
Ask HN: Why did Prismatic fail to gain traction? - cryodesign
If you haven&#x27;t seen the original post yet, here it is http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.getprismatic.com&#x2F;next-chapter&#x2F;<p>Prismatic is basically shutting down its news apps.<p>I remember signing up for it a few years ago, used it a couple of times but then never went back to it and stuck with twitter as my news feed.<p>Why do you think Prismatic failed to gain traction?
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plinkplonk
I think it did gain some traction and had a lot of users. It was a very nice
app imo, and quite useful, in spite of occasional weirdness. I think the
problem was a lack of business model and/or 'hockey stick growth' that would
bring in money sufficient to break even/break out.

They did write some very useful open source Clojure code which will live on. I
am very surprised one of the BigCos (Google, Twitter) didn't acquihire them -
a very talented team.

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cryodesign
Reading about the team was what attracted me to the app a few years ago, but
the app just didn't stick with me (force of habit of using twitter as a news
feed). I'm sure it got better over the years and I should have tried it again.

And Microsoft did try to acquire them earlier this year:
[http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/01/prismatic-2/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/01/prismatic-2/)

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DrScump
Did you mean to submit this as an "Ask HN" ?

Originally submitted here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10721178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10721178)

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cryodesign
Yes I did, I changed the title to reflect that. Thanks for pointing it out.

