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The main question is whether this will lead to a flywheel effect, where adoption is self-reinforcing. Because we've been seeing that in the Netherlands, a small

by Vinnl 2y ago

The main question is whether this will lead to a flywheel effect, where adoption is self-reinforcing. Because we've been seeing that in the Netherlands, a small country that is nevertheless now in the top 5 countries with most Signal users, where growth is now 25 times the usual rate. That is still a quite higher rate than: > the week’s rate of adoption has been twice that of a typical week for 2025, which in turn was twice that of a typical week the same time last year. Market penetration here is getting significant enough for more and more people. [1] https://signalapp.nl/signal-app-nieuws/nederland-top-5-land-voor-signal-veel-meer-gebruikers-dan-gedacht/ https://signalapp.nl/signal-app-nieuws/nederland-top-5-land-... [2] https://signalapp.nl/signal-app-nieuws/nederlanders-kiezen-massaal-voor-signal-dagelijkse-registraties-met-2500-gestegen/ https://signalapp.nl/signal-app-nieuws/nederlanders-kiezen-m...

upofadown 2y ago
If Signal gets too popular then server costs will become significant. Signal needs a viable business model to survive. The big weakness here is that there is only one entity that can run the servers. If that server goes away then any attempt to start it up again would have to do so at the high level of usage that originally killed Signal. Signal is, alas, merely a project. It will never morph into something like email that can withstand server running entities disappearing. So huge popularity could actually be a bad thing...
- chimeracoder 2y ago
  > If Signal gets too popular then server costs will become significant. Signal needs a viable business model to survive. Signal is an incredibly lightweight design. If all users donated $0.60/year, or 5¢/month, that would sustain operations and overhead. Compared to most other services, that's an insanely low cost per user. EDIT: It's actually way less than even what I remembered - they only need about $0.60/user/year in order to break even, not $3/user/month.
  - jacksnipe 2y ago
    Sure, but how would they go about capturing that money?
    - nine_k 2y ago
      As usual, by having 1% of the users pay 100x the rate, because $60/y aka $5/mo is nothing to them. That is, identify well-moneyed users and offer them something substantially-looking but trivial to support. Twitter/X's blue marks are a perfect example.
      - AlecSchueler 2y ago
        Is this the one percent fallacy? Would 0.01% of users be willing to pay 10000x that amount?
        chimeracoder 2y ago
        > Would 0.01% of users be willing to pay 10000x that amount? Apparently so, since Signal broke even last year.
        AlecSchueler 2y ago
        But we were talking about a future situation where it became popular enough that the costs became much more considerable.
  - rurp 2y ago
    That $3/month figure actually makes me more concerned. Sure it's low for a business with revenue but donation funded services rarely get donations from more than a few percent of their users. So Signal probably needs something like $30-40/month from people who actually donate, which seems unlikely.
    - chimeracoder 2y ago

by Vinnl 2y ago

upofadown 2y ago

If Signal gets too popular then server costs will become significant. Signal needs a viable business model to survive. The big weakness here is that there is only one entity that can run the servers. If that server goes away then any attempt to start it up again would have to do so at the high level of usage that originally killed Signal. Signal is, alas, merely a project. It will never morph into something like email that can withstand server running entities disappearing. So huge popularity could actually be a bad thing...

chimeracoder 2y ago
> If Signal gets too popular then server costs will become significant. Signal needs a viable business model to survive. Signal is an incredibly lightweight design. If all users donated $0.60/year, or 5¢/month, that would sustain operations and overhead. Compared to most other services, that's an insanely low cost per user. EDIT: It's actually way less than even what I remembered - they only need about $0.60/user/year in order to break even, not $3/user/month.
- jacksnipe 2y ago
  Sure, but how would they go about capturing that money?
  - nine_k 2y ago
    As usual, by having 1% of the users pay 100x the rate, because $60/y aka $5/mo is nothing to them. That is, identify well-moneyed users and offer them something substantially-looking but trivial to support. Twitter/X's blue marks are a perfect example.
    - AlecSchueler 2y ago
      Is this the one percent fallacy? Would 0.01% of users be willing to pay 10000x that amount?
      - chimeracoder 2y ago
        > Would 0.01% of users be willing to pay 10000x that amount? Apparently so, since Signal broke even last year.
        AlecSchueler 2y ago
        But we were talking about a future situation where it became popular enough that the costs became much more considerable.
- rurp 2y ago
  That $3/month figure actually makes me more concerned. Sure it's low for a business with revenue but donation funded services rarely get donations from more than a few percent of their users. So Signal probably needs something like $30-40/month from people who actually donate, which seems unlikely.
  - chimeracoder 2y ago