arielm

I'd be very curious to hear the kind of questions this raises about the app economy. Do you mean mobile apps? All software?

App.net was neither. It tried to be a platform for too many things for not enough people. So I can't see how its failure reflects on the economy and not just a bad idea.

App.net'S failures, IMO, were not a result of being too early as Dalton suggests. Instead, they failed at building a company. Confusing branding, wrong messaging, and ultimately a product without a need. That's why app.net failed.

https://arielmichaeli.com/where-did-app-net-go-wrong-bb4326a...

> risky investments in non-core-competency

I disagree with this completely. Atlassian is in the business of collaboration tools. They've done that for developers, but it doesn't mean they're only capable of making developer tools.

Also, where's the risk here? Other than the inflated price I don't see any risk. Trello isn't just an idea but rather a real product with a massive team and a ton of users who love it. They've iterated on their platform enough so I imagine many of both the technical and experience aspects are polished enough. What am I missing?

I don't for a second doubt the ability. I'm a big believer in moving fast, especially when there's such a bit opportunity for engagement and PR.

It's just the wording which I found a bit "loose". But I'm a stickler for that sort of stuff ;)

"If you're not moving forward you're moving backward."

It's true for any company, and even more true for tech companies. They have to continue to grow for many reasons, including keeping their existing products better.

I personally am not a JIRA fan. We used it for a while and it just really didn't work out for us. The entire experience was too cumbersome and unfriendly. However, that has nothing to do with them growing. If anything, they're doing an amazing job growing with a product that isn't fun to use at all.

I think this is a neat idea, however I'm pretty sure the boss who'd know what to do with it probably isn't the boss who will get (m)any of these.

As a founder who's always open to feedback I want to know if someone thinks I'm/we're doing something wrong. But... I also understand how hard it is to tell your boss you think he/she is wrong, especially if there's no additional feedback. Still, if you think something can be better you should always speak up.

I completely agree with the sentiment, but my gut says this acquisition isn't about Trello becoming a part of Atlassian but rather Atlassian trying to venture away from their set of dev tools.

Why, you ask? As a recently public company Atlassian knows it'll need to grow beyond developers if they want to continue growing at a healthy rate, and Trello offers that exactly. I believe that's why they paid such a hefty price for it.

It just wouldn't make sense to throw away all those users...

That statement actually makes me trust them less... I'm not saying they shouldn't move quickly on such opportunity, but don't make it so obvious.

I hope it works flawlessly.

We've been bootstrapping (successfully) for a few years now and so far almost every instance of using a freelancer failed (some more miserable than other) and cost us money and time.

We're in a unique situation where we outsourced for lack of time and not skill, which is a double edged sword...

My two cents - if you can do it then do it. If you can't, and can't learn fast enough, then try to freelance it.

Fair point, but that's not what I meant exactly.

If he "wants to" + "can", then he should.

The argument was against "I can but why should I if companies will", which I think misses the point of contribution. The more the better.

I think that's a pretty misguided statement. If you _can_ donate you should. Imagine having to deal with any other platform...

The more people (and companies) donate the better we're all off IMO.

Just to throw my two cents into the mix. The idea of being able to _query_ a single key in a SQL-like fashion is interesting, but I can't think of a production implementation that would be useful enough.

Instead, I'd look at using redis in front of something like MySQL so some operations go to redis and other right to the server.

Having to write SQL statements as redis EXECs isn't elegant IMO.

I completely agree. As someone who uses redis sql heavily I understand both have their use cases and wouldn't want to merge both to begin with.

On top of that, this looks like a simple proxy, so it's only making things less efficient.

OP, I'd suggest explaining the benefits better. Maybe I missed it but I don't really get this at all.

I'm pretty sure the goal of the 50 character limit was to keep it possible to have descriptive names that go beyond a word or two, but prevent extreme keyword stuffing (ex. Car racing game - race cars, trucks, bikes, people, animals, temples, and run like the angry bird, or go with pokemon). Obviously not a real app, but I've seen a lot worse...

Yup, they certainly did. Marco made Instapaper but eventually sold it to a different company (Beta Works) which built a team around it and monetized it via the developer api (https://www.instapaper.com/api). It was recently sold to Pinterest so that developer product is being sunset, but that's irrelevant in this example.

I've seen a few platforms attempt to become brokers for such deals in the past but to my knowledge none were incredibly (or, at all) successful...

But I do agree that it's a possible "exit" strategy.

I believe Instapaper also had a developer product they charged for, though I'm not sure how big of a share that had of revenue.

I think there's still a need for a simple/practical notes app. Apple's built in app has improved tremendously since so it's hard to judge but IMO there's still a big enough market that extends beyond John's followers.

But... an app that has monthly expenses but only charges a one time fee can't really be sustainable. It's completely misaligned, and that's why it failed.

I blogged about it here https://arielmichaeli.com/my-thoughts-on-vespers-unfortunate...

I like the idea in theory but in reality the number of people who can get a somewhat complex backend running on their own is small and the reward (syncing notes) isn't really that compelling so I think it isn't a great idea...

Instead of sun setting the app I'd switch it over to use iCloud (free backend), make it free, and set up a public support forum. This way it'd work and there would not need to be any ongoing investment of time or money.

I echo the sentiment and think there's misalignment between the value and the monetization strategy for many apps.

I wrote about it as well https://arielmichaeli.com/my-thoughts-on-vespers-unfortunate...

Ultimately a lot of the sadness comes from what looks like missed opportunity IMO, which is really tough to predict.

I think there are a variety of reasons for this. Some simple - stores set limits around 100 MB. And more complex ones - many top games have a very casual nature and rely on unlocking new content for revenue.

That said, Gameloft doesn't seem to care with multiple games that are over 1GB...

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Given that all of this took place legally in a courtroom I don't think anarchy should be an issue now or in the future.

I guess. Until Gawker finds something juicy on them...

That's a really valid point, especially if they agree not to collect additional personal information...

My guess is that they kind of have to because they have an agreement with the 3rd party that's handling this.

I see your points, but I think you are speaking about this at a higher level that isn't necessarily specific to this particular implementation.

I agree that when used by the direct posters, affiliate links cause a misalignment of incentive because the poster isn't necessarily adding value to the community but rather to their affiliate account. This can be done very naively or be abused. Users suffer both ways.

This however isn't the case here IMO because if Reddit is auto tagging all links the posters are pretty much in the same boat that they were of Reddit hadn't tagged those links.

You could say that because this is a revenue channel for Reddit they'd optimize tagged posts over non tagged ones when promoting content. That however mostly gets resolved by the same logic as above, plus we all know how stuff gets to the top of Reddit...

Lastly, communities making some revenue is, again, not a misalignment. Using the same logic as above, all auto tagged links are again just links. Hence, a community that generates good content would get some revenue. It's pretty straight forward in my opinion.

Lastly, most affiliates pay commission on sales and not impressions (and if they do it's really tiny). So the context and the targeting are the most important pieces.

Primarily because when they are done at the post level, meaning, when those that post add them there's a misalignment of incentive in many cases.

In this case however, since the posters aren't putting them in there's no incentive.

Ads in most contexts are intrusive and more often than not aren't targeted and irrelevant. Yes, they ruin the experience.

They rarely ruin it enough that is just close the tab and not use the site, but that doesn't really mean anything. If we can do without them I think we should.

I completely agree and don't get why so many people are so grossly upset.

Peter Thiel didn't use his money to bribe anyone, he didn't do anything illegal for Hulk. The court made a decision and Gawker needs to live with the consequences...

I think this is a great attempt by Reddit to become sustainable that isn't purely based on display advertising.

I personally dislike affiliate links just like most others but unlike ads they don't ruin my browsing experience and are generally very transparent.

The real issue here in my opinion is how this was announced, as a "we're doing this, FYI". I'd instead open up a discussion with mods of large communities to get feedback and once they understand the goal get them to show support.

And if they had gone the route of involving large communities they could have also done a tiny rev share, similar to how YouTube compensates content creators.