
Milk Inc. to shut down Oink on March 31st - HectorRamos
http://www.oink.com
======
unreal37
What the....

I'm super surprised by this, and Kevin Rose just lost a couple of points of
respect in my book. Must be nice to have investors who will throw money at
you, so that you can give a half-hearted effort at something (or maybe less
than half) only to shut it down a few months later to "try something else".

It's like ADD at the business level.

Terrible decision. I don't even think anyone even tried to make this a
success.

~~~
ericflo
"People talk about pivoting all the time now, but if something isn’t working
after four months, we’ll just shoot it in the head and start again" - Kevin
Rose, last April [http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/milk-kevin-roses-new-
compan...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/04/milk-kevin-roses-new-company-aims-
to-solve-big-problems-on-the-mobile-web/)

In fact, I think it shows a lot of discipline to stick to what they said
they'd do.

~~~
mxavier
While I'm not disagreeing with this, I wonder if it will impact the users of
Milk Inc tools' willingness to participate in future projects. For services
which run off of user's submitting content (reviews in the case of Oink), I'd
imagine users may become hesitant to contributefor fear of the project (and
thus their work) getting shot in the head.

I'm not saying terminating a project that didn't meet expectations is wrong,
I'm just curious about the lasting implications.

~~~
cgarvey
I was one of the (seemingly) few people using Oink in Orlando, FL, and I
thought it was great. I'll certainly be more hesitant to create any more
content for a Milk product because it kinda feels like I just fired off
information in to a black hole.

I figured it would be killed after how little people in my area were using it
and I knew what I was getting in to, but I think I'll still let other people
be the test dummies next time.

------
eoghan
So many armchair commentators… Nobody here has the data about Oink that Milk
do. The data required to tell if this venture was something worth doubling-
down on or moving on from.

Business is an art. And great artists know that moving forward often requires
you to say "this didn't work, let's start again."

"If you want to live your life ... as an artist, you have to not look back too
much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were
and throw them away." — Steve Jobs

~~~
newobj
You can also paint (no pun intended) metaphors about artists dedicating their
whole lives to something, seeing through their vision to the point of
insanity, dying broke and starving only to be appreciated for their genius
later on.

"____ is an art" is often used as an excuse when ____ is being approached with
a total lack of discipline...

~~~
barkingcat
But within that perserverence is the willingness to scap everything and
restart again.

Some authors rewrite their books over and over again. I know in the crafting
of a story that held firm to my vision, I had over 30 or 40 rough drafts that
went into /dev/null. I will never know if any of those drafts were better than
my final story, but my art is is in holding strong to my vision, and to be
willing to discard, rewrite, ruthlessly edit, and endlessly revisit every
single one of my assumptions about the plot, characters, mood, structure.

That is art, and no amount of armchair commentation will capture the beauty,
frustration, and joy within this process.

Yes. It is possible for an artist to spend an entirety of his/her life
reworking one single piece. and yes - it is true that within this work, he/she
would have said no a million times to a million possible decisions, and
restarted from scratch a million times.

------
mmastrac
As a founder of a company in the same space (chee.rs) I was surprised to see
them pivot from the idea so quickly.

Our internal analysis of share/engagement metrics was showing that our own
users were way more engaged than Oink's. We were expecting that if they
noticed us in the market they'd have been working on rev 2 of the product -
gathering intel from products like ours and integrating it - rather than
shutting it down.

~~~
functionform
Honestly I had no interest in anything associated with Kevin Rose thanks to
Digg.

~~~
parktheredcar
I haven't really been involved in social bookmarking very long, but isn't Digg
what spawned the voting-system type site that we see in Reddit and HN? My
understanding is that slashdot based on discussion instead of a straight-up
voting mechanic.

~~~
philwelch
The difference between Digg and Slashdot is that with Slashdot, all the
stories were placed by editors. You _might_ have been able to submit stories
to the editors, but there was no upvoting and the front page was purely up to
the editors. Of course, later Slashdot added Firehose, and then awhile after
that I stopped reading Slashdot.

Slashdot had moderation for comments, but no similar mechanism for stories.
Digg had the voting system for stories and for comments.

~~~
boyter
And even after all these years I still think that slashdots comment moderation
system is the most effective one on the web today.

------
pagehub
Why would anyone bother committing to one of their products again if they just
arbitrarily shut things down when they are working on the next big thing?!

~~~
phereford
Agreed. If I were a user, I'd feel pretty burned getting attached to an
application then have the company "shut down" to work on something better.

Maybe oink just wasn't driving the engagement they wanted (or something).

------
jgrahamc
I was an Oink user and deleted it a few weeks ago from my phone. It seemed
like an intriguing idea (to see recommendations of things rather than places),
but ultimately there are only so many photographs of beers, burgers and
coffees that one can stare at.

But I really do appreciate that they offer a way to download my data as I've
done it and discovered a beer I'd forgotten about:
<http://www.meantimebrewing.com/our-beers/meantime-wheat>

~~~
jmathai
> ultimately there are only so many photographs of beers, burgers and coffees
> that one can stare at.

Instagram hopes to prove you wrong.

------
marcamillion
Wow...the vitriol to Kevin here is ridiculous (or telling - depending on your
perspective). HN is supposed to be a place where people are encouraged to
start things - with the acknowledgement that not everything will work out and
we are the testing ground for many of those new ideas.

The price for being a cutting-edge digirati is that many of the services you
use, will not survive. If you can't deal with that, wait until they go
mainstream and have some viable way to stay alive. Don't complain about it.

Yes, Kevin has raised money on his name - but why all the hate? Let him do his
thing and you do yours.

Try launching a product and building your own, rather than criticizing other
efforts. Either way, bootstrapping, getting funding, pivoting, abandoning is
not easy. Doing it with such public scrutiny is even harder.

Take a chill pill and take solace in the fact that you are in the digirati
that can even see these things. Your mom likely doesn't even know what Oink
is. If you would rather be like her, then stop hanging out here and
complaining.

------
phatbyte
How come Oink didn't got any traction, even with all the publicity they did
everywhere when it was launched? When oik hit the app store I thought "god, If
only I have 1% of kevin rose visibility to use it". I guess this ain't enough.

I think people are getting tired of using apps to tag stuff, take pictures,
"like" this and that, etc... It feels like we are working for a company and
not having fun or create anything, and Oink! just gave me reason to think this
way even more firmly. There's no market for this anymore, because we don't
have that much time to spent in dozens of different communities, and so,the
less populated die.

So please, if you want to build something, please work on something real and
that actual solves something, not another Flickr meets Facebook/twitter app.

~~~
AznHisoka
Yep, you're right. What was the purpose of Oink? There weren't a ton of
reviews or opinions - not enough anyway for it to be vastly useful as a
replacement to Yelp. And it wasn't no Angry Birds so why even use it in the
first place?

And they got a bunch of publicity, but ask yourself this question: of all the
apps you reach about in Techcrunch, Mashable, etc, what % do you actually use?
Publicity doesn't always translate to lots of users. They probably got a ton
of initial downloads from curious geeks, but that's about it. Their churn rate
was probably ridiculously high.

Publicity is pretty good for 1 thing for sure: search engine rankings, and
Oink wasn't a website.

~~~
kin
I wasn't a fan of Oink from the beginning. On its first use I was able to like
such arbitrary things like my own T-shirt, or a piece of gum on the floor. I
knew right then this was going to get way too noisy and it did.

I do see where they're coming from though. The reputation system was supposed
to balance this out. Kind of like social news websites where people submit
tons of links. Somehow through upvoting things become relevant no longer noisy
and I'm pretty sure that's what Oink was going for. It was all very well
designed.

I think a lot of people who used it didn't treat it that way. They treated it
as another review site, which it also was. But treating it that way makes it
such a chore to "build" and so eventually we all lost the point of it all.

~~~
duxup
I would think that if successful the reputation system would have to be
constantly fiddled with and change like that, "OMG I lost my reputation",
would be a constant community management challenge.

------
OoTheNigerian
IMHO it would have been better PR to "pivot" even if it is to an entirely
different thing. It would sound more respectful to people that used the app,
covered the app and those that cheered them on.

I'd really be interested in seeing what next they build.

~~~
dkrich
No offense, but why are you interested in seeing what they build next? Seems
to me they are nothing more than a small group of overfunded kids with
computers.

~~~
OoTheNigerian
Interested, not excited. I want to see the "better idea".

I am suspecting this episode will offend people who are working real hard on
what they think is are more important ideas and are struggling to get finding,
only for Kevin to throw away millions for fun.

------
rglover
This really speaks to how we should look at apps, specifically those based
around social networks. Consider the analogy of an app vis à vis a roller
disco. The roller disco was a fad, so why can't apps and their subsequent
networks be "fads" too? Maybe that's the point: they're cool because they're
relevant now. Maybe longevity isn't the goal. We should enjoy the ephemeral
things (so later we can say "remember when...").

------
siglesias
I think one of the biggest hurdles to ranking and rating systems is how the
data comes in. Imagine a two-dimensional histogram where Y is the number of
ratings and all of the items are arranged on the X axis.

What I saw with Oink was this X axis (the number of items to be rated) growing
faster than the Y axis (the number of ratings): in effect, noise growing
faster than signal.

They weren't aggressive enough in filtering out duplicate entries and/or
working with businesses to upload their catalogs onto Oink so users didn't
have to add (and re-add) them. Not saying it was an easy task, but essentially
this is the main challenge to such a product.

------
garraeth
First line sheds a bit of light on their philosophy: "We started Milk Inc.
(the company behind Oink) to rapidly build and test out new ideas. Oink was
our first test and, in preparing to move onto the next project..."

Sounds like they are trying for a shotgun approach (didn't the company behind
Angry Birds do the same thing? I don't know the official business term for
this methodology). Where they have an internal API/system to roll out an idea
FAST, then see if it gains any traction within their internal goal (whatever
short period of time they set for themselves), and if not, scrap it to move
onto the next thing...?

I think that works great for little one-off games. But with websites where
people are expecting it to be around for years? Will that burn users too
often, too fast, and sully your reputation? I don't know. I'm curious.

(imo, I don't know if I'd have put those two sentences in the shut-down notice
- sounds like they were just experimenting with the site to see if they could
make a quick buck, weren't really serious about it unless the $ or pageviews
started flowing, and the users were just the guinea pigs...but that's just
me.)

~~~
samstave
Milk was founded/funded on cult of personality rather than quality of ideas.

I wish them success, but maybe they should spend more time thinking up a
quality idea instead of sitting around on a bunch of couches drinking beer and
tea appreciating the brilliance of their hipsterness through their macbooks.

------
deepkut
Question: what is the font they used for the "OINK" logo? If anyone has an
idea, I would love to know.

What the Font was unsuccessful in determining it.

~~~
simantel
Looks like Gotham Black to me.

------
faramarz
I'm not sure if this was more of a "fail fast, move fast" effort or that they
realized it was stupid to begin with.

------
togasystems
Glad to hear that Kevin Rose is sticking to his guns. I wonder if the Milk
team will tackle a harder problem next time around.

Edit: Kevin Rose said he would kill off any project that wasn't gaining
traction and he did just that. This is what I was referring to.

~~~
LVB
"Sticking to his guns" is not the first phrase that came to mind after reading
that he'd canned Milk Inc's flagship product after only three months.

~~~
speg
but that's not the point of Milk... Milk was founded on the idea of pumping
out lots of small things and seeing if any of them stuck.

If they kept Oink alive until it took off (if ever) they wouldn't be able to
build the _next_ thing.

------
adrian201
I applaud the Milk folks in their first effort, but I must say if you've used
Oink you would realize that: 1\. it's not sticky 2\. it's value proposition is
relatively low

When it launched I played around with it for a few weeks before eventually
uninstalling. Reason being, when you can check-in to places via FourSquare,
recommend food/items you like from restaurants via Yelp, why would you use a
system like Oink (especially when it has a smaller social-footprint than the
aforementioned services)?

Maybe this app was awesome for you Bay area folks, but in NYC I never found
much when I used the “find nearby” feature. Their interface was also inundated
with too many data points as well (see there item detail screen).

I think the next wave of apps, now that we're experiencing check-in fatigue,
is "passive utility" apps (Highlight, Sonar, etc). Their value can be
ascertained with little friction (literally all you have to do is walk by
someone) and there's tremendous room expansion on its core concept (dating
based on shared interests, linkedin introductions based on shared contacts,
etc.).

~~~
baddox
It wasn't bad for us bay area folks, but it still lacked utility. I
occasionally browsed the app because its feeds we're filled with big pictures
of interesting local stuff (mostly food). I added a few dishes to my todo
list, but I can't say I ever went out of my way to try any. I also never
really _trusted_ the content like I do with Yelp, I just liked the feeds.

------
timmm
I think it's funny how people consider Kevin Rose a seasoned entrepreneur...
what a joke. Their process is throw it against the wall and see what sticks
because they apparently have no idea what actually constitutes a good idea.
These guys are clueless, straight up. What an embarrassment.

How many Apple products have failed? How many 37Signals products failed?

------
JulianMiller520
Glad they are moving on. IMHO never understood what problem OINK was solving
or why so many people ran to support it simply because Kevin Rose was
attached. I have the utmost respect for Kevin but oink was very "emperor's new
clothes" for me. I wondered what everyone was looking at while I saw nothing
but junk

------
neovive
What a coincidence! This just reminded me to migrate my SimpleGeo apps; they
are also shutting down on March 31.

------
unohoo
it seems like they intended to use oink for data gathering: from:
[http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-milk-
shutt...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/03/14/kevin-roses-milk-shutters-its-
first-app-oink-after-just-over-3-months/)

\------------------------- This is an interesting case. It seems like the
group designed, built and shipped a pretty slick ratings app all in a bid to
gather data. Rather than mine existing databases or pay other companies to
license their information, they were able to garner attention via the app
launch and gather their own. \--------------------

if this is indeed the case, they should have been upfront about it. This is
like taking users for a ride. 'Now that we have enough data, we're going to
shut this thing down'

~~~
sixQuarks
I don't buy that. Where did nextweb come up with the idea that the app was
just an information gathering device?

They "inferred" it from this quote: \------------ We are extremely grateful
for all of your effort finding and rating the best things in the places around
you. We’ve discovered thousands of awesome pizzas, pastas, coffees, teas… and
roller coasters, zoo exhibits, paintings, sculptures, vistas… and sodas,
salads, sliders, soups… and so much more. \----------

That's reading into it way too much.

Oink was a beautifully designed app. If they just wanted to gather info, I
don't think they would have spent so much time making it look good.

I think it just didn't work out the way they wanted it to, they are learning
from this experience and quickly discarding what doesn't work and moving on to
the next thing.

------
loso
Trying different business models is a great thing. Businesses become
successful in different ways. When they announced Milk they said that this
would be their business model and they have stuck with it. It is going to be
interesting to see how this works out in the end.

------
moocow01
Disregarding all the traditional startup acumen (lean, agile, blah blah blah),
in an environment where businesses are expected to be tested and discarded
within months how will our 'ecosystem' tackle the bigger more meaningful
problems that have a deferred payout for seeing it through? It seems to me
that real innovation comes a lot more from long hard teeth grinding slogs than
it does from rapid iteration. It seems like the startup environment has lately
transitioned to business methods that largely aim at finding the most
efficient means to get the last of the low hanging fruits.

------
helen842000
I can't help but wonder what the cost would have been to keep it running,
unsupported even?

I knew Milk was going to do multiple apps - I didn't think they'd delete their
old ones before they started on their new ones.

It now seems apparent they're looking for 'the one' that sticks and they're
not interested in building a portfolio of products with a strong fan-base. I
would have thought keeping their early-adopter user base happy would have been
a really valuable asset.

I feel they'll get a less favourable uptake for their next app now, so if Oink
didn't get the traction they were looking for they might struggle more next
time.

------
benackles
Seeing news like this makes me less inclined to be an early adopter in Milk's
next project. Going into business with the primary intent to start a lot of
projects and fail until one succeeds seems like a recipe for failure. While
it's always an inherent consideration in every startup, it should never be
your core strategy. Unfortunately for Milk, it seems like that was exactly
what they had in mind. Kevin has a personality that makes people WANT him to
succeed, but every user has their limits on how much they will continue to
forgive.

------
SandersAK
I think this is really tough on users. But it's also indicative of Rose's
power and pull with a large user base. I think people will forgive him and
sign up to his next new thing because he's a smart dude and has a great team.

For better or worse, this is kindof a blip on the cosmic radar, even in the
tech world.

I dunno how I'd react if I was an investor - I guess you invest in a guy like
that because you're long on him, and in that case, the failures don't matter
as long as your equity carries over.

------
Shane_Wolf
Obviously start-ups pivot all the time, but Oink entered a crowded space of
ratings and reviews. While they got the 150,000 sign-ups it was mostly due to
the fact that it was Kevin Rose. I think they realized it would be hard to be
real profitable quickly and that people may not want to review items inside
places. I think all you need is a review of the business.

Plus, its not like Rose cant just move on anyways. He's got plenty of $$ and
connections to fund his next venture.

------
farhad667
there are different philosophies on when to kill a project... and imho, this
was way too quick. By way of personal example, it took us 2 years to build
BizRate.com into something that could even get funded, another 5 years before
it started making money as Shopzilla, and 9 years total before we had our
"overnight success" -- Many points along the way we could easily have pulled
the plug. Persistence / sticking to your vision is something that is sorely
lacking these days. (Another more obvious example: How long did it take for
Apple's design+hardware+software philosophy to strike a mainstream cord?)

Timing aside, this method of "putting a bullet in its head" (which is not even
a good expression to use colloquially), was a terribly callous way to treat
their current users too... Especially given the fact that for a few thousand
dollars a month (max) they could have kept the system rolling in the cloud
indefinitely, without investing any time in it. They then could have put out
feelers to find it's users / content a new home... (For example, our new
start-up chee.rs would gladly have welcomed oink users -- in fact we're
working on a quick oink importer as I write this. :)

Or, even if they weren't interested in transitioning users to someone else,
they could have kept things running at least until their next big idea came
along to announce to their users: "Hey we've got this new great thing, come on
over and now that we have it, we've decided to finally and reluctantly shutter
Oink, because we hadn't seen it gain much traction. Sorry about letting you
down... blah blah blah."

Much better for PR than "We put a bullet in your head and moved on... But, we
hope you'll join us again for another round as soon as your headache
subsides."

~~~
farhad667
Here's an importer to turn your old oinks into @cheers! :)
<http://chee.rs/oinkimport>

------
pacomerh
I'm not very surprised by this decision, I like Kevin Rose and his ideas, but
in my opinion OINK was late to the game. In a time where you have so many app
options to check-in or review things, this app becomes very unnecessary.

I guess this proves that even a great design and great execution are not
enough, you also need a clever idea huh. What do you think?.

------
waldr
However you look at it, with the clout Rose has (over 1 mill twitter
followers) whatever he does next will get a ton of press and interest,probably
even more so given the quick shutdown of oink. So why not save some cash and
go for something new, at least they've come out and said it rather than
leaving it to slowly die and not commenting.

------
barrynolan
Fundamentally its a question of Novelty versus Utility. Is it just this months
new, new thing, or is it something that fundamentally solves a problem, makes
your live easier/better, or sates a desire. Most of the 1st wave of apps are
(understandably) novelties...its the utility equation that will be the next
wave

~~~
jordhy
I agree. This looks like they were testing some hypotheses and they didn't
prove to be true. Maybe the engagement metrics just weren't there.

------
iamjoshua
This is a good example of how extremely hungry entrepreneurs often have the
advantage. Established companies and serial entrepreneurs rarely stick with
their ideas if there isn't immediate success. Yet most large successes take
time to mature and build momentum. Really sad to see kevin and milk give up so
fast.

------
dreadsword
This seems a bit... premature. Not that I've used it. But in all seriousness,
if Twitter, Pinterest, or Facebook had shut down after the first few mediocre
months... well, we'd probably all be better off. But you get the picture.

Was Kevin Rose involved in Pownce? That felt like another "meh" effort from
the former Diggers.

------
TheShrike
When I read Milk Inc. the first, second and third thing that came to my mind
is the Belgian vocal trance band: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_inc>

------
zinssmeister
Called this one a few months ago
[https://twitter.com/#!/zinssmeister/status/15514462538288332...](https://twitter.com/#!/zinssmeister/status/155144625382883328)

But actually I am still surprised how quick this got axed. As a user you gotta
ask yourself these days if it's worth investing a lot of time and content into
a new app. An App that might be shut down, just because the builders want to
go try out a new idea. To give Kevin Rose some credit here, he always state up
front that Milk was going to "try" different ideas and move on to another if
one wasn't bringing the right amount of traction. Now I hoped that the
transition over to a new idea wouldn't mean the instand death of the previous
and that's probably the biggest surprise here.

~~~
nikcub
if only you could make money from not investing in things

~~~
bithive123
A penny saved...

------
conorwade
People need to get over this. Milk originally said that they would try a
series of experiments, that would be killed if the required traction wasn't
there.

We will see what happens with their next effort.

------
dustineichler
Make the source code available; the app and website!

~~~
mikejarema
Or how about finding a new home for the product (eg. another startup, media
co., anyone!).

While I understand there is a large amount of effort involved in transacting
something like that, certainly there is a legitimate & appropriate
organization out there who could foster and grow the community that is Oink.

This action would mildly address the concerns about continuity and trust in
product longevity.

~~~
dustineichler
Now I'm kinda wondering why they didn't spin this out on it's own like a
startup assembly line.

------
Andrex
Kind of a shame, I was looking forward to an Android version of Oink. Now it's
too late. :(

Although they were taking quite a while to put it out.

------
dirkdk
being a serial entrepreneur is easy, making a huge success of every endeavor
is hard. 9 out of 10 startups die, so even if you are Kevin Rose this means
you will probably have more failures than successes. Kill it and move on. Just
make sure you can say you gave it your utmost best.

------
jcromartie
First thought: what the heck is Oink?

------
seanp2k2
Sad to see it go. Oink was really fun for the few days I was using it :)

------
farhad667
we're helping @oinkapp users cheer up! Here's an importer to turn your old
oinks into @cheers! :) <http://chee.rs/oinkimport>

------
syed123
perhaps kevin rose is joining the bandwagon of SoLoMo to compete with the
likes of Highlight, <http://LetsLunch.com>, Glancee etc

------
sirwanqutbi
What is it about Kevin Rose and commitment ?

------
rdssassin
Read that as oink.de legendary torrent site

------
jjacobson
"It's better to burn out, than fade away"

------
woodall
Lots of Kevin Rose hate in this thread for whatever reason. Reads a lot like
Reddit...

------
didip
What did Oink do?

------
zyfo
A shame to see Oink getting shut down _again_.

~~~
jonursenbach
Again?

~~~
alaskamiller
Joke is the music pirate club Oink was shutdown.

------
wavephorm
If they didn't really believe in this "innovative" idea of taking pictures of
food and posting them on the internet, and didn't have the resources and
conviction to see it through, then why will they be more successful next time?

------
shareme
I have a question..

How ethical is this to set something up to obviously collect 'free data'?

------
cft11
Mark my words: no tech startup founded by a hipster will ever succeed.

~~~
pothibo
What a stupid statement. I'm nowhere close of being a hispter but this remark
is so stupid and useless that I don't understand how you had the guts to press
Enter

~~~
TillE
It's kind of amusing to see how "hipster" has become a catch-all insult,
particularly in nerd communities. Are you youngish and slightly unusual in a
way that I don't like? Hipster!

I don't like Kevin Rose, but c'mon, at least find some more creative insults.

