
Github is MySpace for hackers - mqt
http://tomayko.com/weblog/2008/02/26/github-is-myspace-for-hackers
======
mechanical_fish
Invite-only betas make THOG ANGRY! Grrr! Arrg!

Allow me to vent my rage by quoting Wil Shipley again:

 _Don’t announce until it can be downloaded. Don’t let it be downloaded until
it can be bought._

Seriously. Here's the P.R., right here on the front page of news.yc, ground
zero of the elite-hacker P.R. machine, and the site isn't ready. Momentum:
halted. Opportunity: wasted.

~~~
ichverstehe
Let's bet.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Bet... what?

~~~
ichverstehe
Sure, maybe a bit of momentum halted, but when they open for public interest
will definitely still be there. Seeing the large influx of new git users
lately, and GitHub being one of the two main repository hosting facilities and
the large number of people craving for an invite. They will manage just
alright.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Well, we'll never know what they lost, will they? It's not like we can turn
back the clock and launch it a second time. When upside potential dies, it
dies with a whimper, not a bang.

I agree that this product seems very nice, and that it might be cool enough
that it will do just fine. On the other hand, as you point out, they have
competition already. More will be coming. They could easily get lost in a sea
of competitors within the next six months. Every geek on this site probably
imagines that they could build a site like gitweb in their spare time. I know
I do. And it's not like the cost of moving a project from gitweb to a
competitor is going to be that high: you do one "git pull" and ask your
clients to update their URLs. Maybe you clone a couple of wiki pages.

The biggest problem with free private beta is that, when they finally announce
some prices, they probably will get another round of P.R... in the form of
unreasonable people complaining that the prices are too high and talking up
the alternatives. Even if their prices turn out to be incredibly reasonable,
they will be higher than they are now... and folks don't like having things
that were free taken away from them, no matter how polite and logical the
sales pitch is. It sets off the inner bait-and-switch detector, which is a
very highly developed mental organ in a consumer-oriented society like ours,
and it just makes you unhappy. Unhappy customers are never a good thing. And
this problem defies logic: Just look at all the people who complain about
paying $20 a month for a Slicehost VPS because it's so much more expensive
than the $6.95 oversold shared hosting plan at VapidHoster.com.

It's a particularly hard sell to convince people that a wrapper around a
_free-software tool_ is worth money... and it gets even harder when you
consider that 100% of the customers are the kind of hard-core Unix programmers
for whom the gitosis docs are light bedtime reading. Launching without a price
tag and then trying to paste one on later just makes that whole argument more
difficult.

~~~
KirinDave
What github offers is community and project maintenance around git. This is
not something git gives you on its own, nor is it trivial to simulate with
free tools. I've recently put a project up and had people who follow me ask
about the project and offer code, just because I put it up. They're building a
focused, targeted community with opt-in listens (like twitter's very
successful model) for code. It's a fantastic idea.

Running github is not free, and writing it has been an uncompensated
investment for its maintainers. I am sure they hope to make at least enough
money to pay for the bandwidth and hardware. It's doubtful people will
begrudge them that.

------
Raphael
I suppose that "MySpace" was meant as a good thing, contrary to what I
initially thought, ad-filled with black text on a black background and sparkly
animated gifs.

~~~
Xichekolas
You forgot the neon green marquee text in alternating caps and lowercase
proclaiming the person is "misunderstood/forged in fire" or some other emo
crap.

~~~
kajecounterhack
Well at least theres no default friend named "Tom"

...

At least, I hope not.

~~~
Xichekolas
Yeah, I'm sure they named him Paul.

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jimbokun
"no longer a pain in the ass"

One of the better slogans I've read in a while.

------
pius
This really is a very cool little community . . . they're going to make a
killing when they start charging.

~~~
pibefision
totally agree.

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altano
I've got 5 invites. Email me your YC username if you want one. altano gmail
com.

~~~
maxwell
Looks pretty cool. I got invited yesterday, and just noticed 5 invites too.
You can email max maxwellterry.com for one.

------
omnipath
How will this be different from expert exchange?

