If everyone you talk to says, "I wouldn’t use this service if you paid me in gold-plated puppies" then you really should consider that your service may have a problem.
You might be talking to people in the wrong audience. If you asked me about, say, Gilt Groupe, I'd recommend setting it on fire. But that's because I'm a big nerd, and I think "luxury goods" are for idiots. I'm not in the market.
Or you could be talking to the right audience but the wrong end of it. Consider the Crossing the Chasm model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm
If you show your early product to anybody on the right three quarters of that curve, they'll tell you the seven thousand ways your idea is obviously wrong. The first SSDs (circa 1995) were too small, too slow, and too expensive for the mass market. But for military and aviation use, they were golden.
Every product has problems. The trick to startups isn't removing all the problems. It's finding somebody who's happy with early versions despite the problems, and then removing just enough problems that you can sell it to a slightly bigger audience.
The fact that the author and you miss this is probably indicative of why we see so much crap software produced with no real audience or use scenario.
I wonder, though, how you could have designed the right app if you have only been talking to the wrong people?
I mean, the sequence is either - "design an app that you yourself want and that you think is sooo cool that the whole world will want too" or "talk to people different enough from programmers that you need to understand them first to create a great app". The first approach is (caricatured) Steve Jobs, the second approach is Patio11. But it seems if the people you're talking to hate your app, you've failed at either of these approaches.
Hehe, I very much agree :) At the same time - what if 25% or 30% of replies are this negative? I've experienced that on other forums, only to end up making a decent amount of money.
I would never do that, even it it were free, but I can spend a lot of money on computers and gadgets like 3d printers and plotters.
Every body has different interests and necessities. Let it be.