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by tytso 889 days ago
There was definitely a certain amount of "I told you so" vibes, but I don't blame the author. It appears that he was attacked by a lot of Ello founders and fans for raising some cautionary notes. And as it turns out, he was right and they were wrong.

We would all like to have a model where users don't get charged money, and yet are not the product. But I haven't seen a model that works to date. In some cases, I don't mind my personal date getting sold; in other cases I pay money because the service is valuable. But I certainly make backups since I don't assume that even when I pay $$$, that the company might not go poof in the night....
3 comments
SamBam 889 days ago
I believe GP was referring to the Ello founder Budnitz, who said that line, as the "dick."

I agree. He was responding to perfectly justified -- and accurate -- criticism by saying how sad it is to be a person with such views of the world.

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Andrex 889 days ago
Yes. The author of the article knows how to write enjoyably.

The CEO he was quoting is the subject of my schadenfreude.

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bruce511 889 days ago
>> But I haven't seen a model that works to date

Sure you have. Amazon grew without giving stuff away for free. Customers paid (just below market rate) from day 1. This demonstrated the -convenience- of ecommerce. It had revenues from the first sale. Yes, it spent mountains of VC money on marketing and development, but -not- on just buying stuff for you so you think it'll be free forever.

Uber is the same, although it's less clear that users will pay gor what a ride really costs. (And their margin makes it attractive for competition)

In both cases though there us revenue from customers from day 1. You can wind prices up. It's really hard to "go from free to paid".

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xorcist 888 days ago
> I haven't seen a model that works to date

IRC. NNTP. SMTP. XMPP. HTTP.

It's just that nobody wants to work on protocols anymore. Ever since the world's richest was suddently a computer guy, no one wants to work on anything without a business model that includes taking complete control over what is built. A product, if you will.

In the background, there's always some geeks slaving away with new protocols and federated models. That will not become mainstream, not in our current society. But societies change over time. There is always hope.

Protocols, not products, people!

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