
Don't Be A Free User - stilist
http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
======
DanielBMarkham
This article brings up a good point: if you just found some super-cool free
web application that you love? Odds are the only thing you're doing when you
use it and recommend it to your friends is creating a nice resume for some
large company to do a "talent acquisition" Large companies love this -- they
find a couple of guys who are able to identify and engage audiences and then
they kill their product and stick them on some other product that the company
wants pumped. Web apps are about eyeballs, right? Start-ups are about teams,
right? Well what's the logical conclusion then? Startups that gain eyeballs
with income-free business models only have themselves -- the team -- to sell.
And from some of these sales, it looks like there's serious money in "pump and
dump" entrepreneurialism.

This also suggests that there is a pecking order. At the bottom we have start-
ups that don't have traction. Then we have start-ups with traction but no
income. Then start-ups who can mostly break even. Finally start-ups that have
momentum (extra super bonus points for big momentum in a huge market)

The more I look at this model, the better bootstrapping looks.

~~~
drhayes9
Amy Hoy is a big proponent of bootstrapping. Her 30x500 class seems to rock
(according to the sample materials she has out there), and she has some choice
words on the subject: [http://unicornfree.com/2011/fuck-glory-startups-are-
one-long...](http://unicornfree.com/2011/fuck-glory-startups-are-one-long-
con/)

~~~
davidw
Rob Walling's "Start Small, Stay Small" is pretty good too, and has less
gratuitous profanity.

~~~
mst
I think I'd argue that the profanity is for effect/emphasis, and to mark the
post out as a rant - it's clearly (to me) being used intentionally as a
writing technique.

Which suggests 'gratuitous' is a harsher adjective than strictly requires, and
may simply reflect that you aren't fond of profanity's use at all.

I think either dropping the word entirely from your comment or perhaps
replacing it with 'prolific', which would not only have been non-judegemental
while still conveying the key point, but additionally alliterates nicely too.

Or maybe I'm just overthinking this :)

~~~
davidw
"Gratuitous" is a judgment: profanity loses its shock value if you lace
everything you say/write with it. I don't know if the rest of her writing is
like that (my recollection is that it isn't), but this piece was too heavy on
it. A well placed "fuck" can add a lot, if used judiciously, but it's the kind
of thing where you only sit up and take notice of it due to its absence
elsewhere.

------
gkoberger
This article operates under the very incorrect assumption that paid services
never shut down and free services are never carried on by their purchasers.

See Flickr or YouTube or PayPal or Skype or Picnik or Grand Central or Picasa
or Siri or mySpace or FriendFeed or FeedBurner or even pinboard's biggest
competitor Delicious for examples of the latter.

As for the former, there's an unlimited number of examples (for a few, try
<http://techcrunch.com/tag/deadpool/>)

Unfortunately, $7/month from a few people can't keep things afloat.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Delicious, for all intents and purposes, WAS shut down, and a new, barely
related site was put up in its place.

I was a Delicious user for years, with thousands of links tagged, and I
continued using it for as long as I could stand under Avos, but the features
that they cut and/or broke in the transition finally made me throw up my
hands, give up, and switch...first to Trunk.ly, which Avos then bought and
shut down (oops), and then to Pinboard.

I for one welcome my new Pinboard masters, especially if they're willing to
fight to keep the service alive. :)

~~~
hyyypr
What exactly do you have against delicious' new interface ? I continue using
it as I always did, and except for the design I barely see any difference.

Maybe I'm missing some key feature here ?

~~~
joshu
I'm struggling with it.

Commas instead of spaces for tags breaks my muscle memory. It often saves my
bookmarks with no tags at all because of it.

I am continually tempted to rewrite it (or, more likely, its predecessor,
which did more for fewer users.)

~~~
gruseom
I wish you would.

Yahoo's one was slow and a dead-end but enough good remained that I could get
by.

This one is incoherent and sloppy. It doesn't feel like the people developing
it have much understanding of (or passion for) the space.

------
dotBen
The issue of BigCo's closing useful small services just to harvest the
developers post acquisition is certainly a valid one that's worthy of debate.

However, the premise that this only happens because the startup in question
was "free" doesn't hold weight. Call me a cynic but the recommendation to use
"paid-for" services only to avoid this outcome just seems a little too self-
serving to _paid-for-only_ service PinBoard (as excellent as it is).

I don't have an exhaustive list of startup acquisitions that were then shut
down, but here's a few just from a Google acquisition list I found:

* PostRank was a paid-for blog data service Google acquired, shut down

* Jambool was a virtual gold payment processing system Google acquired, shut down

* Gizmo5 was a VOIP service Google acquired and shut down.

In some cases even if a company is taking money that alone still doesn't make
it viable. In other cases, like PostRank and Jambool where the $$$ being paid
by customers was probably significant, acquirers like Google have other
circumstances where they'll shut a profitable businesses for a 'higher goal'
in a bigger project.

~~~
garrettdimon
I believe the point is less about revenue being a guarantee that it won't
happen and more about the fact that a lack of profit makes it increasingly
likely that the product will eventually be shuttered because free isn't a
sustainable model.

~~~
dotBen
But that also doesn't really ring true either because a "lack of profit"
doesn't necessarily mean that an acquiring party will shut said service down
either.

I doubt Friendfeed makes Facebook any money, and was clearly a talent
acquisition (Bret is their CTO now) but they still keep it running.

You're right that anyone using any tool/service with an unsustainable model
needs to be cautious. But there's a lot more to it then is being proposed by
the OP.

~~~
adambyrtek
They keep the lights on, but Friendfeed might be as well dead. The impression
of activity is maintained by posts imported automatically from connected
accounts, and the list of supported sites haven't been updated in years. For
example, neither Rdio, Spotify, nor Grooveshark are available in the music
section, same with Instagram and picplz in the photos section.

------
thaumaturgy
To partly rebut what maciej is saying here, I'd point out that Backblaze is a
very successful not-free service which was also courting purchase offers;
paying for a service is no guarantee that you'll get to rely on that service
forever, which is a major failing of web-based services in general (and a
frequently-mentioned point from my clients when I suggest using some web-based
service or another).

But I mostly agree with him anyway.

I paid for and love pinboard. I will probably start paying for his page
archival service within the next month. I'm more comfortable with it not only
because of his track record so far, but because I know _I am his customer_. If
it were a free service, I'd be far more concerned about how many concessions
he'd be willing to make for his real customers -- advertisers or metrics
companies or who-knows.

~~~
quanticle
_I will probably start paying for his page archival service within the next
month. I'm more comfortable with it not only because of his track record so
far, but because_ I know I am his customer. _If it were a free service, I'd be
far more concerned about how many concessions he'd be willing to make for his
real customers -- advertisers or metrics companies or who-knows._

As the old saying goes, "If you're not paying, you're not the customer. You're
the product." Kudos to Pinboard for asking you to become a customer, rather
than settle in and be sold like a product.

~~~
canbeboth
If you aren't paying and the company is trying to make money, then yes,
someone else is probably paying for it. However, the implication does not go
the other way. If you buy a newspaper, go to a movie, or watch cable TV, you
are both a customer _and_ a product.

------
drhayes9
The reactions I'm seeing are mostly people zeroing in on the "paid services
sometimes shut down" counterargument. And, yeah, that's true.

But I don't think charging your customers for your service means that you will
never consider being acquired; I think it means that your exit strategy is to
_serve your customers with this great service you've built_. It's the
difference between a long-term strategy of "God I hope we get acquired" versus
one of sustainability.

Sites that don't charge are floating on investor money, and investor money
would really like to get oodles of money back eventually, instead of slowly
growing a modest business that comfortably supports one or two people.

I don't have the link anymore, but there's an excellent essay that says
exactly this using a metaphor about strip mining versus farming.

~~~
mdaines
[http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-
mi...](http://blog.wilshipley.com/2011/04/success-and-farming-vs-mining.html)

------
todd3834
Based on their signup help page (<https://pinboard.in/help/fee/>) the price is
"number of users * $0.001". Now there is no telling when they started with
that pricing but assuming it was from the beginning they have made around
$50k. Since it was created 3 years ago that is an average of around $17k/year.

I realize the archival accounts are $25/year and I have no way of knowing how
many they have but assuming it doubles their profits which I doubt they are
still making less than $40k/year minus expenses.

I'm not huge on selling out but I would rather build a large app and flip it
vs run a company that profits less than $40k/yr

(I did not double check my math so please forgive me if I rushed through this
too fast)

~~~
adambyrtek
As far as I remember, this multiplier is not valid anymore. When it comes to
estimating the number of users, another post[1] on the Pinboard blog sheds
some light on that.

[1]
[http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/10/spikes_logs_and_the_power_cl...](http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/10/spikes_logs_and_the_power_claw/)

~~~
adambyrtek
Sorry about the duplicate comment. I hate when the "noprocrast" setting
prevents me from correcting mistakes like that.

If you are a moderator, feel free to delete the other comment (the one without
any children).

------
patio11
I think geeks have severely irrational expectations as to what they are "owed"
by someone just because that someone has created something which they used or
enjoyed.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
I couldn't disagree more. Startups just going away over night is _the_ major
objection I hear from business users (small and large) against using any of
these products.

Purely consumer oriented entertainment kind of apps may be a different matter,
but for anything else consumers are very apprehensive when there is any talk
of losing access to an app they rely on. Unlike geeks, they can't just take
some CSV dump and move their data elsewhere. For them, the UI is the data.

You may be annoyed about the tone in which some geeks complain about free apps
going away, but don't let that mislead you into thinking geeks are the issue
here. There is a huge issue and it's not opinionated geeks.

~~~
patio11
A business which wants a guarantee of continued service from a vendor knows
exactly how to phrase that: _contract_.

~~~
_delirium
True, though it also requires a belief that the company will honor the
contract (and be able to), which is hard to rely on too much with many
startups. Due to the desire not to complicate potential exits, startups also
tend to be wary of signing service-guarantee contracts that can persist
through acquisition; just about any service contract I've seen from a startup
includes clauses about it going poof if the company is acquired.

Could be an angle for big companies like IBM and Microsoft's cloud offerings,
or at least that's what they're trying to push, with pitches of: come get
something reliable from us, with guaranteed service that we'll actually honor
and will still honor in 10 years, instead of some startup that might be dead
or bought next year.

------
phillmv
I love Pinboard, but it's a one man operation. Maciej is extremely susceptible
to get hit by a bus tomorrow, leaving me without my $9.23 and all of my
bookmarks.

You're telling me that if someone offered you $1-5 mil to lead a team at
insert huge tech company here you'd turn it down? Bitch, please.

That chart is overall correct, but it's not like paying is suddenly going to
be a panacea. I give flickr $25 a year, but I'm actively looking for
replacements because it's obvious Yahoo!'s not gonna keep running it forever.

Do you get what I'm trying to say?

~~~
Sukotto
I suggest you backup your bookmarks on a regular basis using the handy export
page <http://pinboard.in/export/>

You might also want to tone down the snark.

~~~
phillmv
What snark? I'm being totally straight here.

I love Maciej and all of his body of work and I aim to give him many of my
dollars in the future - but this is something I'm going to nitpick on.

The reason why I feel comfortable using Pinboard on a day to day has nothing
to do with the fact that I've paid for it because it's just as fragile and
likely to suddenly disappear. It has a high "hit-by-a-bus" factor.

It's because Maciej loudly proclaims his love for letting people export their
data. That's it.

~~~
jarek
This actually occurred to me and kinda bothered me as well. I saw an example
during the FBI raid outage when the site was down in the morning on the east
coast and there were no updates because he was still asleep on the west coast.

I just saw a post on Twitter from him about this:
<http://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/144174085629427714>: "pals of mine have
agreed to wind down the site in an orderly way and open-source the code if
something happens to me"

That being said, I would still keep fairly regularly back-ups. With export
this great, there's no excuse (short of maybe getting monthly back-up dumps
delivered by email).

------
kiba
Anti-free software? I don't think free software is antithetical to the
movement for charging a leg and an arm.

The hard part is figuring out how to charge an arm and a leg for open source
software. However, everyone take the easy way out by closing down on mission
critical and open source the rest.

I thought of a possible solution that allow everyone to charge an arm and leg
while still being open source, or even public domain. Mainly, I am inspired by
the kickstarter idea, but I am less interested in curating projects for one
time event and more interested in business model automation.

Here how it would works:

You have a webcomic and you have an ever expanding archive of past comic
strips. However, the next comic strip, already finished, is not available. To
make the comic strip available, you ask for a collective donation of 100
dollars. Some donate 1 dollars, others 20 dollars, until the money is raised.
This ensure that you will get paid every step of the way while your comic
archive acts as advertising.

The value for my users is the automation of numerous drudgery involved with
the business model. That included tracking who donate what, tracking the
deadline, the release, and so on. With an API for the service, people can get
especially creative with how they release, or how they incentivize their
customers.

Another twist to this idea is sponsorship by advertisers and allowing
advertisers getting involved with the fundraising process. They can aid the
fundraising in either matching user donations or offering discounts.

Of course, this will be just another idea if nobody took any effort in
building the service and nobody will attempt this business model, easily. I am
working on it, but it's more of a half-baked project on some private repos
somewhere rather than a serious startup.

~~~
quanticle
So... er how exactly would you bootstrap this business model? Yeah, this
_might_ (with a very small probability) work if you're already an established,
successful webcomics author. If you're starting out, though, you have _no_
chances of success. Who's going to chip in for a comic that may or may not be
good when it is finished?

~~~
kiba
In my experience with this business model, I started with a free archive of
the magazine with previous essays for people to look at. Then I use a formula
to determine the ransom price.

All my ransom are met, because I didn't have an extreme expectation that I was
going to raise hundred of dollars at the beginning of the publication.

Compared to advertising, it performs far better in term of revenues. More
importantly, it doesn't uglify your site or make your site worse unlike what
advertising usually does.

How much better? I would need to perform manual collection to get these
figures. With automation, I would be able to tell you, right down to 8 digit
place.

The problem with this business model is that people doesn't do the work that
allows them to reach their goal, or they have an extreme expectation of how
much money they are going to raise. If you don't have the fanbase, you ain't
going to raise much money.

It's not that it might work with a very small probability. It will works, to
varying degree of success, depending on the popularity, how loyal your fans
are, and so on.

I seen a writer who done the exact same thing, but I don't have the link
handy. So, I know it works.

The more interesting question is how it will perform compared to other
business models such as advertising, selling in dead tree format,
merchandising, live performance, and so on, depending on the relevancy of each
business model for particular industries. Like I said, advertising earn me
money, but it perform terribly to how much money I can get by ransoming
contents.

------
tlots
"You might call this the anti-free-software movement."

While I agree with his argument (and I'm a pinboard customer), I am not for
mixing the term 'free software' with 'free, unmodifiable, supported, centrally
hosted web service'.

To me, free software means code sharing and the ability to modify software and
run it personally as I choose. The difference boils down to resources. With
free software I do get the source; however, I need to provide the environment,
time, and self reliance support-wise (or a decent community).

~~~
ahoyhere
It was clearly a joke. Laugh a little. :)

~~~
tlots
oh!

lal

------
morisy
Seeing Pinboard's success was really helpful in getting over the sick feeling
of charging a sea of free, and I think we're finally seeing a non-trivial
amount of web users understand that if you're not the customer, you're the
product (after they've been burned a time or twelve).

Great post, and glad to see a lot of other Hacker Newser following suit.

~~~
_delirium
Unfortunately, there's no way to guarantee that you're not the product without
access to financials and inside thinking, _even_ if you're paying. There are
plenty of paid services where you're the product, because the people buying
your usage data or access to you are paying so much more than you that your
revenue is negligible.

With many magazines, the only reason they even bother to charge is to prove to
advertisers that you're a "serious" reader: they don't care about your
subscription fee, but about what it says about your value as a product. This
has even led to a weird cat-and-mouse game where magazines try to give away
free promotional subscriptions while pretending they charged you, and
advertisers respond by demanding that subscription numbers be audited by third
parties so magazines have to prove that you "really" paid (and this produces
complex legalistic rules about things like whether paying with frequent-flyer
miles counts as paying). That's because they really want the "paid subscriber"
bit to sell to their advertisers, but don't particularly care about your
measly $20.

~~~
terinjokes
Every month I get a magazine. Every month I get a "final notice" that my
subscription is up. They generally come within a few days of each other.

And yet every month, I get another issue, and another notice. I've longed
chalked it up to trying to count me as a subscriber, and it must be working.

The kicker is, I've never once paid for this magazine.

------
nhangen
Finding out that Trunk.ly, which I've grown to love, is shutting down...well
it flat out pisses me off.

Great post. Thanks for having the courage to state the truth, that most
startup founders don't give a ____about users.

~~~
ramblerman
> Thanks for having the courage to state the truth, that most startup founders
> don't give a about users.

Is this a public secret. Do you think Steve Jobs was so obsessed with user
experience because he cared about you personally?

~~~
nhangen
No, I don't think he cared about me personally, but I believe he knew where
his bread was buttered.

------
tomkarlo
I'd suggest the nature of free and paid services biases how many of each we
think gets "shut down" post-acquisition. Free / freemium services will tend to
have tens or hundreds of times as many "users" versus a paid service of the
same value.

So when one gets shut down, we all notice because so many of us had an account
(even if we weren't using it.) Whereas when a paid service closes, it impacts
only a tiny fraction of us in comparison, so we don't hear the same hue and
cry.

The fact is that for a large company like Google or Amazon, the $$$ income
from most small startup acquisitions (ads or paid) isn't large enough to be a
factor in the decision to continue running that product. Either they believe
that it's going to turn into a business that does tens to hundreds of millions
of dollars in sales a year, or they don't and it's better to move those
developers and resources off to a project that might.

I've seen this firsthand - I've had to fight to maintain services that were
making lots of money with a few staffers, because a large company just didn't
think they were worth the hassle of supporting from a legal and administrative
perspective. And I understood that point of view from a management
perspective, in many cases.

------
epaga
"DISCLAIMER: I run a paid bookmarking site. Every morning I wake up and dive
into my vault of golden coins."

Best. Disclaimer. Ever.

------
gbelote
I don't disagree with OP's point, but I don't think he does a good job at
making it. He name-drops several popular startups that were bought out then
implies they wouldn't be bought if they were making more money.

Etherpad, for example, charged for it's product. You could use it for free,
but if you wanted private pads and custom domains/urls you could upgrade to
Pro. I don't see how "doesn't have a business model" applies to that.

------
kellysutton
As someone that runs a paid service, I can tell you it's awesome to interact
with customers. There's an air of respect that you don't get from completely
open products.

~~~
pavel_lishin
You haven't run into the ones that think that because they shelled out $15,
you are their personal butler?

~~~
jamesaguilar
From what I've read, the effect is actually the opposite. If I remember
correctly, patio11 had a post a while ago about how his free users consumed
most of the support requests. The hypothesis is that giving users one
entitlement (free use of the service) leads them to believe that they have
access to others (your time).

------
jakubw
While I agree with the reasoning, I don't like the point being made here. A
better one would be to say: be prepared for a possible shutdown of the service
you're using if it's free. That means, make sure you can easily take your data
out and that you're not too much dependant on it.

------
icebraining
I prefer an alternative: use a free service, but assume it'll close next week;
the key is to make them as close to a commodity as possible.

All services eventually close, free and paid, but as long as you control your
data, you can move when it happens. Knowing how to script something up to push
the data to the new service is important too.

For example, I use Google Apps for my email. I'm not worry that it'll be
closed tomorrow, but for all I know, some glitch might kill my account and
Google's support isn't. So I got my own domain, I use an email client and keep
very regular backups on everything. If it closed, my only loss would be the
couple of hours while the MX records update.

------
RexRollman
No, the way it's done is that you offer everything for free and get a large
userbase. Once you have the userbase, then you start ruining it with
advertising or sell it to a company to will slowly kill it, like Yahoo or AOL.

------
dman
Google and Facebook are counter examples of how free can be resilient. I guess
it depends on the vertical. If you are aiming to scale up to world scale being
free is almost essential.

~~~
gacba
Google and Facebook are free because _you_ are the product. They make craptons
of money off of you using their service, selling your usage data, showing ads.
That's completely different than Pinboard.

------
neuromancer2600
Maciej Ceglowski provided more insights into his views about pricing and free
services in this podcast interview from January this year (just ff to 24:19):
<http://5by5.tv/founderstalk/9>

His major point is that users regard bookmarking sites as a bank where they
want their bookmarks safe and secure. I find that a pretty compelling
difference.

So the statement still holds that if you don't pay for a product, you are the
product.

------
Tcepsa
Clearly Google is going to get bought out by somebody any day now and we can
kiss those searching, mapping, and mail services goodbye. As are Facebook and
Twitter--better find someone that you can pay for your social networking,
stat!

And obviously Hacker News isn't going to be around for long...

~~~
jarek
Hacker News isn't exactly ran off VC money and in need of an exit.

~~~
Tcepsa
I think that's an important distinction. I'd have been much less grumpy about
the article if he'd said "avoid using services that someone is providing for
free off of investor capital with no plan for monetization."

------
kd1220
If you replaced "free software/service" with "person" then a sensible title
could be "Don't Have No-Strings-Attached Relationships."

I think the author is giving bad advice. If you're using a free service that
doesn't appear to have any revenue stream, then just assume it won't be around
when you need it. There's nothing bad about using a free service. You don't
have to bug the owners to monetize. It's a technological fling. Just like with
interpersonal relationships, a company isn't going to tell its users "Hey,
we're not going to be around in 2 years. This is just a temporary thing."

Maybe Gowalla just wasn't that into its users.

------
orijing
The author didn't bring up the point that many of those services became
successful (not yet profitable) because they were free. The years when they
had no ads and charged nothing are considered loss-leaders in order to build a
large network, because their services typically benefit strongly from first
order network effects.

Google didn't always have such an indisputable business model. Who knew search
was so profitable? Would it have been as successful if it started charging
users right off the bat, or covering the results pages with (irrelevant) ads
before contextual ads were developed?

------
robryan
What I dislike are companies that don't start with a business model and still
don't have one after some time of operation. Makes it feel like hey are being
built to flip or are trying to be the next Twitter and not many have been able
to pull that off.

Sure ads don't always look the best but put say one small one and get some
revenue started. Offer a premium account, even if the value proposition isn't
great, even if it's just a cool badge for your use to say they are supporting
the product, the users who love your product will probably take it up.

------
charlieok
I'll put in a good word for a return to the days of actually running an online
service yourself, instead of just using remote services. If you are the one
running the software, you have control.

------
fuckmoney
Wikipedia?

"Like a service? Make them charge you or show you ads. If they won't do it,
clone them and do it yourself. Soon you'll be the only game in town! "

If a free website service shuts down you can make your own.

Being competitive and ruthless may work financially but it isn't right and
unlike a corporation in constant pursuit of profit an owner of a free website
is free to act morally and avoid monetary perversion.

I'd prefer if websites were a little less stable than if the internet was
exclusively for the rich by the rich.

------
mcherm
Oh yeah, thanks for the reminder. I just switched to being a paid user of
pinboard (which I had always intended to do but hadn't gotten around to yet).

------
Havoc
Both paid & free have their place in the world. Not quite sure why the one is
being portrayed as evil?

I also don't think its the responsibility/right of the user to fix the
business model of the company ("Make them charge you or show you ads.").

To me the "pump and dump" approach is perfectly legit. Just make sure nobody
gets hurt. e.g. Allow customer to export their data. Companies aim to make
money, not win a papal election.

~~~
Havoc
Almost forgot:

Dear HN. Please charge me money or show ads. /s

------
einhverfr
There are a bunch of ways of monetizing free use though. I work with Free/Open
Source accounting/ERP software and I estimate that less than 1% of our users
put money back in our pockets.... But at the same time a lot put money in
_somebody's_ pockets, and this grows the community which makes us all more
successful and prosperous.

------
gcr
At risk of squabbling over semantics, "Free software", as used in the article,
is orthoganal to open-source software. If the source code for these websites
were released, even at the end, there would be no issue. Case in point:
Etherpad released their source code just before taking their wave dive,
starting Piratepad et al.

~~~
jarek
While you are correct that the article takes some liberties with its use of
"free software", having the source code won't help you much with applications
that need beefier hosting to truly be useful.

------
drdaeman
While he has a point, I feel somehow offensed^W trolled by such one-sided
opinion. Should someone fork HN and make a paid/ad-filled version of it? Doubt
so.

It's probably because I totally don't get that "oh, their service is so good I
want them charge more" mindset.

------
angryasian
its a big cycle, the service will sell everyone cashes out, some other team
picks up where the last service left off.

Delicious -> pinboard anyone ?

I think theres a pattern of products deteriorating after purchase for one
reason or another, either not enough attention or founders leave or consumers
find another product from a hot startup thats in the same space. While having
a paid option should be encouraged, no service yet is something that I can't
absolutely live without where theres a free alternative, and if theres
something worth paying for, someone will build a free service.

I'd rather encourage users to turn off ad block on sites they like, and click
on links that are relevant.

------
j_baker
_Like a service? Make them charge you or show you ads. If they won't do it,
clone them and do it yourself. Soon you'll be the only game in town!_

"We're just like service x, but we _charge you money_!"

There is no way this business model isn't a good idea.

------
blackdivine
Loved the article. It was exactly to the point, precise. No more reading first
paragraph and ok.. gah...

Also the Disclaimer is a pure win

"DISCLAIMER: I run a paid bookmarking site. Every morning I wake up and dive
into my vault of golden coins."

------
rradu
Do people just like paying for things?

If a company can find a way to make money off ads and keep the product free,
I'll gladly take that over paying a subscription fee.

~~~
mcantor
I like paying for things.

I'd rather pay $5 - $50 for a mobile app than see ads.

------
r0s
I'm all for it, transparent business models!

Also, I will no longer tolerate advertizing in my paid content. Seems great,
when do we start?

------
jalada
Upvoted purely for the laughs I got when I read "Every morning I wake up and
dive into my vault of golden coins."

------
pbreit
The reason not as many paid services are acquired is because they don't get
enough traction to entice a buyer.

------
ssgrfk
I Agree. -> <http://www.gigatools.com>

------
zdw
So, where do I go to pay for Twitter?

------
smashing
Can I still use this news.ycombinator site for free or should I stop until I
can be charged for its usage?

------
nknight
He keeps saying "free software", and also says "anti-free software movement".

He means "free service", which is a radically different scenario from "free
software" in either sense, and should be treated as such.

Whether we're talking about Free software or just freeware, the user's use of
a normal piece of software on their computer doesn't suddenly disappear when
the developer goes away.

~~~
teaspoon
From the article:

 _But free web services are not like free software. If your free software
project suddenly gets popular, you gain resources: testers, developers and
people willing to pitch in. If your free website takes off, you lose
resources._

~~~
cbs
Perhaps thats a sign the webapp-for-things-that-don't-need-to-be-webapps model
has flaws.

Nahhh. That can't be it.

~~~
bengl3rt
Maybe nothing should be web apps... maybe the pipe is for content and
services, and native code is for layout and interaction...

~~~
DannoHung
So are you willing to have native code pushed to you with no control over it?
Because that's the major logistical advantage of webapps that has Enterprises
trying to use them.

Maybe when NaCL gets better...

~~~
nknight
Untrusted native code isn't strictly necessary. There is no need for locally-
run software to be in any particular form, so long as it doesn't depend on the
developer's server to function.

Java bytecode is excellent precedent for what is broadly possible. There are
problems with it, but most of what's missing for the end user is a better
degree of convenience and control.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I think iOS software is a better example. There's no reason they can't be
hosted in a Safari page, and they're rich while still being sandboxed.

~~~
nknight
Actually, the iOS model isn't that great IMO. Rather than relying on
verifiably safe bytecode, Apple uses a combination of TrustedBSD-based
technology on the phone, and human-directed testing in their labs, in an
attempt to keep native code from doing things they don't want it to.

I think this is backwards for what they're trying to achieve, and I think
that's part of the reason their app review process is such a pain in the ass.

------
diamondhead
Question: what happens when a guy copies pinboard (in other words, the old
delicious) and open sources it?

A community evolves. And some of paid pinboard users switch to the free one
because it's open source, some people implement some cool stuff periodically,
it'll be maintained forever.

Another question: What happens when pinboard makes less money?

These questions were answered 30 years ago by OSS community.

~~~
jarek
Sure, the code will be open source. It will still have to be hosted somewhere.
Who'll pay the bills?

Pinboard's long-term income is primarily from the archiving users. The storage
and full-text search index would be even more expensive to host for free.

~~~
diamondhead
I search my bookmarks with grep thanks to a local, plain text copy of them.
It's so fast and can be programmed in a way that I can search I bookmarks
before I open my browser.

There are way better architectures to have an unsocial bookmarking service.
Pinboard has the worst one and because its focus is to copy Delicious and make
money. In other words, it creates the problem first, and gives users an
expensive solution.

An open source solution that can kill Pinboard may be based on even DropBox.
OSS community is good at solving real problems.

~~~
jarek
Sounds like Pinboard isn't the solution for you. However, it evidently appeals
to many, myself included.

I don't think I ever have my browser not open. I use something like four
different computers, not including mobile devices, and appreciate the central
copy without having to think about syncing it. I don't worry about setting up
scripts on my local machine or updating my local plain text copy so that it
can be searched. For the archiving users, they don't have to manually save the
files of each website they'd like to search later.

If you believe you can do bookmarking better and free, then do it. If it
matches what I'm using Pinboard for, and is better (and doesn't use Dropbox),
I'll switch.

~~~
diamondhead
I use delicious for 5 years and keep a local, sync copy to make it possible to
program, so that I can develop my own desktop tools.

I mean, a free Pinboard was a solution for me when I was looking for a good
alternative of delicious, 2 years ago.

But it's not free. The owner claims that he'll keep maintaining forever but he
will not when he lose a considerable percent of his customers.

And he'll. As I said, pinboard solves the wrong problem. An online bookmarking
service can be structured in a way that will cost nothing. Couple of scripts
that manipulate a text file on DropBox was the solution came to my mind in 3
seconds.

~~~
sireat
Another thing to keep in mind, that DropBox might be a big success now and
have plenty of financing, but Dropbox keeping free accounts free is also not
guaranteed. People who choose wrong file storage startup will lose out that
much is certain.

Kind of ironic, that I am still bookmarking this on Delicious.

------
wavephorm
The users have spoken. They want free software products. Open source, piracy,
and free websites, together have burned into people's heads that software is
worthless regardless of the platform (windows, ios, web, server-side).

Unless this mentality changes, expect all software to continue this cycle of
froth and recycling.

------
maximusprime
Doesn't really mention the fact you can make far more from showing your users
a few adverts. (Disclaimer: I do).

------
diamondhead
let me summarize the main idea for you: A bunch of people pay me because I
store their a few hundreds lines of text, save their ass from the sites full
of annoying ads like cjb.net or freeservers.com.

no need for the user friendly, smart business models. no need to develop a new
vision. this is the hack.

------
diamondhead
See the irony: pinboard is a clone of delicious' initial version. it copied
the idea, the visual design and started selling it.

In every success story of pinboard, I'm very surprised to see how people are
impressed from a carbon copy.

Let me introduce myself: I'm a guy who bookmarks everyday for 5 years, on
delicious. After the Yahoo acquire, it was redesigned.

And I was annoyed. I started looking at the alternatives. Most of them were
crappy except Pinboard. It was a good copy of old Delicious.

And I decided to use it just because it was a good copy of Delicious!

Then, I noticed that Pinboard is not free. And what it provides is nothing but
keeping some text on a database. Same idea, almost same design but it's not
free. Let the owner explain why it's not free: it's unsocial. and it'll be
online unless a 90% percent of users keep paying it.

It's not ethical, Pinboard. If I think that it's not a waste of time, I'll
code some scripts to store bookmarks in Dropbox for your users. It'll be under
WTF PL license so that you can sell it.

------
jsilence
Put a Flattr button on your free cool website. (<https://flattr.com/>)

Problem solved.

~~~
jsilence
Ok, maybe I should have worded it: Another alternative in between paysite and
freesite would be to give the user the opportunity to pay whatever they want.
With Flattr or Kachingle.

~~~
vetler
But still, is it really as easy as that? Problem solved? I'm sure some can
survive on donations alone, but how would you know?

