I don’t get why people are so skeptical of the business model. This model already exists and has been doing well outside of the web. Namely, free to play games have turned normally non-viable business models into something that can at least make it month to month. The idea is simple; make it so that a lot of people can play and enjoy the game for free. You do this so that your game has a large user base and can attract your real target. Now, you make it so that some idiots can spend hundreds of dollars without pissing off the free or low paying players. This method has been exceptionally effective in the MMO field where server costs are high, a lack of players is lethal, and it is hard to get people to pay a monthly fee to maintain it all.
I could see this as being a solid model for a social media site because they suffer the same problem as MMOs. They need tons of people to be worthwhile, but the vast majority of those people will never pay. If they can avoid the ad rout, it changes there incentives dramatically and lets them offer up something tangibly better than the Book of Faces. I think they can attract the much beloved white whales to the feeding frenzy, they just need to figure out a way to slay them. They need to give a handful of people the ability to spend hundreds of dollars without pissing off everyone who is paying nothing.
…because Ello has people and some momentum, and Diaspora simply doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I would prefer a Diaspora style service, but it is pretty useless without my friends in it.
I’m a nerd. I like nerdy things. The idea of Diaspora gets me all hot and bothered. For better or for worse though, I am not actually the norm. Diaspora couldn’t have launched worse if they had tried. They launched when they were not ready, launched something that was crap, and squandered their moment in the sun. Open source software people are the absolute worst humans on this planet when it comes to marketing, timing, launching, and aesthetics and usability for the normalz.
Well, that’s great, but this is a web site we’re talking about, and the business model has been tried by social sites on the web and has failed every time.
Kind of. Facebook tried to do something that was designed to get a few bucks from everyone. It turns out, no one cared. If you really want to nail the “free to play” model, what you are really looking for is a way to get a lot of money from just a few people. You need some way to get it so that there is no upper limit to what someone can spend. I’m not saying I have the answer, I’m just saying that it isn’t a completely insane idea.
Dear Boingers, please forward spare invites to: redacted@redacted (clicky to reveal)
I promise to share an invite with the next person on the list who requests one… I want to get in before they sell out… kthxbye
This sounded like a good idea; I read thru the article, but nowhere did I see the word “encryption”. Just another bullshit hangout site then! Sorry, not interested.
PM’ed you (I asked someone I know for one, but he hasn’t sent me one - possibly because I pointed out the economic concerns addressed above). I’ll have a go at it though, at least it’s not bloody facebook…
