
Come for the network, pay for the tool - cookingoils
https://subpixel.space/entries/come-for-the-network-pay-for-the-tool/
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codingdave
Paid communities aren't new. AOL was a paid community. Anyone remember Apple's
eWorld?

I'm not denying that the economics of the internet are evolving, it just irks
me our industry comes full circle to the same stuff we hashed through decades
ago and people act like it is a new phenomenon.

~~~
derefr
> AOL was a paid community.

Did the majority of people paying for AOL really pay for it for access _to AOL
services_ , rather than thinking of it mostly as an Internet (and email)
service provider, that just _happened_ to offer some value-added gated-
community-portal services? Were those portal services an actual selling point?

Maybe a better example is paying in phone minutes to dial into a BBS. Sure,
that money isn't going _to_ the BBS (unless it's on a 900 number)—but users
are still being charged by the minute to be there, so they're constantly doing
an ROI calculation and only staying if they're getting real value out of the
place.

~~~
codingdave
> Did the majority of people paying for AOL really pay for it for access to
> AOL services

Yes, they really did. Before the web grew, AOL had far more content in its
services. There were discussions, communities, even early MMORPGs. They
devolved into an ISP and email later.

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syntheticcorp
Apparently a “Bloomberg Hacker News clone” exists, according to this article.
Does anyone have access to it? Is it good?

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jasode
The author doesn't seem to reference it but the title looks to be a riff on
the 2015 article _" Come for the tool, stay for the network"_:
[https://cdixon.org/2015/01/31/come-for-the-tool-stay-for-
the...](https://cdixon.org/2015/01/31/come-for-the-tool-stay-for-the-network)

~~~
eitland
> Bloomberg is an example of the classic Web 2.0 business maxim “come for the
> tool, stay for the network.” But the inverse trajectory, from which this
> essay takes its name, is now equally viable: “come for the network, pay for
> the tool.” Just as built-in social networks are a moat for information
> products, customized tooling is a moat for social networks.1

I don't know if the post has been updated, but unless I misread something it
is explicitly mentioned now.

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tantaman
The example paid communities are trivial -- they're hobbyist groups when
contrasted against the social media companies this article is trying to
compare against.

and it starts with quite an unsubstantiated claim " and audiences are slowly
but surely evacuating the big social media companies"

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fouc
\- The Emergence of Paid Communities

\- Paid Communities Are a New Business Model for Bespoke Social Media

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joezydeco
Meanwhile, MetaFilter just turned 21 years old.

