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by andrea_sdl 4116 days ago
I personally hate when services let people down. I prefer a much more "future oriented" approach much like the one from Basecamp https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3830-ta-da-list-until-the-end...

or the idea behind https://posthaven.com/

I guess it's all about vision and how to delight your customers. All the people who believed in a product are people who trusted your words, and gave you access to a lot of their information. Yet it's so easy to let them down and shut down a service. It was for springpad, it now is for friend feed. Sometimes it's about the money sometimes it's about the users (I guess it's always about the money though).

But I can't help it, I prefer when you can trust a service,and I'd be willing to pay as long as I know that service will stay up even if I'm the only user.
2 comments
ozten 4116 days ago
They continued to run FriendFeed for 5 years after it was clear the core team was moving on. That is above and beyond the call of duty.

37 Signals has a healthy business with good revenue building only "sane" products. To compare the two is apples to oranges.

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andrea_sdl 4115 days ago
I know they are not the same kind of business, and I didn't want my view to sound harsh, sorry if it seemed that way.

As you said they did A LOT for the friendfeed platform even after it was somewhat decided they would have not mantained anymore, that is not something I want to ignore.

My point is that many services are born and die, some of them die because they weren't building "sane" products. It's a choice, not complaining about that, but I personally prefer when there's a path ahead that won't let the users down because they weren't relying on funding or other things to stay up, but only on the power of their users.

Maybe I'm asking for something impossible? Dunno, but the PostHaven/Basecamp thing is giving me hope :)

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jimminy 4116 days ago
I don't feel let down at all. I was one of the most active users prior to the acquisition, and and still an active member of the site.

It was an inevitability, that the site would shrink, and that FB would either decide it couldn't continue to fund a small community or the handful of employees would decide to depart.

Currently, there are only 3 members of the team working at FB, and I have a feeling a few of them have decided to move on which has precipitated the closure.

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