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Comment by taneq | Hacker News Reader

Create -> Monetize -> Expand -> Exploit -> Destroy

It's a common commercial lifecycle for all sorts of things. You make a new thing. You find a way to make money from the thing. You expand your market for the thing by filling a need and treating your customers well. At some point you want to cash out, and start burning your userbase to make extra money. Eventually this destroys the whole thing.

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That's part of it. Another cause is that companies grow and get more employees and those employees need to justify their existence by changing things up. You don't get promoted for not fixing what aint broken.

This this this. That's why there are a million fly-by-night Craigslist competitors, and then there's Craigslist.

It works the same way it did in 1999, so my grandma can still sell stuff on it. That's it. Done. It's probably made way more money by not changing anything than by increasing CPMs 5% by playing a fullscreen ad every 6 seconds.

it's not common. most businesses do not wait years until they capriciously decide to make money. that's because most businesses are not funded by the silicon valley, it's float or die.

'Monetize' is the stage where they make money, and in normal companies it happens early and doesn't imply that customer service suffers. It's the 'Exploit' phase where the customer gets screwed if you let short-sighted people call the shots.

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