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Comment by ctdonath | Hacker News Reader

OH, NOW I GET IT.

Good night that was painful.

ihave50dollars.com is a spoof of join.app.net (duplicate layout of main page, text changed), which is a no-ad paid-membership version of Twitter, which apparently got VC funding to some people's amazement. An attempt to sign up takes you to an "end slavery" charity.

Yeah, sounds stupid to spell it out like this. Not everyone knows what app.net is, nor what its backstory is (I still don't). Ergo the spoof garners a well-deserved WTF.

WHY someone felt compelled to create the spoof is still a mystery to some of us.

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I think the spoof was created was because (a) app.net has no value proposition other than wanting $50, and (b) that there were over 100K people out there who put in money regardless.

(No value proposition is more accurately no value proposition for the site by itself. It does have a value proposition if it does billions of users like twitter, but that there is no realistic way of getting there.)

"A thing is worth only and exactly what others are willing to pay for it." Obviously it's worth $50 to 100,000 people. Some of us would like an ad-free version of Twitter that, by paid signup, screens out much of the...um...less interesting participants. Sounds like they've got 100,000 users already, which seems a good start.

I've always thought that was a very shallow definition and this has just helped me finally realize why I think that.

Basically, I could announce that I'm offering a service whereby you give me $50 dollars and I call you gullible. If I find 100,000 people willing to do that, it would mean that my service is "worth" $5,000,000 dollars.

The "worth" you're talking about does not seem to me as a very good indicator of whether we're improving the world or not.

Obtuse straw-man hypotheticals do not make for convincing argument. To the contrary, the fact that you can't find anyone to pay you $50 to call them gullible shows that "service" isn't worth $5M. Unless, of course, you consider politicians...

If you're not involved in the transaction, you're not in a position to decide "whether we're improving the world or not". Millions daily spend ~$50 for an extravagant meal, far beyond nutritional needs, and having nothing but excrement to show for it. Would you discount those goods/services as "not improving the world" and not worth millions of dollars?

Codemage's comment neatly explains Facebook's current predicament though. All of us suck at valuation it seems.

Clarification: we suck at predicting what something's value to others will be.

"$50 for an extravagant meal, far beyond nutritional needs"

"Would you discount those goods/services as "not improving the world" and not worth millions of dollars?"

Yes. Considering how people actually starve because of speculation with food, and considering global warming, I wouldn't even blink when saying that makes the world worse.

So I'm all for stepping on that toe and see where it leads. Kinda like making wearing fur uncool -- why not? Where is the problem?

I think it's closer to 12,000 users. From join.app.net:

"We eventually raised $803,000 from over 12,000 backers during the campaign."

Not necessarily. I could pay for something and decide afterwards that it was in fact not worth it and ask for a refund or simply not fall for it again. If this happens it doesn't mean the first exchange of $50 delivered $50 of worth back to me.

100,000 is a terrible start, IMO. Many millions of people made Google+ accounts and while I like Google+ far more than Facebook, I'm still essentially forced into using Facebook because the overlap of Google+ users to people I care about following is virtually nil. I don't see how the same won't happen for the vast majority of users when it comes to Twitter/App.Net except it will feel even worse for the App.Net users since they blew 50 bucks.

Twitter sucks but reproducing their network effect is a huge undertaking, especially when you're charging for it, and IMO 100k users as post-hype starting point is way too low for App.net to have a reasonable chance of succeeding before running out of money.

$50? That's like, what, 12.5 cups of $4 coffee? Just skip Starbucks for 3 work weeks and bam! no-risk social network.

It's worth about 10 bottles of water!

But you can't make that comparison! With a cup of Starbucks coffee, I know the extraordinary quality I'm getting. This walled social network is a life-or-death gamble.

I believe libria was mocking nearly everyone's use of "oh it only costs X cups of coffee."

And ngokevin was mocking: http://www.joshlehman.com/thoughts/stop-using-the-cup-of-cof...

See, I have my doubts about this... I dont think that many people actually signed up. I feel pretty strongly App.net is using the "Reddit" model of making themselves popular with fake users. "See all these cool people on this exclusive network? U know u want to fork over $50 to be a part of this special club..."

I'm willing to bet at least half of App.net users are bots used to incentivise people to join "to be a part of the club"

You're probably right...

https://alpha.app.net/senitiki

https://alpha.app.net/_danilo

https://alpha.app.net/arfsoftware

https://alpha.app.net/drh

https://alpha.app.net/yahelc

I paid for app.net, and I'm a human, and I haven't posted anything because I don't have anything to say yet. Note that you don't automatically get into the alpha if you pay -- you have to request, presumably because they guessed there were people like me who care about supporting app.net more than they care about saying anything quite yet.

> WHY someone felt compelled to create the spoof is still a mystery to some of us.

someone was simultaneously bored and disdainful of app.net.

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