[skore]

I also remember them having pretty much exactly a bazillion more users than formspring.

That is to say: the evaluation of a business plan is a completely different horse than the price at which a company is purchased later on. The former says is "we'd really like it to get to X". The latter says "we actually made it to Y".

[pbreit]

Well, actually Instagram had around 30 million users at the time of acquisition and according to the linked article Formspring also had around 30 million users at one point.

Having said that, I never used Formspring and didn't know anyone who ever had.

[skore]

> Having said that, I never used Formspring and didn't know anyone who ever had.

Yeah, lies, damn lies and statistics ;-) I rarely ever saw a formspring Q&A that was bustling with activity while it was quite the opposite for Instagram. Not sure I like that, though, but I guess that's human nature.

They claim 4 billion posts - would be interesting to see the Q to A ratio.

[scwu]

I was in high school when it was released. It was notoriously ubiquitous. Everyone had one. People said terrible things to each other - it was a free place to trash anyone you hated and really get them down.

Then, there was a rumor that Formspring was a huge fraud and was built as a complete joke and that they'd release the names of all the people who had posted questions on April Fool's. People freaked out and stopped posting, and those who had Formsprings released that they were happier without Formspring.

This is obviously a very microscopic look, but it wouldn't surprise me if Formspring did achieve the numbers they reported. I didn't know any peers of mine who didn't have one, back in the day and the "popular kids" at my school got hundreds of questions a week about everything.

[iampims]

Those numbers are real – even a tiny bit lower than the real ones just because round numbers are easier to remember.

[iampims]

We’re at 4+ billion responses. Obviously, many more questions were sent. If you were to guess 5Q/1R you wouldn’t be far.

[spullara]

Brutal ROI for writing a Q.

[iampims]

Direct questions hover around 1/1. Questions sent to followers, 5/1. It’s probably a higher engagement, albeit different, than Tumblr/Twitter/FB.

When you ask a question on Twitter, how many of your followers respond? Very few. The nature of both sites is obviously different, but the engagement on Formspring remains pretty good.

Also, there’s only so many times you can answer a question about your favorite movie, or where you met your husband/wife before it gets boring. Original questions (with photos, links, tags) get a far higher response rate.

You really think 5/1 is bad?

[arnehormann]

I guess you meant to write 1Q/5R

[Hovertruck]

Back when formspring was "big" a few years ago I remember seeing it all over the place.