[Multicomp]

I like the idea, but 2 things.

1) where did they get the prices of $4.99 a week? Facebook's average revenue per user per quarter is ~$25. That's approximately $1.50 a week, for their most profitable section. Elsewhere, FB makes $6 ARPU per quarter, or around 37¢ a week. I'd be willing to pay $1 a month for a social network if it manages to get around the network effects etc. but ~$20(!) for something Facebook enables at no monetary cost? Yikes. But, I suppose that may just be the patreon effect.

2. Why is this iOS only? Limited resources excuses can be answered with 'do a mobile web so all mobiles can'. Is it the 'sometimes iPhone users tend to pay more for the same things Android users are too cheap to'?

I know the above can come off as somewhat harsh, but I do really like the business idea overall, I just want to discuss the implementation challenges.

[choward]

$4.99 a week has to be a joke, right? $20 a month is about double what I pay for Netflix and half of my phone bill. Just to send messages to people? I'm sure the article is leaving things out but as of right now I don't get this at all.

[noonespecial]

I'm actually not sure its enough. It looks like the only play this service has is the "country club" model. You're not paying $5/week to get in, you're paying it to keep the people who can't/won't pay that much out.

The question I'd really like to find out the answer to is will average net trolls pay real money to troll?

[Fjolsvith]

I bet this turns into a casual sex hookup app. Put out there you're interested and see what you get back.

[joegahona]

I had the same reaction. Not trying be a jerk, but this article sounds like a sponsored post, or something on the company's blog. I know it's not, but I've noticed this a lot in regular journalism these days, and as you mention it feels like the article is leaving a lot out. As is I can't figure out what problem this solves or, even if it is a good idea, how the features couldn't just be copied by Facebook.

[pavel_lishin]

> Just to send messages to people?

That's not what they're selling people. They're selling people a solution to loneliness.

[throwaway_law]

>They're selling people a solution to loneliness.

I'll one up you, they are selling hope. Odds are this will be seeded with a bunch of bots, and these lonely people may or maynot get some sense of temporary relief thinking they are interacting privately with someone else, when its really just a bot.

[pavel_lishin]

Oh yeah, you're absolutely right. I don't think they can deliver on what they're promising.

[throwaway_law]

I know its unfair and maybe even disparaging, especially my suggestion they would seed their own thing with bots...but the reality is the social network/SV startup well has been poisoned and so it would be my (our) own fault not to approach these things with a ton of skepticism.

>Today, a new social app is launching. Called Friended...Friended has raised a $500K seed round from investors...

That is what it is all about.

[vannevar]

That business model already exists, in the form of online dating sites:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/09/25/ftc_match_fake_user...

[the-dude]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

[brontide]

High price doesn't necessarily indicate a Veblen good. The best case for it not being a Veblen good is that its difficult to showcase status to the people who aren't subscribers, unlike a an expensive iPhone/purse/etc.

[pedalpete]

I'll agree it's a lot, but I wouldn't compare it to Netflix, Tinder is probably a closer comparable. Our pricing is also quite high, justification to employees who felt our price was too high is that content creation platforms, or platforms where users engage with the content are able to charge more than content consumption platforms where the content is a commodity for the most part.

[dlhavema]

Half your phone bill? Wow. Granted I have 3 people one the plan bit I'm more like 7x the monthly fee

[tiborsaas]

I spend $10 on my phone (prepaid) which is usually enough for 3-4 months :)

Yeah, I don't make many calls, usually I just ring someone that I'm there or schedule a meeting.

[dddw]

I really don't get the pricing of many many online services. I think if you did something like 1 or 2 bucks a month you'd win a lot of customers on a site like this. and they'd probably stay as well. I'm not saying 5 or 10 or 20 a month is expensive. But it is not as cheap as a beer or a bread. and having multiple of these 5 or 10 dollar services eventually does add up, and people eventually will cull the ones they deem too expensive or unnecessary. on the contrary if they just cost a buck or two (which in my opinion is probably more the actual value) I'd probably wouldn't go on a cull-cruise at least every halfyear

[rogerkirkness]

I love the outrage about $20/month. It's clear that social networks create almost no individual utility at all, and that the reason we have privacy violating ones in the first place is that people "really want it" but also really don't want to pay for it. Facebook will clearly win, based on the comments about pricing. People don't value privacy, they value free stuff.

[s3r3nity]

> It's clear that social networks create almost no individual utility at all...

That's a broad statement. I find a lot of utility in social networks like FB to keep me in close contact with my family on the other side of the country.

Yes I value the fact that it's free - there's a low barrier for folks in my family to join. There's no way in hell I'm going to convince my grandmother to pay for a social network; she has no interest in yet another subscription that offers no marginal value over the free services like FB or even Twitter.

Well...she _might_ if that was the _only_ way to contact me, but I personally wouldn't put her through the hassle of memorizing yet another account/password login.

[aldoushuxley001]

The comment your replying to said they would be willing to pay $1 a month for a social network, so there’s definitely appetite for paid social networks, but $20 a month is understandably a crazy price.

[rogerkirkness]

It's market failure because you'd have to find a way to basically compete with Facebook while your TAM/potential is 5x smaller.

[aldoushuxley001]

idk if people are downvoting me because they think $20 a month for a social network isn't crazy, or if they think that someone willing to pay $1 a month isn't a sign of appetite for paid social networks...

[jasode]

>Limited resources excuses can be answered with 'do a mobile web so all mobiles can'

There's always a delta of capabilities between HTML5+Javascript mobile web app vs native iOS/Android. (E.g. native app has more API access to device hardware like camera video, GPS, accelerometer, multi-touch pinch zoom, etc.) Even if HTML5+Javascript standards get the new capabilities in 2019's iOS 13 and Android 10, both Apple and Google are still adding new features to the native APIs (iOS 14+, Android 11+) which means that standard web apps will always lag behind in some way.

The question is if that delta of capability between web vs native matters for an app like Friended.

[tiborsaas]

I think they just want artificial exclusivity, similar to how Facebook was university only in the early stages.

You are not limited to browser technologies. There's React native, Flutter and some other cross platform frameworks. What super new OS level features a social messaging app needs?

[giancarlostoro]

> 2. Why is this iOS only? Limited resources excuses can be answered with 'do a mobile web so all mobiles can'. Is it the 'sometimes iPhone users tend to pay more for the same things Android users are too cheap to'?

Even simpler... Progressive Web Apps will install on both and I believe you can have a PWA in either app store... Code once. Run anywhere...

[snazz]

PWAs still feel very janky in real life. They’re slow, you can’t do any complex animations, weird bugs always show up, etc. Most importantly, they still feel like websites, which isn’t a good thing.

Reimplementing something of the complexity of Snapchat as a PWA would be impossible: seamless camera usage, real-time AR filters, smooth animations, swipe gestures, usable built-in maps, video without buffering, and it’s fast for their target audience (recent iPhone users).

[WA]

Depends. Which app does need complex animations? And you could very well build Twitter as a PWA (and probably FB). Maybe not Snapchat. Most apps aren't heavy on filters, camera and video.

[snazz]

That’s valid, I guess. I think that if a social network wants to take off today (especially amongst people under the age of 25), it’s going to need to be a little fancier than Twitter. But PWAs could replace a lot of the more basic applications that exist today.

[tiborsaas]

Not true, PWA-s has nothing to do with CSS/JS performance.

Check out: https://proxx.app/

[phoe-krk]

> ~$20(!) for something Facebook enables at no monetary cost?

These costs are not something that Facebook does not suffer - all these infrastructure, development, maintenance and other expenses exist for every online service.

In case of Facebook, though, these expenses are paid by you being not also the user, but also its main product. And, as much as I would like to think otherwise, Friended - as a VC-backed service - will also go in the same direction once it finishes its "growth" stage and enters the "milking" stage.

[AndrewDucker]

Wow. I hadn't realised that Facebook's ARPU was so high - or that it varied so much between regions!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

$35 in US/Canada, $11 in Europe seems like a startling difference! I wonder if advertising and privacy restrictions are the cause, or something else...

[organsnyder]

I could see GDPR easily making monetization of users more difficult.

[Kalium]

> 2. Why is this iOS only? Limited resources excuses can be answered with 'do a mobile web so all mobiles can'. Is it the 'sometimes iPhone users tend to pay more for the same things Android users are too cheap to'?

Generally the answer is that the founders / designers use iPhones, so it's what they prioritize.

[peteretep]

> Generally the answer is that the founders / designers use iPhones, so it's what they prioritize

My understanding is that people willing to pay for apps use iPhones

[enraged_camel]

>>Limited resources excuses can be answered with 'do a mobile web so all mobiles can'.

Nope, it really can't. It takes a lot of effort, and can be a major pain in the ass, to develop a web app UI to look good and work well on both mobile and desktop. Every single time I do it, I end up regretting it.

[gnicholas]

> where did they get the prices of $4.99 a week?

The TC article says this is the cost if you want to post a conversation starter more frequently than once every 8 hours, or for other advanced features. That sounds like a power-user feature to me (I post very infrequently on social media).

[newsbinator]

If dating sites are social networks to a degree, then compare this $4.99/week to what the major dating sites end up charging via their membership fees and tokens for things like seeing conversations, replying to conversations, seeing user photos, etc

[johnchristopher]

> 2. Why is this iOS only?

Remember when IG was iOs only ?