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Well, this is disappointing. It seemed like a nicely designed application, with an enthusiastic development team behind it. And now, within days, it's gone. If
by User8712 13y ago
Well, this is disappointing. It seemed like a nicely designed application, with an enthusiastic development team behind it. And now, within days, it's gone.
If they wanted to avoid piracy, I think it might have had some potential going the legal route as well. It would be a nice interface to browse legal movies, documentaries, web series, etc.
Strange decision, I could see a company like Netflix buying them out for a rather large sum of money, within a short period of time.
As far as using it as a stepping stone to future jobs, why wouldn't they run the application longer? They pulled the plug before it became a widespread success. It they waited longer, the name Popcorn Time would actually be recognizable, which would be great for their résumé, kind of like saying you developed Napster. Now, they'll mention they worked on Popcorn Time, and have to explain to everyone it was an app to stream torrents, that had a brief shelf life.
They really should have road this out longer. Even the name was catchy. Someone else is going to fork the project and achieve the success they would have earned.
- mbavio 13y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7401316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7401316
- lucb1e 13y ago> I could see a company like Netflix buying them out Really? I think Netflix would "suddenly" have each and every contract broken and no content can be watched on Netflix services ever again. Well, with the exception of anything that runs on Popcorn, of course.
- User8712 13y agoI never said Netflix would continue to run the application and let people stream illegal content. Let's break this down. First off, it's a perfect fit. The Popcorn Time audience streams the latest movies and tv series. This is exactly the audience Netflix wants to target. Popcorn Time hitting 100 million users doesn't seem far fetched. Netflix pays around $16 for each user that you refer to their free trial. Let's say Netflix buys Popcorn Time, converts it to movies that are in the public domain, and tries to refer everyone to the Netflix trial to continue streaming new films. We'll say 99% of people leave, and 1% take up the trial. That's 1 million trial users, which Netflix would currently pay 16 million dollars for in referral fees. In short, it could easily grow into an application worth tens of millions to a company like Netflix. The movie industry would love it. Netflix destroys the most popular service for illegally streaming movies, and they make some money off the Netflix subscribers. If someone makes a successful fork, maybe we'll see this happen.