizzas, pastas, coffees, teas… and roller coasters, zoo exhibits, paintings, sculptures, vistas… and sodas, salads, sliders, soups… and so much more. ---------- That's reading into it way too much. Oink was a beautifully designed app. If they just wanted to gather info, I don't think they would have spent so much time making it look good. I think it just didn't work out the way they wanted it to, they are learning from this experience and quickly discarding what doesn't work and moving on to the next thing.
faramarz 15y ago
I'm not sure if this was more of a "fail fast, move fast" effort or that they realized it was stupid to begin with.
deleted 15y ago
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phatbyte 15y ago
How come Oink didn't got any traction, even with all the publicity they did everywhere when it was launched? When oik hit the app store I thought "god, If only I have 1% of kevin rose visibility to use it". I guess this ain't enough. I think people are getting tired of using apps to tag stuff, take pictures, "like" this and that, etc... It feels like we are working for a company and not having fun or create anything, and Oink! just gave me reason to think this way even more firmly. There's no market for this anymore, because we don't have that much time to spent in dozens of different communities, and so,the less populated die. So please, if you want to build something, please work on something real and that actual solves something, not another Flickr meets Facebook/twitter app.
- AznHisoka 15y ago
  Yep, you're right. What was the purpose of Oink? There weren't a ton of reviews or opinions - not enough anyway for it to be vastly useful as a replacement to Yelp. And it wasn't no Angry Birds so why even use it in the first place? And they got a bunch of publicity, but ask yourself this question: of all the apps you reach about in Techcrunch, Mashable, etc, what % do you actually use? Publicity doesn't always translate to lots of users. They probably got a ton of initial downloads from curious geeks, but that's about it. Their churn rate was probably ridiculously high. Publicity is pretty good for 1 thing for sure: search engine rankings, and Oink wasn't a website.
  - kin 15y ago
    I wasn't a fan of Oink from the beginning. On its first use I was able to like such arbitrary things like my own T-shirt, or a piece of gum on the floor. I knew right then this was going to get way too noisy and it did. I do see where they're coming from though. The reputation system was supposed to balance this out. Kind of like social news websites where people submit tons of links. Somehow through upvoting things become relevant no longer noisy and I'm pretty sure that's what Oink was going for. It was all very well designed. I think a lot of people who used it didn't treat it that way. They treated it as another review site, which it also was. But treating it that way makes it such a chore to "build" and so eventually we all lost the point of it all.
OoTheNigerian 15y ago
IMHO it would have been better PR to "pivot" even if it is to an entirely different thing. It would sound more respectful to people that used the app, covered the app and those that cheered them on. I'd really be interested in seeing what next they build.
- faramarz 15y ago
  Totally agree. This was a PR fail. Take note folks
- dkrich 15y ago
  No offense, but why are you interested in seeing what they build next? Seems to me they are nothing more than a small group of overfunded kids with computers.
  - OoTheNigerian 15y ago
    Interested, not excited. I want to see the "better idea". I am suspecting this episode will offend people who are working real hard on what they think is are more important ideas and are struggling to get finding, only for Kevin to throw away millions for fun.
unreal37 15y ago
What the.... I'm super surprised by this, and Kevin Rose just lost a couple of points of respect in my book. Must be nice to have investors who will throw money at you, so that you can give a half-hearted effort at something (or maybe less than half) only to shut it down a few months later to "try something else". It's like ADD at the business level. Terrible decision. I don't even think anyone even tried to make this a success.
- ohgodthecat 15y ago
  Were the investors throwing money at oink or at milk? If it is the latter this decision makes sense. Using money to fund ideas that may or may not pan out is an interesting concept and kind of cool and if they decide to throw out ideas that don't work rather than stick to it that just defines what milk is.
  - speg 15y ago
    Milk. The whole point of Milk is to pump out lots of ideas (and hope one sticks). It would be against their mission statement to keep Oinking.
    - unreal37 15y ago
      So as a consumer, why would anyone ever even try Milk's products until they clearly become viable? You are being asked to give tons of your time and energy to build out their product (user generated content), recommend it to your friends, and do their word of mouth marketing, and in return the company has no loyalty to you unless its spectacularly successful. And in contrast to the Milk model, you have sites like Delicious, Flickr, and even Digg itself which still operate even after the original founders have moved on.
      - speg 15y ago
        Oink was free, so why not?
Andrex 15y ago
Kind of a shame, I was looking forward to an Android version of Oink. Now it's too late. :( Although they were taking quite a while to put it out.
conorwade 15y ago
People need to get over this. Milk originally said that they would try a series of experiments, that would be killed if the required traction wasn't there. We will see what happens with their next effort.
didip 15y ago
What did Oink do?
siglesias 15y ago
I think one of the biggest hurdles to ranking and rating systems is how the data comes in. Imagine a two-dimensional histogram where Y is the number of ratings and all of the items are arranged on the X axis. What I saw with Oink was this X axis (the number of items to be rated) growing faster than the Y axis (the number of ratings): in effect, noise growing faster than signal. They weren't aggressive enough in filtering out duplicate entries and/or working with businesses to upload their catalogs onto Oink so users didn't have to add (and re-add) them. Not saying it was an easy task, but essentially this is the main challenge to such a product.
iamjoshua 15y ago
This is a good example of how extremely hungry entrepreneurs often have the advantage. Established companies and serial entrepreneurs rarely stick with their ideas if there isn't immediate success. Yet most large successes take time to mature and build momentum. Really sad to see kevin and milk give up so fast.
wavephorm 15y ago
If they didn't really believe in this "innovative" idea of taking pictures of food and posting them on the internet, and didn't have the resources and conviction to see it through, then why will they be more successful next time?
JulianMiller520 15y ago
Glad they are moving on. IMHO never understood what problem OINK was solving or why so many people ran to support it simply because Kevin Rose was attached. I have the utmost respect for Kevin but oink was very "emperor's new clothes" for me. I wondered what everyone was looking at while I saw nothing but junk
zinssmeister 15y ago
Called this one a few months ago https://twitter.com/#!/zinssmeister/status/155144625382883328 https://twitter.com/#!/zinssmeister/status/15514462538288332... But actually I am still surprised how quick this got axed. As a user you gotta ask yourself these days if it's worth investing a lot of time and content into a new app. An App that might be shut down, just because the builders want to go try out a new idea. To give Kevin Rose some credit here, he always state up front that Milk was going to "try" different ideas and move on to another if one wasn't bringing the right amount of traction. Now I hoped that the transition over to a new idea wouldn't mean the instand death of the previous and that's probably the biggest surprise here.
- nikcub 15y ago
  if only you could make money from not investing in things
  - bithive123 15y ago
    A penny saved...
deepkut 15y ago
Question: what is the font they used for the "OINK" logo? If anyone has an idea, I would love to know. What the Font was unsuccessful in determining it.
- simantel 15y ago
  Looks like Gotham Black to me.
garraeth 15y ago
First line sheds a bit of light on their philosophy: "We started Milk Inc. (the company behind Oink) to rapidly build and test out new ideas. Oink was our first test and, in preparing to move onto the next project..." Sounds like they are trying for a shotgun approach (didn't the company behind Angry Birds do the same thing? I don't know the official business term for this methodology). Where they have an internal API/system to roll out an idea FAST, then see if it gains any traction within their internal goal (whatever short period of time they set for themselves), and if not, scrap it to move onto the next thing...? I think that works great for little one-off games. But with websites where people are expecting it to be around for years? Will that burn users too often, too fast, and sully your reputation? I don't know. I'm curious. (imo, I don't know if I'd have put those two sentences in the shut-down notice - sounds like they were just experimenting with the site to see if they could make a quick buck, weren't really serious about it unless the $ or pageviews started flowing, and the users were just the guinea pigs...but that's just me.)
- samstave 15y ago
  Milk was founded/funded on cult of personality rather than quality of ideas. I wish them success, but maybe they should spend more time thinking up a quality idea instead of sitting around on a bunch of couches drinking beer and tea appreciating the brilliance of their hipsterness through their macbooks.
jjacobson 15y ago
"It's better to burn out, than fade away"
dustineichler 15y ago
Make the source code available; the app and website!
- joering2 15y ago
  it seems like this move, an open database of photos, tags and content would somehow "save" Kevin's image, of course in the eyes of those who point him down.
- mikejarema 15y ago
  Or how about finding a new home for the product (eg. another startup, media co., anyone!). While I understand there is a large amount of effort involved in transacting something like that, certainly there is a legitimate & appropriate organization out there who could foster and grow the community that is Oink. This action would mildly address the concerns about continuity and trust in product longevity.
  - dustineichler 15y ago
    Now I'm kinda wondering why they didn't spin this out on it's own like a startup assembly line.
cft11 15y ago
Mark my words: no tech startup founded by a hipster will ever succeed.
- pothibo 15y ago
  What a stupid statement. I'm nowhere close of being a hispter but this remark is so stupid and useless that I don't understand how you had the guts to press Enter
  - TillE 15y ago
    It's kind of amusing to see how "hipster" has become a catch-all insult, particularly in nerd communities. Are you youngish and slightly unusual in a way that I don't like? Hipster! I don't like Kevin Rose, but c'mon, at least find some more creative insults.
neovive 15y ago
What a coincidence! This just reminded me to migrate my SimpleGeo apps; they are also shutting down on March 31.
rzbn 15y ago
This is the whole idea of Milk. Keep making stuff until it "makes it" Same thing as Color. Oink was aiming at a 4sq + instagram hybrid. Didn't achieve the set goal. Time to move on
rglover 15y ago
This really speaks to how we should look at apps, specifically those based around social networks. Consider the analogy of an app vis à vis a roller disco. The roller disco was a fad, so why can't apps and their subsequent networks be "fads" too? Maybe that's the point: they're cool because they're relevant now. Maybe longevity isn't the goal. We should enjoy the ephemeral things (so later we can say "remember when...").
SandersAK 15y ago
I think this is really tough on users. But it's also indicative of Rose's power and pull with a large user base. I think people will forgive him and sign up to his next new thing because he's a smart dude and has a great team. For better or worse, this is kindof a blip on the cosmic radar, even in the tech world. I dunno how I'd react if I was an investor - I guess you invest in a guy like that because you're long on him, and in that case, the failures don't matter as long as your equity carries over.
eoghan 15y ago
So many armchair commentators… Nobody here has the data about Oink that Milk do. The data required to tell if this venture was something worth doubling-down on or moving on from. Business is an art. And great artists know that moving forward often requires you to say "this didn't work, let's start again." "If you want to live your life ... as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away." — Steve Jobs
- newobj 15y ago
  You can also paint (no pun intended) metaphors about artists dedicating their whole lives to something, seeing through their vision to the point of insanity, dying broke and starving only to be appreciated for their genius later on. "____ is an art" is often used as an excuse when ____ is being approached with a total lack of discipline...
  - mikemoka 15y ago
    I second that
  - barkingcat 15y ago
    But within that perserverence is the willingness to scap everything and restart again. Some authors rewrite their books over and over again. I know in the crafting of a story that held firm to my vision, I had over 30 or 40 rough drafts that went into /dev/null. I will never know if any of those drafts were better than my final story, but my art is is in holding strong to my vision, and to be willing to discard, rewrite, ruthlessly edit, and endlessly revisit every single one of my assumptions about the plot, characters, mood, structure. That is art, and no amount of armchair commentation will capture the beauty, frustration, and joy within this process. Yes. It is possible for an artist to spend an entirety of his/her life reworking one single piece. and yes - it is true that within this work, he/she would have said no a million times to a million possible decisions, and restarted from scratch a million times.
- stephenapple 15y ago
  Also if return on investment is Milk's primary goal then killing a product that's not working to push 100% of their resources to their next thing is the best thing they could do for investors. If the signs are there (which they obviously are internally) then better kill it now and start on the next thing earlier than draw it out longer. I think people are getting Oink and Milk confused. Milk received the capital which makes killing Oink more of an internal decision. I think it's a wise. Also it's a little interesting people are commenting about the effort behind the product. Sure the timeline is short, but I feel it's the effort that really makes Oink stand out and fall harder.
syed123 15y ago
perhaps kevin rose is joining the bandwagon of SoLoMo to compete with the likes of Highlight, http://LetsLunch.com http://LetsLunch.com, Glancee etc
timmm 15y ago
I think it's funny how people consider Kevin Rose a seasoned entrepreneur... what a joke. Their process is throw it against the wall and see what sticks because they apparently have no idea what actually constitutes a good idea. These guys are clueless, straight up. What an embarrassment. How many Apple products have failed? How many 37Signals products failed?
woodall 15y ago
Lots of Kevin Rose hate in this thread for whatever reason. Reads a lot like Reddit...
barrynolan 15y ago
Fundamentally its a question of Novelty versus Utility. Is it just this months new, new thing, or is it something that fundamentally solves a problem, makes your live easier/better, or sates a desire. Most of the 1st wave of apps are (understandably) novelties...its the utility equation that will be the next wave
- jordhy 15y ago
  I agree. This looks like they were testing some hypotheses and they didn't prove to be true. Maybe the engagement metrics just weren't there.
moocow01 15y ago
Disregarding all the traditional startup acumen (lean, agile, blah blah blah), in an environment where businesses are expected to be tested and discarded within months how will our 'ecosystem' tackle the bigger more meaningful problems that have a deferred payout for seeing it through? It seems to me that real innovation comes a lot more from long hard teeth grinding slogs than it does from rapid iteration. It seems like the startup environment has lately transitioned to business methods that largely aim at finding the most efficient means to get the last of the low hanging fruits.
marcamillion 15y ago
Wow...the vitriol to Kevin here is ridiculous (or telling - depending on your perspective). HN is supposed to be a place where people are encouraged to start things - with the acknowledgement that not everything will work out and we are the testing ground for many of those new ideas. The price for being a cutting-edge digirati is that many of the services you use, will not survive. If you can't deal with that, wait until they go mainstream and have some viable way to stay alive. Don't complain about it. Yes, Kevin has raised money on his name - but why all the hate? Let him do his thing and you do yours. Try launching a product and building your own, rather than criticizing other efforts. Either way, bootstrapping, getting funding, pivoting, abandoning is not easy. Doing it with such public scrutiny is even harder. Take a chill pill and take solace in the fact that you are in the digirati that can even see these things. Your mom likely doesn't even know what Oink is. If you would rather be like her, then stop hanging out here and complaining.
artist777 15y ago
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loso 15y ago
Trying different business models is a great thing. Businesses become successful in different ways. When they announced Milk they said that this would be their business model and they have stuck with it. It is going to be interesting to see how this works out in the end.
Shane_Wolf 15y ago
Obviously start-ups pivot all the time, but Oink entered a crowded space of ratings and reviews. While they got the 150,000 sign-ups it was mostly due to the fact that it was Kevin Rose. I think they realized it would be hard to be real profitable quickly and that people may not want to review items inside places. I think all you need is a review of the business. Plus, its not like Rose cant just move on anyways. He's got plenty of $$ and connections to fund his next venture.
jcromartie 15y ago
First thought: what the heck is Oink?
dirkdk 15y ago
being a serial entrepreneur is easy, making a huge success of every endeavor is hard. 9 out of 10 startups die, so even if you are Kevin Rose this means you will probably have more failures than successes. Kill it and move on. Just make sure you can say you gave it your utmost best.
dreadsword 15y ago
This seems a bit... premature. Not that I've used it. But in all seriousness, if Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook had shut down after the first few mediocre months... well, we'd probably all be better off. But you get the picture. Was Kevin Rose involved in Pownce? That felt like another "meh" effort from the former Diggers.
sirwanqutbi 15y ago
What is it about Kevin Rose and commitment ?
benackles 15y ago
Seeing news like this makes me less inclined to be an early adopter in Milk's next project. Going into business with the primary intent to start a lot of projects and fail until one succeeds seems like a recipe for failure. While it's always an inherent consideration in every startup, it should never be your core strategy. Unfortunately for Milk, it seems like that was exactly what they had in mind. Kevin has a personality that makes people WANT him to succeed, but every user has their limits on how much they will continue to forgive.
rdssassin 15y ago
Read that as oink.de legendary torrent site
pacomerh 15y ago
I'm not very surprised by this decision, I like Kevin Rose and his ideas, but in my opinion OINK was late to the game. In a time where you have so many app options to check-in or review things, this app becomes very unnecessary. I guess this proves that even a great design and great execution are not enough, you also need a clever idea huh. What do you think?.
adrian201 15y ago
I applaud the Milk folks in their first effort, but I must say if you've used Oink you would realize that: 1. it's not sticky 2. it's value proposition is relatively low When it launched I played around with it for a few weeks before eventually uninstalling. Reason being, when you can check-in to places via FourSquare, recommend food/items you like from restaurants via Yelp, why would you use a system like Oink (especially when it has a smaller social-footprint than the aforementioned services)? Maybe this app was awesome for you Bay area folks, but in NYC I never found much when I used the “find nearby” feature. Their interface was also inundated with too many data points as well (see there item detail screen). I think the next wave of apps, now that we're experiencing check-in fatigue, is "passive utility" apps (Highlight, Sonar, etc). Their value can be ascertained with little friction (literally all you have to do is walk by someone) and there's tremendous room expansion on its core concept (dating based on shared interests, linkedin introductions based on shared contacts, etc.).
- baddox 15y ago
  It wasn't bad for us bay area folks, but it still lacked utility. I occasionally browsed the app because its feeds we're filled with big pictures of interesting local stuff (mostly food). I added a few dishes to my todo list, but I can't say I ever went out of my way to try any. I also never really trusted the content like I do with Yelp, I just liked the feeds.
seanp2k2 15y ago
Sad to see it go. Oink was really fun for the few days I was using it :)
TheShrike 15y ago
When I read Milk Inc. the first, second and third thing that came to my mind is the Belgian vocal trance band: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_inc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_inc
helen842000 15y ago
I can't help but wonder what the cost would have been to keep it running, unsupported even? I knew Milk was going to do multiple apps - I didn't think they'd delete their old ones before they started on their new ones. It now seems apparent they're looking for 'the one' that sticks and they're not interested in building a portfolio of products with a strong fan-base. I would have thought keeping their early-adopter user base happy would have been a really valuable asset. I feel they'll get a less favourable uptake for their next app now, so if Oink didn't get the traction they were looking for they might struggle more next time.
waldr 15y ago
However you look at it, with the clout Rose has (over 1 mill twitter followers) whatever he does next will get a ton of press and interest,probably even more so given the quick shutdown of oink. So why not save some cash and go for something new, at least they've come out and said it rather than leaving it to slowly die and not commenting.
farhad667 15y ago
there are different philosophies on when to kill a project... and imho, this was way too quick. By way of personal example, it took us 2 years to build BizRate.com into something that could even get funded, another 5 years before it started making money as Shopzilla, and 9 years total before we had our "overnight success" -- Many points along the way we could easily have pulled the plug. Persistence / sticking to your vision is something that is sorely lacking these days. (Another more obvious example: How long did it take for Apple's design+hardware+software philosophy to strike a mainstream cord?) Timing aside, this method of "putting a bullet in its head" (which is not even a good expression to use colloquially), was a terribly callous way to treat their current users too... Especially given the fact that for a few thousand dollars a month (max) they could have kept the system rolling in the cloud indefinitely, without investing any time in it. They then could have put out feelers to find it's users / content a new home... (For example, our new start-up chee.rs would gladly have welcomed oink users -- in fact we're working on a quick oink importer as I write this. :) Or, even if they weren't interested in transitioning users to someone else, they could have kept things running at least until their next big idea came along to announce to their users: "Hey we've got this new great thing, come on over and now that we have it, we've decided to finally and reluctantly shutter Oink, because we hadn't seen it gain much traction. Sorry about letting you down... blah blah blah." Much better for PR than "We put a bullet in your head and moved on... But, we hope you'll join us again for another round as soon as your headache subsides."
- farhad667 15y ago
  Here's an importer to turn your old oinks into @cheers! :) http://chee.rs/oinkimport http://chee.rs/oinkimport
farhad667 15y ago
we're helping @oinkapp users cheer up! Here's an importer to turn your old oinks into @cheers! :) http://chee.rs/oinkimport http://chee.rs/oinkimport

173 points by HectorRamos 15y ago

Glad to hear that Kevin Rose is sticking to his guns. I wonder if the Milk team will tackle a harder problem next time around. Edit: Kevin Rose said he would kill off any project that wasn't gaining traction and he did just that. This is what I was referring to.

kappaknight 15y ago
I wonder if the Milk team will tackle actual problems the next time around?
LVB 15y ago
"Sticking to his guns" is not the first phrase that came to mind after reading that he'd canned Milk Inc's flagship product after only three months.
- speg 15y ago
  but that's not the point of Milk... Milk was founded on the idea of pumping out lots of small things and seeing if any of them stuck. If they kept Oink alive until it took off (if ever) they wouldn't be able to build the next thing.
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- AznHisoka 15y ago
  you gotta look at the conversion rate as well. If only 500 ppl used Pinterest years back, but 200+ people continued using it daily after 1 month, that's shows the product has very good potential, even though the total # of users is weak. That means you just gotta figure out to get more traction. If on the other hand, you find out only 1 person is still using it after a month, that means it's a product fit problem, and sticking to your guns is probably futile.
- delsarto 15y ago
  I think the guns the parent poster is referring to was the widely publicised statement that they would "shoot in the head" their projects if they weren't working. So they are sticking to that particular gun, as it were
  - togasystems 15y ago
    That is exactly what I was talking about.

jgrahamc 15y ago

I was an Oink user and deleted it a few weeks ago from my phone. It seemed like an intriguing idea (to see recommendations of things rather than places), but ultimately there are only so many photographs of beers, burgers and coffees that one can stare at. But I really do appreciate that they offer a way to download my data as I've done it and discovered a beer I'd forgotten about: http://www.meantimebrewing.com/our-beers/meantime-wheat http://www.meantimebrewing.com/our-beers/meantime-wheat

jmathai 15y ago
> ultimately there are only so many photographs of beers, burgers and coffees that one can stare at. Instagram hopes to prove you wrong.

pagehub 15y ago

Why would anyone bother committing to one of their products again if they just arbitrarily shut things down when they are working on the next big thing?!

phereford 15y ago
Agreed. If I were a user, I'd feel pretty burned getting attached to an application then have the company "shut down" to work on something better. Maybe oink just wasn't driving the engagement they wanted (or something).
angryasian 15y ago
yep never investing time into another Kevin Rose product. I loved pownce and i liked oink. Hes let me down too many times.

mmastrac 15y ago

As a founder of a company in the same space (chee.rs) I was surprised to see them pivot from the idea so quickly. Our internal analysis of share/engagement metrics was showing that our own users were way more engaged than Oink's. We were expecting that if they noticed us in the market they'd have been working on rev 2 of the product - gathering intel from products like ours and integrating it - rather than shutting it down.

kappaknight 15y ago
Since you guys are in the same space. What are you seeing that the rest of us are missing? Is there an actual business around the idea? Oink was maybe useful when items were attached to locations. As soon as people started like Macbook Pros and other free standing stuff, it became completely pointless for me. (Too cluttered and not enough recommendation value.)
- mmastrac 15y ago
  We're pretty confident there's a big business in our space. chee.rs is focused on the positive experiences in our users lives, rather than rating every little thing. Users post what they love (it's freeform: it can be music, restaurants or just general concepts), and other users pile on with positive reenforcement. What we're seeing is that users get hooked on having a space dedicated to things that people like and spend hours at a time (literally - like spending 3+ hours on some nights) in the app just going through what other people like, and posting their own content from time-to-time. We've had a few businesses approach us cold after being cheered, asking if they could offer some sort of coupon, or other offer to users who cheer on their business. That's something we haven't really figured out how to run with and/or monetize yet. I can't really explain what gets these users hooked, but you can see the sort of engagement we're seeing here: http://chee.rs/1433322 http://chee.rs/1433322
  - darkane 15y ago
    Just curious. Why are you ruining such a good domain by redirecting to www.chee.rs?

shareme 15y ago

I have a question.. How ethical is this to set something up to obviously collect 'free data'?

zyfo 15y ago

A shame to see Oink getting shut down again.

jonursenbach 15y ago
Again?
- alaskamiller 15y ago
  Joke is the music pirate club Oink was shutdown.
aw3c2 15y ago
Oink.me.uk/.cd getting shut down made me quit caring about commercial music. And seeing how Alan was declared non-guilty later made me really really angry (the most awesome music service was killed and there was no reason or legislation to it).

unohoo 15y ago

it seems like they intended to use oink for data gathering: from: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-milk-shutters-its-first-app-oink-after-just-over-3-months/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-milk-shutt... ------------------------- This is an interesting case. It seems like the group designed, built and shipped a pretty slick ratings app all in a bid to gather data. Rather than mine existing databases or pay other companies to license their information, they were able to garner attention via the app launch and gather their own. -------------------- if this is indeed the case, they should have been upfront about it. This is like taking users for a ride. 'Now that we have enough data, we're going to shut this thing down'

sixQuarks 15y ago
I don't buy that. Where did nextweb come up with the idea that the app was just an information gathering device? They "inferred" it from this quote: ------------ We are extremely grateful for all of your effort finding and rating the best things in the places around you. We’ve discovered thousands of awesome pizzas, pastas, coffees, teas… and roller coasters, zoo exhibits, paintings, sculptures, vistas… and sodas, salads, sliders, soups… and so much more. ---------- That's reading into it way too much. Oink was a beautifully designed app. If they just wanted to gather info, I don't think they would have spent so much time making it look good. I think it just didn't work out the way they wanted it to, they are learning from this experience and quickly discarding what doesn't work and moving on to the next thing.

faramarz 15y ago

I'm not sure if this was more of a "fail fast, move fast" effort or that they realized it was stupid to begin with.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

phatbyte 15y ago

How come Oink didn't got any traction, even with all the publicity they did everywhere when it was launched? When oik hit the app store I thought "god, If only I have 1% of kevin rose visibility to use it". I guess this ain't enough. I think people are getting tired of using apps to tag stuff, take pictures, "like" this and that, etc... It feels like we are working for a company and not having fun or create anything, and Oink! just gave me reason to think this way even more firmly. There's no market for this anymore, because we don't have that much time to spent in dozens of different communities, and so,the less populated die. So please, if you want to build something, please work on something real and that actual solves something, not another Flickr meets Facebook/twitter app.

AznHisoka 15y ago
Yep, you're right. What was the purpose of Oink? There weren't a ton of reviews or opinions - not enough anyway for it to be vastly useful as a replacement to Yelp. And it wasn't no Angry Birds so why even use it in the first place? And they got a bunch of publicity, but ask yourself this question: of all the apps you reach about in Techcrunch, Mashable, etc, what % do you actually use? Publicity doesn't always translate to lots of users. They probably got a ton of initial downloads from curious geeks, but that's about it. Their churn rate was probably ridiculously high. Publicity is pretty good for 1 thing for sure: search engine rankings, and Oink wasn't a website.
- kin 15y ago
  I wasn't a fan of Oink from the beginning. On its first use I was able to like such arbitrary things like my own T-shirt, or a piece of gum on the floor. I knew right then this was going to get way too noisy and it did. I do see where they're coming from though. The reputation system was supposed to balance this out. Kind of like social news websites where people submit tons of links. Somehow through upvoting things become relevant no longer noisy and I'm pretty sure that's what Oink was going for. It was all very well designed. I think a lot of people who used it didn't treat it that way. They treated it as another review site, which it also was. But treating it that way makes it such a chore to "build" and so eventually we all lost the point of it all.

OoTheNigerian 15y ago

IMHO it would have been better PR to "pivot" even if it is to an entirely different thing. It would sound more respectful to people that used the app, covered the app and those that cheered them on. I'd really be interested in seeing what next they build.

faramarz 15y ago
Totally agree. This was a PR fail. Take note folks
dkrich 15y ago
No offense, but why are you interested in seeing what they build next? Seems to me they are nothing more than a small group of overfunded kids with computers.
- OoTheNigerian 15y ago
  Interested, not excited. I want to see the "better idea". I am suspecting this episode will offend people who are working real hard on what they think is are more important ideas and are struggling to get finding, only for Kevin to throw away millions for fun.

unreal37 15y ago

What the.... I'm super surprised by this, and Kevin Rose just lost a couple of points of respect in my book. Must be nice to have investors who will throw money at you, so that you can give a half-hearted effort at something (or maybe less than half) only to shut it down a few months later to "try something else". It's like ADD at the business level. Terrible decision. I don't even think anyone even tried to make this a success.

ohgodthecat 15y ago
Were the investors throwing money at oink or at milk? If it is the latter this decision makes sense. Using money to fund ideas that may or may not pan out is an interesting concept and kind of cool and if they decide to throw out ideas that don't work rather than stick to it that just defines what milk is.
- speg 15y ago
  Milk. The whole point of Milk is to pump out lots of ideas (and hope one sticks). It would be against their mission statement to keep Oinking.
  - unreal37 15y ago
    So as a consumer, why would anyone ever even try Milk's products until they clearly become viable? You are being asked to give tons of your time and energy to build out their product (user generated content), recommend it to your friends, and do their word of mouth marketing, and in return the company has no loyalty to you unless its spectacularly successful. And in contrast to the Milk model, you have sites like Delicious, Flickr, and even Digg itself which still operate even after the original founders have moved on.
    - speg 15y ago
      Oink was free, so why not?

Andrex 15y ago

Kind of a shame, I was looking forward to an Android version of Oink. Now it's too late. :( Although they were taking quite a while to put it out.

conorwade 15y ago

People need to get over this. Milk originally said that they would try a series of experiments, that would be killed if the required traction wasn't there. We will see what happens with their next effort.

didip 15y ago

What did Oink do?

siglesias 15y ago

I think one of the biggest hurdles to ranking and rating systems is how the data comes in. Imagine a two-dimensional histogram where Y is the number of ratings and all of the items are arranged on the X axis. What I saw with Oink was this X axis (the number of items to be rated) growing faster than the Y axis (the number of ratings): in effect, noise growing faster than signal. They weren't aggressive enough in filtering out duplicate entries and/or working with businesses to upload their catalogs onto Oink so users didn't have to add (and re-add) them. Not saying it was an easy task, but essentially this is the main challenge to such a product.

iamjoshua 15y ago

This is a good example of how extremely hungry entrepreneurs often have the advantage. Established companies and serial entrepreneurs rarely stick with their ideas if there isn't immediate success. Yet most large successes take time to mature and build momentum. Really sad to see kevin and milk give up so fast.

wavephorm 15y ago

If they didn't really believe in this "innovative" idea of taking pictures of food and posting them on the internet, and didn't have the resources and conviction to see it through, then why will they be more successful next time?

JulianMiller520 15y ago

Glad they are moving on. IMHO never understood what problem OINK was solving or why so many people ran to support it simply because Kevin Rose was attached. I have the utmost respect for Kevin but oink was very "emperor's new clothes" for me. I wondered what everyone was looking at while I saw nothing but junk

zinssmeister 15y ago

Called this one a few months ago https://twitter.com/#!/zinssmeister/status/155144625382883328 https://twitter.com/#!/zinssmeister/status/15514462538288332... But actually I am still surprised how quick this got axed. As a user you gotta ask yourself these days if it's worth investing a lot of time and content into a new app. An App that might be shut down, just because the builders want to go try out a new idea. To give Kevin Rose some credit here, he always state up front that Milk was going to "try" different ideas and move on to another if one wasn't bringing the right amount of traction. Now I hoped that the transition over to a new idea wouldn't mean the instand death of the previous and that's probably the biggest surprise here.

nikcub 15y ago
if only you could make money from not investing in things
- bithive123 15y ago
  A penny saved...

deepkut 15y ago

Question: what is the font they used for the "OINK" logo? If anyone has an idea, I would love to know. What the Font was unsuccessful in determining it.

simantel 15y ago
Looks like Gotham Black to me.

garraeth 15y ago

First line sheds a bit of light on their philosophy: "We started Milk Inc. (the company behind Oink) to rapidly build and test out new ideas. Oink was our first test and, in preparing to move onto the next project..." Sounds like they are trying for a shotgun approach (didn't the company behind Angry Birds do the same thing? I don't know the official business term for this methodology). Where they have an internal API/system to roll out an idea FAST, then see if it gains any traction within their internal goal (whatever short period of time they set for themselves), and if not, scrap it to move onto the next thing...? I think that works great for little one-off games. But with websites where people are expecting it to be around for years? Will that burn users too often, too fast, and sully your reputation? I don't know. I'm curious. (imo, I don't know if I'd have put those two sentences in the shut-down notice - sounds like they were just experimenting with the site to see if they could make a quick buck, weren't really serious about it unless the $ or pageviews started flowing, and the users were just the guinea pigs...but that's just me.)

samstave 15y ago
Milk was founded/funded on cult of personality rather than quality of ideas. I wish them success, but maybe they should spend more time thinking up a quality idea instead of sitting around on a bunch of couches drinking beer and tea appreciating the brilliance of their hipsterness through their macbooks.

jjacobson 15y ago

"It's better to burn out, than fade away"

dustineichler 15y ago

Make the source code available; the app and website!

joering2 15y ago
it seems like this move, an open database of photos, tags and content would somehow "save" Kevin's image, of course in the eyes of those who point him down.
mikejarema 15y ago
Or how about finding a new home for the product (eg. another startup, media co., anyone!). While I understand there is a large amount of effort involved in transacting something like that, certainly there is a legitimate & appropriate organization out there who could foster and grow the community that is Oink. This action would mildly address the concerns about continuity and trust in product longevity.
- dustineichler 15y ago
  Now I'm kinda wondering why they didn't spin this out on it's own like a startup assembly line.

cft11 15y ago

Mark my words: no tech startup founded by a hipster will ever succeed.

pothibo 15y ago
What a stupid statement. I'm nowhere close of being a hispter but this remark is so stupid and useless that I don't understand how you had the guts to press Enter
- TillE 15y ago
  It's kind of amusing to see how "hipster" has become a catch-all insult, particularly in nerd communities. Are you youngish and slightly unusual in a way that I don't like? Hipster! I don't like Kevin Rose, but c'mon, at least find some more creative insults.

neovive 15y ago

What a coincidence! This just reminded me to migrate my SimpleGeo apps; they are also shutting down on March 31.

rzbn 15y ago

This is the whole idea of Milk. Keep making stuff until it "makes it" Same thing as Color. Oink was aiming at a 4sq + instagram hybrid. Didn't achieve the set goal. Time to move on

rglover 15y ago

This really speaks to how we should look at apps, specifically those based around social networks. Consider the analogy of an app vis à vis a roller disco. The roller disco was a fad, so why can't apps and their subsequent networks be "fads" too? Maybe that's the point: they're cool because they're relevant now. Maybe longevity isn't the goal. We should enjoy the ephemeral things (so later we can say "remember when...").

SandersAK 15y ago

I think this is really tough on users. But it's also indicative of Rose's power and pull with a large user base. I think people will forgive him and sign up to his next new thing because he's a smart dude and has a great team. For better or worse, this is kindof a blip on the cosmic radar, even in the tech world. I dunno how I'd react if I was an investor - I guess you invest in a guy like that because you're long on him, and in that case, the failures don't matter as long as your equity carries over.

eoghan 15y ago

So many armchair commentators… Nobody here has the data about Oink that Milk do. The data required to tell if this venture was something worth doubling-down on or moving on from. Business is an art. And great artists know that moving forward often requires you to say "this didn't work, let's start again." "If you want to live your life ... as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away." — Steve Jobs

newobj 15y ago
You can also paint (no pun intended) metaphors about artists dedicating their whole lives to something, seeing through their vision to the point of insanity, dying broke and starving only to be appreciated for their genius later on. "____ is an art" is often used as an excuse when ____ is being approached with a total lack of discipline...
- mikemoka 15y ago
  I second that
- barkingcat 15y ago
  But within that perserverence is the willingness to scap everything and restart again. Some authors rewrite their books over and over again. I know in the crafting of a story that held firm to my vision, I had over 30 or 40 rough drafts that went into /dev/null. I will never know if any of those drafts were better than my final story, but my art is is in holding strong to my vision, and to be willing to discard, rewrite, ruthlessly edit, and endlessly revisit every single one of my assumptions about the plot, characters, mood, structure. That is art, and no amount of armchair commentation will capture the beauty, frustration, and joy within this process. Yes. It is possible for an artist to spend an entirety of his/her life reworking one single piece. and yes - it is true that within this work, he/she would have said no a million times to a million possible decisions, and restarted from scratch a million times.
stephenapple 15y ago
Also if return on investment is Milk's primary goal then killing a product that's not working to push 100% of their resources to their next thing is the best thing they could do for investors. If the signs are there (which they obviously are internally) then better kill it now and start on the next thing earlier than draw it out longer. I think people are getting Oink and Milk confused. Milk received the capital which makes killing Oink more of an internal decision. I think it's a wise. Also it's a little interesting people are commenting about the effort behind the product. Sure the timeline is short, but I feel it's the effort that really makes Oink stand out and fall harder.

syed123 15y ago

perhaps kevin rose is joining the bandwagon of SoLoMo to compete with the likes of Highlight, http://LetsLunch.com http://LetsLunch.com, Glancee etc

timmm 15y ago

I think it's funny how people consider Kevin Rose a seasoned entrepreneur... what a joke. Their process is throw it against the wall and see what sticks because they apparently have no idea what actually constitutes a good idea. These guys are clueless, straight up. What an embarrassment. How many Apple products have failed? How many 37Signals products failed?

woodall 15y ago

Lots of Kevin Rose hate in this thread for whatever reason. Reads a lot like Reddit...

barrynolan 15y ago

Fundamentally its a question of Novelty versus Utility. Is it just this months new, new thing, or is it something that fundamentally solves a problem, makes your live easier/better, or sates a desire. Most of the 1st wave of apps are (understandably) novelties...its the utility equation that will be the next wave

jordhy 15y ago
I agree. This looks like they were testing some hypotheses and they didn't prove to be true. Maybe the engagement metrics just weren't there.

moocow01 15y ago

Disregarding all the traditional startup acumen (lean, agile, blah blah blah), in an environment where businesses are expected to be tested and discarded within months how will our 'ecosystem' tackle the bigger more meaningful problems that have a deferred payout for seeing it through? It seems to me that real innovation comes a lot more from long hard teeth grinding slogs than it does from rapid iteration. It seems like the startup environment has lately transitioned to business methods that largely aim at finding the most efficient means to get the last of the low hanging fruits.

marcamillion 15y ago

Wow...the vitriol to Kevin here is ridiculous (or telling - depending on your perspective). HN is supposed to be a place where people are encouraged to start things - with the acknowledgement that not everything will work out and we are the testing ground for many of those new ideas. The price for being a cutting-edge digirati is that many of the services you use, will not survive. If you can't deal with that, wait until they go mainstream and have some viable way to stay alive. Don't complain about it. Yes, Kevin has raised money on his name - but why all the hate? Let him do his thing and you do yours. Try launching a product and building your own, rather than criticizing other efforts. Either way, bootstrapping, getting funding, pivoting, abandoning is not easy. Doing it with such public scrutiny is even harder. Take a chill pill and take solace in the fact that you are in the digirati that can even see these things. Your mom likely doesn't even know what Oink is. If you would rather be like her, then stop hanging out here and complaining.

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loso 15y ago

Trying different business models is a great thing. Businesses become successful in different ways. When they announced Milk they said that this would be their business model and they have stuck with it. It is going to be interesting to see how this works out in the end.

Shane_Wolf 15y ago

Obviously start-ups pivot all the time, but Oink entered a crowded space of ratings and reviews. While they got the 150,000 sign-ups it was mostly due to the fact that it was Kevin Rose. I think they realized it would be hard to be real profitable quickly and that people may not want to review items inside places. I think all you need is a review of the business. Plus, its not like Rose cant just move on anyways. He's got plenty of $$ and connections to fund his next venture.

jcromartie 15y ago

First thought: what the heck is Oink?

dirkdk 15y ago

being a serial entrepreneur is easy, making a huge success of every endeavor is hard. 9 out of 10 startups die, so even if you are Kevin Rose this means you will probably have more failures than successes. Kill it and move on. Just make sure you can say you gave it your utmost best.

dreadsword 15y ago

This seems a bit... premature. Not that I've used it. But in all seriousness, if Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook had shut down after the first few mediocre months... well, we'd probably all be better off. But you get the picture. Was Kevin Rose involved in Pownce? That felt like another "meh" effort from the former Diggers.

sirwanqutbi 15y ago

What is it about Kevin Rose and commitment ?

benackles 15y ago

Seeing news like this makes me less inclined to be an early adopter in Milk's next project. Going into business with the primary intent to start a lot of projects and fail until one succeeds seems like a recipe for failure. While it's always an inherent consideration in every startup, it should never be your core strategy. Unfortunately for Milk, it seems like that was exactly what they had in mind. Kevin has a personality that makes people WANT him to succeed, but every user has their limits on how much they will continue to forgive.

rdssassin 15y ago

Read that as oink.de legendary torrent site

pacomerh 15y ago

I'm not very surprised by this decision, I like Kevin Rose and his ideas, but in my opinion OINK was late to the game. In a time where you have so many app options to check-in or review things, this app becomes very unnecessary. I guess this proves that even a great design and great execution are not enough, you also need a clever idea huh. What do you think?.

adrian201 15y ago

I applaud the Milk folks in their first effort, but I must say if you've used Oink you would realize that: 1. it's not sticky 2. it's value proposition is relatively low When it launched I played around with it for a few weeks before eventually uninstalling. Reason being, when you can check-in to places via FourSquare, recommend food/items you like from restaurants via Yelp, why would you use a system like Oink (especially when it has a smaller social-footprint than the aforementioned services)? Maybe this app was awesome for you Bay area folks, but in NYC I never found much when I used the “find nearby” feature. Their interface was also inundated with too many data points as well (see there item detail screen). I think the next wave of apps, now that we're experiencing check-in fatigue, is "passive utility" apps (Highlight, Sonar, etc). Their value can be ascertained with little friction (literally all you have to do is walk by someone) and there's tremendous room expansion on its core concept (dating based on shared interests, linkedin introductions based on shared contacts, etc.).

baddox 15y ago
It wasn't bad for us bay area folks, but it still lacked utility. I occasionally browsed the app because its feeds we're filled with big pictures of interesting local stuff (mostly food). I added a few dishes to my todo list, but I can't say I ever went out of my way to try any. I also never really trusted the content like I do with Yelp, I just liked the feeds.

seanp2k2 15y ago

Sad to see it go. Oink was really fun for the few days I was using it :)

TheShrike 15y ago

When I read Milk Inc. the first, second and third thing that came to my mind is the Belgian vocal trance band: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_inc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_inc

helen842000 15y ago

I can't help but wonder what the cost would have been to keep it running, unsupported even? I knew Milk was going to do multiple apps - I didn't think they'd delete their old ones before they started on their new ones. It now seems apparent they're looking for 'the one' that sticks and they're not interested in building a portfolio of products with a strong fan-base. I would have thought keeping their early-adopter user base happy would have been a really valuable asset. I feel they'll get a less favourable uptake for their next app now, so if Oink didn't get the traction they were looking for they might struggle more next time.

waldr 15y ago

However you look at it, with the clout Rose has (over 1 mill twitter followers) whatever he does next will get a ton of press and interest,probably even more so given the quick shutdown of oink. So why not save some cash and go for something new, at least they've come out and said it rather than leaving it to slowly die and not commenting.

farhad667 15y ago

there are different philosophies on when to kill a project... and imho, this was way too quick. By way of personal example, it took us 2 years to build BizRate.com into something that could even get funded, another 5 years before it started making money as Shopzilla, and 9 years total before we had our "overnight success" -- Many points along the way we could easily have pulled the plug. Persistence / sticking to your vision is something that is sorely lacking these days. (Another more obvious example: How long did it take for Apple's design+hardware+software philosophy to strike a mainstream cord?) Timing aside, this method of "putting a bullet in its head" (which is not even a good expression to use colloquially), was a terribly callous way to treat their current users too... Especially given the fact that for a few thousand dollars a month (max) they could have kept the system rolling in the cloud indefinitely, without investing any time in it. They then could have put out feelers to find it's users / content a new home... (For example, our new start-up chee.rs would gladly have welcomed oink users -- in fact we're working on a quick oink importer as I write this. :) Or, even if they weren't interested in transitioning users to someone else, they could have kept things running at least until their next big idea came along to announce to their users: "Hey we've got this new great thing, come on over and now that we have it, we've decided to finally and reluctantly shutter Oink, because we hadn't seen it gain much traction. Sorry about letting you down... blah blah blah." Much better for PR than "We put a bullet in your head and moved on... But, we hope you'll join us again for another round as soon as your headache subsides."

farhad667 15y ago
Here's an importer to turn your old oinks into @cheers! :) http://chee.rs/oinkimport http://chee.rs/oinkimport

farhad667 15y ago

we're helping @oinkapp users cheer up! Here's an importer to turn your old oinks into @cheers! :) http://chee.rs/oinkimport http://chee.rs/oinkimport