> He said he would sell it to me for $40k. I offered $20k, which he refused but he said if I had any domain names generating ad revenue, we could do a deal of domains and cash. He said he would accept a lower amount if I paid in Bitcoin.
> So we worked out a deal where I gave him $20k in Bitcoin and a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue, and he gave me the domain friendster.com. Now I was the owner of the domain name friendster.com.
I don't know anything about how to project future ad revenue of a domain, but would this be likely to be valued at only $10,000? Unless I'm misremembering my limits, even if it made $4,500 next year and continued to cut in half every year after that, it would still account for $9,000 of revenue projecting indefinitely into the future, even bumping that up to something like 60% of the previous year's revenue it would already put it at more than $10,000 (although I don't know whether ad revenue tends to scale with inflation or not; my instinct is that the prices of ads probably would roughly increase with inflation over time)?
I know I'm nitpicking a bit about the title, but I can't help but actually be curious now that I thought of this.
If you had a steady investment opportunity with 10% return (about in line with long-terms stock market returns), $9000 per year indefinitely is worth the same as $99000 now (in an idealized finance world. In the real world you can't invest $99000 and withdraw $9000 per year because withdrawals during downturns will take out too much. But it's a quick way to calculate equivalent values).
That's obviously an upper bound, because those domains won't make $9000/year forever. But valuing them at $10k if they make $9k/year is equally unsound. Not to mention the domain is worth more than its ad revenue. You could also end up selling it to a company that came up with the name and saw that the domain is available for purchase for some reasonable 4-5 figure amount (like in the example of this very article, where someone buys a domain for a five-figure amount)
Obviously there is a lot we don't know (is the $9k pure profit or are there substantial costs? How likely is the domain to sell?), but it sounds like the seller got the better end of the deal. He got more than $40k in value, in return the author got a deal he could afford
I imagine that $9k ad revenue is a site that had an actual user base. And that the guy taking over the domain is going to just put all ads and no content, like he had on Friendster.com. And if so, the expected ad income is probably much lower.
Good analysis. if I was the author I would have just borrowed 20k in a personal loan and paid it off in three years. Of course he may be exaggerating that he gets 9K in Ad revenue per year or he knows that it's going to decline
You can check out similar sales on flippa.com - ad revenue does not last forever, even if it’s existed for years. And revenue is very much not profit, you could create a site and get $100/day in ad revenue tomorrow but it would cost you $200 in ad spend.
1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
2. Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
3. Save yourself a lot of money by building it on top of the Nostr protocol. Run a relay yourself if you want guaranteed reliability. Run a Blossom server for media. Use email for auth and store people's keys for them if you want a traditional UX. Don't worry about what's on Nostr already, just build your own thing on the protocol.
Let people come and go as they please and don't lock them in. They will love you for it later.
I tried to search for Friendster in the App Store and didn’t see it among the first few results. Instead, App Store was returning a sponsored ad followed by normal results for all other kinds of similar annd less similar apps. Instagram, Snapchat, Yubo (never heard of), Monopoly Go (mobile game related to the board game Monopoly), BeFriend (never heard of), Tinder, Friendly Social Browser (never heard of), Facebook, and at that point I stopped scrolling the results.
For a moment I thought maybe the app was US exclusive or something and not available in my region.
But following the link from the post worked fine and I could install it.
I literally searched Friendster and the app is named Friendster but App Store gave me all kinds of other crap in the search result instead. Weird.
Anyway, installed the app finally thanks to the link.
When a new app is released, it takes a few days for it to get into search, for some reason. Pretty much every single time a new app releases I see a comment like this. Nothing malicious you just have to wait a bit.
Wow, the phone tap requirement, love it! And your ethics, the best part.
Constructively, of course (if you care for feedback devolving ramble-y):
Could almost see myself using a web app version of this for kicks. But can’t sign up for another network (though would be happy to link a self hosted project, if I could stumble through setup). Apps don’t feel private (Apple neglects to offer basic firewall/other features), and not sure how someone would look at me trying to get them to register somewhere… maybe the phone tap pitch is enough? (Especially if it’d allow one-tap registration for friends inviting new friends, because the phone bump allowed for some data transfer.)
Anyway, understand self hosting is ostensibly permanently destined to be unpopular but somehow feel if the pitch were “be your own network, tap the phone, use this Friendster infrastructure/instruction set to link your networks”, I’d be more tempted.
The 'tapping phones' gimmick strikes me as something that sounds cute but will become an annoying chore that one should be able to opt out of.
Particularly given various unintended side effects -- I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
And either way, it's not the core feature that will draw users to the site
If you want to differentiate as an alternative to toxic behemoth platforms, the framing of "Facebook but with chores" isn't it. The idea of spending time on the platform itself should be appealing -- I am not that interested in knowing how to connect with someone on the platform before knowing why I would want to be there in the first place.
See e.g. how Nextdoor doesn't lead with "you'll have to verify that you live in the neighborhood", instead it's "Connect to your neighborhood with Nextdoor"
While this probably could only be done with the cooperation of Apple/Google, something like what they did for contact tracing during the pandemic would be ideal. Picking up that you were in the proximity of various friends without any active effort.
> I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
It seems like a feature could deal with this specific case, such as marking a friend as deceased. Possibly, other friends doing the same thing puts the profile to be in deceased status until the user logs in and changes the status.
This looks exactly like what I've been looking for. I love the idea of using phone proximity as the only way to add friends.
I think it will be very important for the onboarding process to be effortless, so you should focus on that. Until you reach some kind of saturation, most people will be downloading the app because a friend wants to add them. Having a way to generate a QR download code on my phone when I "add" a friend so they can take a photo and then download it, and immediately connect us, would be huge.
Do you have any kind of development plan for new features?
What I was describing is a way to quickly onboard a friend who I want to friend, because chances are zero of my friends will have this app yet.
If the connect with friend interface also had a QR code for app download and could trigger a connection between our accounts upon download, that would remove enough friction that I could start recommending this to my friends on the fly.
> this failed Apple App Store review because of Guideline 4.2 — Design — Minimum Functionality. They said “the usefulness of the app is limited because it seems to be intended for a small, or niche, set of users. Specifically, the app is intended for invited friends only.”
This is why we need laws regulating mobile platforms. Apple shouldn't be able to dictate what you use your phone for, or what apps you can give to your users. Doesn't work that way for PCs, shouldn't work that way for computers in your pocket.
I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant now. Same with other celebrities, like Kim Kardashian. If connections expired after a year (or 3 months or 6 months), people would have to maintain their social relevance, and it becomes a natural editorial filter, keeping the overall network fresh and relevant.
If you want a business model, require payment for long-term subscriptions or large celebrity/news accounts, but you have to overcome the network effect first. Maybe have a dozen or so permanent connections to start with, like MySpace's 8 priority friends.
> If connections expired after a year (or 3 months or 6 months), people would have to maintain their social relevance, and it becomes a natural editorial filter, keeping the overall network fresh and relevant.
This is a weird comment because it treats connections like they're only an asset for the person being followed.
The people doing the following aren't even considered. They're supposed to continuously re-follow the people they want to follow?
I don't see any upsides to this for anyone. I'm not reading social media every day. I don't want the network to automatically expire my follows and force me to remember and re-discover who I want to follow all the time. I don't want the people I follow feeling like they desperately need to pursue relevance instead of just being themselves.
If Selena Gomez is "socially irrelevant" then why do you care that she has 400 million followers? What does this take away from you in any way?
Because I don't want to see all her posts on my timeline anymore. I have to actively unfollow her to do that, which is more work.
That's more work than even following someone, because it asks for confirmation or pops up a separate modal to unfollow, which it doesn't do for following someone. And so I don't even bother.
This leads to stale social networks and algorithmic timelines.
I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Have at it. Or share with multiple circles or everyone / global.
Its a damn shame Google nerfed it after forcing it on people who werent asking to be forced into it. Google Plus was a very tech heavy Social Media platform, if Google had half a brain they could have built their own serious LinkedIn alternative.
i think it was just poorly implemented. i didn't use the circles feature because all my friends would be in one circle and my family were all offline, but i still had to deal with it for no personal benefit
opt in probably would have been better, like just default everyone to one circle and make it obvious how to split them up after you're a bit more comfortable with the platform
they made a bunch of other obvious blunders like attempting to force real names and spread them to youtube, mandatory account linkage etc etc but i think there were probably just too many conflicting high level voices at google trying to set direction
I completely agree. Circles were great. Unfortunately, they're one of the things that killed Google+. I remember reading an article from one of the creators of Google+ years and years ago. They talked about how asymmetric friending (Alice adding Bob to one of her circles didn't add Alice to any of Bob's circles) prevented the viral network effect that Facebook was able to achieve.
It's a damn shame. I feel like Google giving up on Google+ and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes.
Windows Phone was so so good - it was THE phone I recommended to users who were on feature phones/non-smart phones because the UX was so simple and clean (and obvious) - with a side effect that if you HAD a smart phone before (Palm, Apple, Android, BlackBerry, the UX was contrary to what you were used to).
Windows Phone died because MS didnt do enough to build the app ecosystem, and bailed out too soon. I also feel webOS was a lost opportunity too - in some ways it was just too ambitious for the hardware of its time.
I really wish I had messed with Windows Phone when it was a thing. They were the only ones not to just ship a clone of an existing interface ASAP. But it was closed source and offered no advantages for carriers or device makers compared to Android.
WebOS needed WASM and a lot more to be successful. I think WASM/WASI is to the point that the next major platform build out can use it.
Facebook has that feature and has for many years. That is a good idea, but there are many bad ideas that negate the good ideas even when the good ones are implemented.
As I understand my FB account, I can easily post to a group. But I can't easily adjust the membership of that group. Otoh, I post maybe once a year, so who knows.
It would be easy to send a notification “you haven’t interacted with Sally in 6 months, so we’re removing her from your network. Click here to add her back” or something along those lines and nobody would be the least confused. They’d probably be annoyed often enough though.
Also Discord - tons of people use Discord as a social network and keep up with friends. I must have 5 friend groups that have their own Discords with some overlap.
What killed Google+ is the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. They had a brief window where everyone wanted to use it, and they kept it locked behind a hard to get invite system for months and months.
It was worse than that: they forced _everyone_ into it, whether or not you had any interest in using it.
They did this before having notification control or usable filtering[1] so what this meant was for most of year, you'd login to Gmail and see the upper right notification badge be !!!LOOK AT ME!!! red only to click on it and see it was telling you that some dude who no-showed on a Craigslist sale 10 years ago in a different city had been forced to “join” Google+. Even worse, it took like 6 months for their iOS developers to give you any control over push notifications so you got all of that as push notifications until you deleted the app.
They also annoyed key communities like Google Reader users: that wasn't their largest popular social network but it was one which people actually liked and it disproportionately skewed towards people like journalists, bloggers, etc. who recommended technology to other people. The conversion to Google+ was really clumsy and they did things like replacing the popular Reader commenting system with a Google+ “integration” which didn't work at all on mobile devices[2], which meant that a ton of influential people had a really negative experience and told everyone they knew about it.
1. The “circles” idea reportedly worked well when it was Google employees using it internally but it relied on the poster picking an audience for a post, which failed in the real world when the spammiest people think everyone is interested in their every word.
2. The dialog was sized for a desktop display so the post button was inaccessible off the screen.
Thats not the only thing that killed google+ though. I think their aggressive push was their demise, forced all their users to use google+, mangled with youtube and gmail accounts and all that pissed off a lot of users.
> the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good.
That's not it at all. Bluesky is simply just too political.
X is too political. Bluesky is too political. When you focus on content and sharing and having a good time, then the network takes off.
I'm not saying politics isn't important. I'm saying it can't become the miasma that pervades the entire service and makes the entire point of the social network complaining about politics, polarized attacks, etc.
Bluesky is political because their invite-only on-boarding process for months meant that only really tight knit subgroups and subcultures found their way in. By the time your average person who just wanted to stop seeing ads about Great Replacement Theory or whatever found their way into Bluesky, it was chock full of furry art, "fandom" posting from teenagers on the spectrum, and political rambling from people who haven't touched grass since puberty.
How does having a really tightly controlled and/or lengthy invite period translate into the user base being of one particular political viewpoint? I'm not seeing the causal link. Even if I take at face value your claim that "only really tight knit subgroups and subcultures found their way in," I still don't see how these subgroups or subcultures would necessarily have the same political views.
Twitter is a haven for people who are fans of generating non-consensual porn of others, white supremacy/white nationalism, murder of innocent civilians, and other reprehensible things.
Bluesky has become a refuge for people who liked Twitter before it became the above.
I would say that neither site is political in the traditional sense of the word. To call it that is to normalize the abhorrent things that are promoted and celebrated on Twitter as “just politics.”
What does this mean? Like in practical feature terms and benefit to the end user?
Your system kills the social networks ability to act as someone's modern day rolodex of contact information of previous acquaintances. What do they get in exchange for that?
Nah, bad idea. The timeframe of an active connection really varies by age and type. Some important connections are once-every-few-years communications. A year, or two years, etc is too arbitrary.
As someone who's been working on social networking and adjacent services for over 15 years, hard disagree.
An ideal social network should not have any agency of its own, period. If your feed is too crowded because you follow too many people, then so be it. It's your problem, you did this to yourself. Only you know how to fix it for yourself, if you do even want it fixed in the first place.
real world social networks have agency if you define ephemerality as agency. It's an accident of digital platforms that nothing is ever forgotten, not a feature inherent to normal human relations. In the real world you drop phone numbers, you forget events, unused relationships atrophy. And that's not a bug, forgetting is a feature. For anyone who isn't convinced of this, Black Mirror did an admirable job in its first season putting the pathologies of social technologies on display that record everything.
It can be argued that humans actually hate forgetting things. That's why we invented writing. Spoken language lets us share arbitrarily abstract thoughts with others. But human memory is imperfect, so spreading knowledge or memories through word-of-mouth is unreliable. Writing lets us preserve that information as intended by the original author, potentially indefinitely. That's also why we always wanted to be able to record and play back what we hear and see, and our civilization only fairly recently, in terms of history, got advanced enough to have technologies to do that.
I mean Kim & Selena will always have a certain level of celebrity status but people like Sydney Sweeney are currently a lot more popular. This is in terms of "are they the most popular people right now" as their instagram count states. They are literally in the top 10 on instagram right now.
haha yeah it makes her so obviously more popular and thus her follower count more "accurate". The parent's point is just hard to hold.
Pretty sure she founded or runs skims? She's Armenian, daughter of a famous lawyer in LA. Kanye. Sex tape. Early with the reality tv. I too did not seek out any of this knowledge!
Most just be a generational thing. Sweeney is still baking. She's actress from euphoria of which i didn't watch. That's about as much as i know. and the jeans ad controversy.
I would hate it if the system removed nodes from my network without my influence. Perhaps a rules engine with user defined criteria would be useful.
Ultimately, users define their network in current-day social media and the relevance of any celebrity or other person within it.
400M people still find Selena Gomez relevant to themselves - she’s simply not relevant to you. I asked Gemini very simply “is Selena Gomez relevant” and it responded with essentially “more in 2026 than ever.”
Could potentially show you withering connections you havent interacted with, almost an auto recycle bin with the option to dig on there and bring it back later on but dissapear from your main radius of attention if withered.
Instagram has something like this where it shows you "least interacted with". It seems broken to me though, as it showed me people who I do interact with.
I don’t post on Facebook—HN is my closest analogue. But I assure you my partner(s) have no interest in seeing whatever I post here. Any more than I want to be in the thick of the extended-family group chats. Or, frankly, Facebook.
In that sense, maybe this is Facebook doing its part for domestic harmony…
It sure justifies the creepy People You May Know though, doesn't it? Which apparently outs sex workers and whatever else
If you're going to move fast and break things and connect the world full steam ahead (and damn the consequences like what happened in Myanmar) your platform better be absolutely rock solid but Facebook doesn't even do that. Its implementation of 'connection' is laughable
I attended a concert last night and was wishing for this exact kind of app, being able to quickly exchange a follow with someone you just met in real life but will otherwise never see again unless you specifically ask for their name/number, which is awkward. Could spawn some special relationships.
This sounds cool and similar to something I’ve been building! I say similar as we have different ideas and target audiences — What I’m building is a niche network specifically targeting people who are travellers or friends that like holidaying together. I don’t want to seem like I’m spamming or self promoting so will keep the link out but will share if people want.
Anyway, I digress, it would be great to connect and exchange ideas if you have the time? I really like the idea of fading connections.
PLEASE if you are developing only for the Mac ecosystem, you should be required to put (Mac only) in your title so the rest of us don't completely WASTE our time.
It is good to point out this alternative is 90% likely going to be a rugpull on "nice cosy 90s style social network" by systemic factors. Regardless of the intent of the owner.
I just realised federated helps re. censorship but not privacy/secrecy needs.
Craigslist never sold afaik, theres loads of other example companies worth more than a billion now that never sold. Depends how you define "project" of course, but you gotta make sure you don't define it such that this would no longer be a "project" when it's worth 1bn. Also everything that sells for more than 1bn is something that presumably nobody would sell for 1bn.
The idea that anyone would sell any project for 1bn is kinda nonsense, if a project looks worth buying for 1bn to someone, it may look to be worth keeping to the people who made it or are in control of it.
$1B is life changing money. More than you can reasonably spend, unless you start an airline or something like that. $1m is like two Ferraris. If you buy the second one used. Of course it's also life-changing amounts of money to many. It's enough to retire in a cheap country. But only if you are very careful about your money
There are a lot of projects I would sell for $1m, but it is little enough that I would carefully consider for anything I've invested serious time into
I dunno, if I spent even a couple years building something and could sell it for a million relatively quickly I probably would too unless it's something I'm really passionate about. I've sold side projects for waaaay less.
yea the moment 1bn was on the table id quickly think about how not-necessary social media is for humanity and id take the check and peace out like tom from myspace & proceed to drink liquor out of coconuts on a beach somewhere.
though id have the utmost respect for someone who could hold onto the possibility to threaten the facebook/instagram/snapchat moat, realistically i don't think anyone in here could stick to the ideals so strongly.
it's not even a valuable thought exercise. if this thing were to gain any traction at all it's assuredly gonna get acquired. you gotta be tech-buddha to resist that.
The only thing I liked when I did use Facebook was the "wall". To be able to post on a friend's wall semi- publically where their friends can see it. Most other Facebook clones have had the idea of tagging, but it wasn't the same. (E.g. Google+)
The tap-to-connect constraint makes this work. Every social network removes friction; this one keeps it on purpose. Won't scale to billions, but maybe that's the point.
When you're building a social networking site like this, when do you need to start to worry about laws from different states and countries (eg age bans, data export, etc)?
I mean, it's good to be aware from the beginning, even if you don't intend to follow them right away.
But, my rule of thumb is you don't really need to worry about laws from places where they don't have real jurisdiction on you. If they filed suit, would you rather respond or make a note to never visit that place / would you be ok if all your users from there were blocked from contacting you by law?
As a guy who used to run game servers[0] and some other small-web stuff, I hate that this is one of the first questions that springs to mind today, but I'd also like to know.
[0]: in ancient times when server meant an actual server
This is quite amazing. I remember being on the original friendster way back in the day. They had so much potential. And there was also orkut.com that was even better because of the simpler UX. Then came Facebook and you all know the rest.
Not for the operators, I expect. If they flip a couple bits in the webserver I think they can lock the API down to require a device attestation, which would inhibit much of the API’s attack surface from being exploitable without a physical device that can afford to be console-banned (but I haven’t done my research to prove that yet, so grain of feasibility salt). Certainly in this day and age there is no desire to be “search engine optimized” by anyone using a social network for IRL friends, so they lose nothing by lacking a website. And there’s lots of small but nice services that are or have been iOS only (and a couple big ones that collapsed once they opened to other platforms). They’re explicitly selecting against the network effect already in favor of a nice experience, so it’s not like it matters if it grows more slowly. Are there drawbacks you see besides “requires an iOS device” that I haven’t considered?
That's a great question, since the genesis of this was the domain name, which no one using the app will care about or visit. That is, the only thing that was actually needed here was the trademark, it appears.
why not a proper Progress Web App so it can run on any device independent of app stores? it's not as though a social app needs deep OS integration. I'm sure Claude or Codex could vibe code that in an afternoon.
I managed to make an ESP32-controlled RC car move by sending it commands from a webapp running on my Android phone last year. I don't believe I have telekinesis magic power, so I'd rather believe that this is not in-fact iOS only.
For the record, the feature you describe was first introduced on Samsung phones 14 years ago - and later removed, likely after poor adoption. Because Apple "reinvented it", it's now planned to be reintroduced on Android too.
It's likely much more than half because I don't see a guy working on his laptop and switching on his phone to be able to answer messages, I personally never use social medias on a phone, it's annoying to type.
I prefer most communication to happen from my phone. Keeps the laptop less distracting when I don’t talk with people so much on it. Except Slack on work computer. That one I keep open and use for talking with coworkers. But that’s because it’s part of the job, and also relevant for me and them to be talking about things we are working on.
What does "a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue" look like? Is this domain one where people randomly stumble upon it and give ad views to a parking page? A website with regular use or other content that people visit for some purpose that is now under different ownership?
>I don’t really care about making money from [$project], but I’d like it to eventually pay for itself.
Warning bells. Slippery slopes. I think we should know by now that social networks do not mix well with the advertising business model. It would have been nice to see that eventuality ruled out explicitly here (PS: for the future as well as just for now).
Facebook ads began in 2004 with simple "Flyers" for small businesses, but the official, targeted Facebook Ads platform launched in November 2007. While rudimentary banner ads appeared in 2005-2006, the 2007 launch introduced brand pages, social ads, and user insights.
app is snappy and solid. missing a “invite friends” link… i know the point is in person, i’m with two people in person but had to go back to app store to find a share link.
Firstly, it doesn’t seem to work for me and my wife - we hold the phones together but clicking start does nothing (and we’ve accepted Bluetooth etc).
Secondly, I wonder if you’ll have a massive chicken and egg issue with the physical feature. I get it’s the main feature but could you overcome it somehow initially while still maintaining your long term “gimmick”? Like could you allow people to connect with the first X friends (5? 10? 20? Whatever that can get virality and flywheel going) or connect with as many as you want virtually for the first X months etc. You could even have the contacts fade away slowly if they don’t get verified in person etc. You might want to model out different strategies (and be extremely conservative) otherwise you’ll be relying on lottery-level luck. Good luck anyway though :)
lmao i cannot stand medium. the amount of articles i've clicked into on medium that start with
"in todays fast paced business environment.."
the incentive structure on medium is so busted. just people churning out half-working insights to look good for job interviews or promotions, it's like the worlds laziest portfolio. it straight up isn't any sort of bastion of knowledge-share.
Probably being pedantic, but this is not buying Friendster to be precise, usually what is meant by that is that the company was bought.
In this case the domain Friendster.com was bought, and a trademark was conceded (a new different trademark), I don't know precisely the implications of the trademark though, I think it's a different trademark and you still cannot imply that you are a continuation of the previous trademark holder, it's just that you are given monopoly over that word as a trademark.
Now, is that different than buying "Friendster"? A really interesting legal question, I think it is, and I think it has relevant implications, I don't think you can for example restore the website as it was and pretend a continuation as you would if you bought the company.
Honestly if the prior Friendster company itself was bought - including all the assets, codebase and historical documents (no user details) that would've been such an incredibly interesting read.
Buying the domain and getting the trademark is still cool, just not as cool.
Can you please make it (and keep it) so that friendships are symmetrical? I.e., "friend" rather than "follow". IMO that's the enshittification inflection point of Facebook.
These, to me, feel like artifacts of a bygone era, now replaced by the boiled down version - group chats with friends. Telegram has every feature you need in a platform and you get the joy of "circles" as one poster mentioned, by simply having different group chats.
judging from what i hear people say. all you have to do is be able to display who's online from your friends list, and a chronologically ordered list of their posts. thats it. the major platforms are optimising for ads so much they cant even achieve this level of basic functionality
Could you make it so you can have group chats but you can invite anyone you’ve tapped before and they can all talk together (but still not be able to talk outside the group chat)
on the fading connection and monetization - you could let people pay to re-up the connection from fading as opposed to meeting in person again first, and its makes them really think about whether meeting in person is worth happening again or would ever happen again, is the connection itself valuable in another way any way
on instagram, there is a social disincentive to unfollow people and you can also make someone else unfollow you in a couple ways (the button that does just that, as well as blocking someone for a second and unblocking them), doing these actions has a real cost to confrontation. people you thought you would never see again will see you again and say "I thought we were following each other???? oooo :O ... ooooh >:O"
you are making that activity a first class citizen, with no presumption of ill will behind it, this has value to it
He gave the guy $20k dollars in bitcoin (I can’t say how much bitcoin that is because it fluctuates too much to be a stable currency), to buy a dead domain that makes $9k a year in at revenue.
> $20k dollars in bitcoin (I can’t say how much bitcoin that is because it fluctuates too much to be a stable currency), to buy a dead domain that makes $9k a year in at revenue
That's...a good deal? Assuming even 50% margins, that's a solid yield.
> He said he would sell it to me for $40k. I offered $20k, which he refused but he said if I had any domain names generating ad revenue, we could do a deal of domains and cash. He said he would accept a lower amount if I paid in Bitcoin.
> So we worked out a deal where I gave him $20k in Bitcoin and a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue, and he gave me the domain friendster.com. Now I was the owner of the domain name friendster.com.
I don't know anything about how to project future ad revenue of a domain, but would this be likely to be valued at only $10,000? Unless I'm misremembering my limits, even if it made $4,500 next year and continued to cut in half every year after that, it would still account for $9,000 of revenue projecting indefinitely into the future, even bumping that up to something like 60% of the previous year's revenue it would already put it at more than $10,000 (although I don't know whether ad revenue tends to scale with inflation or not; my instinct is that the prices of ads probably would roughly increase with inflation over time)?
I know I'm nitpicking a bit about the title, but I can't help but actually be curious now that I thought of this.
If you had a steady investment opportunity with 10% return (about in line with long-terms stock market returns), $9000 per year indefinitely is worth the same as $99000 now (in an idealized finance world. In the real world you can't invest $99000 and withdraw $9000 per year because withdrawals during downturns will take out too much. But it's a quick way to calculate equivalent values).
That's obviously an upper bound, because those domains won't make $9000/year forever. But valuing them at $10k if they make $9k/year is equally unsound. Not to mention the domain is worth more than its ad revenue. You could also end up selling it to a company that came up with the name and saw that the domain is available for purchase for some reasonable 4-5 figure amount (like in the example of this very article, where someone buys a domain for a five-figure amount)
Obviously there is a lot we don't know (is the $9k pure profit or are there substantial costs? How likely is the domain to sell?), but it sounds like the seller got the better end of the deal. He got more than $40k in value, in return the author got a deal he could afford
I imagine that $9k ad revenue is a site that had an actual user base. And that the guy taking over the domain is going to just put all ads and no content, like he had on Friendster.com. And if so, the expected ad income is probably much lower.
I believe it's 9k/year in parking revenue.
Good analysis. if I was the author I would have just borrowed 20k in a personal loan and paid it off in three years. Of course he may be exaggerating that he gets 9K in Ad revenue per year or he knows that it's going to decline
You can check out similar sales on flippa.com - ad revenue does not last forever, even if it’s existed for years. And revenue is very much not profit, you could create a site and get $100/day in ad revenue tomorrow but it would cost you $200 in ad spend.
Here's what I would do.
1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
2. Make it a PWA. This will make it accessible to many more people. Nobody wants to install an app. Nobody wants to install a PWA either but they will at least use a "web site" (a surprising number will install it if it's good).
3. Save yourself a lot of money by building it on top of the Nostr protocol. Run a relay yourself if you want guaranteed reliability. Run a Blossom server for media. Use email for auth and store people's keys for them if you want a traditional UX. Don't worry about what's on Nostr already, just build your own thing on the protocol.
Let people come and go as they please and don't lock them in. They will love you for it later.
Cool project. Have fun!
If somebody wouldn't even bother to download an app for a social network they probably wouldn't stick around for very long either
Nobody wants to install an app?
I have a handful of 3rd party apps on my phone and none on my computer. Prefer to just use browser.
I always avoid apps if I can.
But yeah, that comment is a bit disconnected to majority of the population.
> I always avoid apps if I can.
Okay.
lol I was going to say this too! I think the inverse is true: nobody wants to install a PWA
If it requires Play Store, I will only put it on my work phone.
> 1. Make it QR code scanning instead of tapping so it can be a PWA.
Misses the point completely. The entire idea is that this enforces in-person meetings, which QR codes do not.
I tried to search for Friendster in the App Store and didn’t see it among the first few results. Instead, App Store was returning a sponsored ad followed by normal results for all other kinds of similar annd less similar apps. Instagram, Snapchat, Yubo (never heard of), Monopoly Go (mobile game related to the board game Monopoly), BeFriend (never heard of), Tinder, Friendly Social Browser (never heard of), Facebook, and at that point I stopped scrolling the results.
For a moment I thought maybe the app was US exclusive or something and not available in my region.
But following the link from the post worked fine and I could install it.
I literally searched Friendster and the app is named Friendster but App Store gave me all kinds of other crap in the search result instead. Weird.
Anyway, installed the app finally thanks to the link.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/friendster/id6760240416
When a new app is released, it takes a few days for it to get into search, for some reason. Pretty much every single time a new app releases I see a comment like this. Nothing malicious you just have to wait a bit.
Odd, Friendster was the first non-sponsored result for me in the U.S. store.
Wow, the phone tap requirement, love it! And your ethics, the best part.
Constructively, of course (if you care for feedback devolving ramble-y):
Could almost see myself using a web app version of this for kicks. But can’t sign up for another network (though would be happy to link a self hosted project, if I could stumble through setup). Apps don’t feel private (Apple neglects to offer basic firewall/other features), and not sure how someone would look at me trying to get them to register somewhere… maybe the phone tap pitch is enough? (Especially if it’d allow one-tap registration for friends inviting new friends, because the phone bump allowed for some data transfer.)
Anyway, understand self hosting is ostensibly permanently destined to be unpopular but somehow feel if the pitch were “be your own network, tap the phone, use this Friendster infrastructure/instruction set to link your networks”, I’d be more tempted.
Thank you for keeping it not evil!
The 'tapping phones' gimmick strikes me as something that sounds cute but will become an annoying chore that one should be able to opt out of.
Particularly given various unintended side effects -- I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
And either way, it's not the core feature that will draw users to the site
If you want to differentiate as an alternative to toxic behemoth platforms, the framing of "Facebook but with chores" isn't it. The idea of spending time on the platform itself should be appealing -- I am not that interested in knowing how to connect with someone on the platform before knowing why I would want to be there in the first place.
See e.g. how Nextdoor doesn't lead with "you'll have to verify that you live in the neighborhood", instead it's "Connect to your neighborhood with Nextdoor"
Perhaps "remember when you met with your friends?"
But taking a photo (possibly a group photo) is a more natural way to do that. Maybe it should integrate with photo-taking somehow?
It would be annoying if you met up, forgot to do the ritual in person, and had no way to fix it.
While this probably could only be done with the cooperation of Apple/Google, something like what they did for contact tracing during the pandemic would be ideal. Picking up that you were in the proximity of various friends without any active effort.
https://covid19.apple.com/contacttracing
> I personally wouldn't want my connection to my deceased best friend to be subject to some decay feature on a social network.
It seems like a feature could deal with this specific case, such as marking a friend as deceased. Possibly, other friends doing the same thing puts the profile to be in deceased status until the user logs in and changes the status.
This looks exactly like what I've been looking for. I love the idea of using phone proximity as the only way to add friends.
I think it will be very important for the onboarding process to be effortless, so you should focus on that. Until you reach some kind of saturation, most people will be downloading the app because a friend wants to add them. Having a way to generate a QR download code on my phone when I "add" a friend so they can take a photo and then download it, and immediately connect us, would be huge.
Do you have any kind of development plan for new features?
I just signed up and it’s super fast. Download the app, put in your name, allow Bluetooth. No email, no password, nothing.
What I was describing is a way to quickly onboard a friend who I want to friend, because chances are zero of my friends will have this app yet.
If the connect with friend interface also had a QR code for app download and could trigger a connection between our accounts upon download, that would remove enough friction that I could start recommending this to my friends on the fly.
> allow Bluetooth
I'd have a hard time getting over my aversion to this. I automatically reject any app's attempt to find local devices, etc.
I can't imagine how it would be possible to detect a phone in close proximity without allowing this though
> this failed Apple App Store review because of Guideline 4.2 — Design — Minimum Functionality. They said “the usefulness of the app is limited because it seems to be intended for a small, or niche, set of users. Specifically, the app is intended for invited friends only.”
This is why we need laws regulating mobile platforms. Apple shouldn't be able to dictate what you use your phone for, or what apps you can give to your users. Doesn't work that way for PCs, shouldn't work that way for computers in your pocket.
I really wish more social networks would have a "fading connections" limit. So many social networks suffer from stale connections and networks, and these connections should expire after a year. Otherwise, it will permanently define a social network's content and editorial direction without algorithmic control. For example, Selena Gomez will always have 400million followers on Instagram, but she's socially irrelevant now. Same with other celebrities, like Kim Kardashian. If connections expired after a year (or 3 months or 6 months), people would have to maintain their social relevance, and it becomes a natural editorial filter, keeping the overall network fresh and relevant.
If you want a business model, require payment for long-term subscriptions or large celebrity/news accounts, but you have to overcome the network effect first. Maybe have a dozen or so permanent connections to start with, like MySpace's 8 priority friends.
> If connections expired after a year (or 3 months or 6 months), people would have to maintain their social relevance, and it becomes a natural editorial filter, keeping the overall network fresh and relevant.
This is a weird comment because it treats connections like they're only an asset for the person being followed.
The people doing the following aren't even considered. They're supposed to continuously re-follow the people they want to follow?
I don't see any upsides to this for anyone. I'm not reading social media every day. I don't want the network to automatically expire my follows and force me to remember and re-discover who I want to follow all the time. I don't want the people I follow feeling like they desperately need to pursue relevance instead of just being themselves.
If Selena Gomez is "socially irrelevant" then why do you care that she has 400 million followers? What does this take away from you in any way?
Because I don't want to see all her posts on my timeline anymore. I have to actively unfollow her to do that, which is more work.
That's more work than even following someone, because it asks for confirmation or pops up a separate modal to unfollow, which it doesn't do for following someone. And so I don't even bother.
This leads to stale social networks and algorithmic timelines.
I feel like that was what made Google Plus better and yet because it was Google shoving everything into Google Plus itself to force numbers… it failed. Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen. You can basically group friends under specific labels, so if you want to only share some posts / photos with family, only family will see it, wanna share posts with former and current coworkers? Have at it. Or share with multiple circles or everyone / global.
Its a damn shame Google nerfed it after forcing it on people who werent asking to be forced into it. Google Plus was a very tech heavy Social Media platform, if Google had half a brain they could have built their own serious LinkedIn alternative.
i think it was just poorly implemented. i didn't use the circles feature because all my friends would be in one circle and my family were all offline, but i still had to deal with it for no personal benefit
opt in probably would have been better, like just default everyone to one circle and make it obvious how to split them up after you're a bit more comfortable with the platform
they made a bunch of other obvious blunders like attempting to force real names and spread them to youtube, mandatory account linkage etc etc but i think there were probably just too many conflicting high level voices at google trying to set direction
I completely agree. Circles were great. Unfortunately, they're one of the things that killed Google+. I remember reading an article from one of the creators of Google+ years and years ago. They talked about how asymmetric friending (Alice adding Bob to one of her circles didn't add Alice to any of Bob's circles) prevented the viral network effect that Facebook was able to achieve.
It's a damn shame. I feel like Google giving up on Google+ and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes.
I never tried a Windows phone - but everyone I knew with one loved them. (Most of the owners worked for Microsoft...)
I loved Google+ - it was like Facebook without the dark patterns. So of course, nobody was on it (which I didn't dislike exactly).
> and Microsoft giving up on Windows phones were both mistakes.
You hit me right in the gut, are we long lost siblings? Lol
Windows Phone was so so good - it was THE phone I recommended to users who were on feature phones/non-smart phones because the UX was so simple and clean (and obvious) - with a side effect that if you HAD a smart phone before (Palm, Apple, Android, BlackBerry, the UX was contrary to what you were used to).
Windows Phone died because MS didnt do enough to build the app ecosystem, and bailed out too soon. I also feel webOS was a lost opportunity too - in some ways it was just too ambitious for the hardware of its time.
I really wish I had messed with Windows Phone when it was a thing. They were the only ones not to just ship a clone of an existing interface ASAP. But it was closed source and offered no advantages for carriers or device makers compared to Android.
WebOS needed WASM and a lot more to be successful. I think WASM/WASI is to the point that the next major platform build out can use it.
Facebook has that feature and has for many years. That is a good idea, but there are many bad ideas that negate the good ideas even when the good ones are implemented.
it goes back even further - LiveJournal, which was a social network like any other - more importantly without algorithmic optimization.
> Circles in Google Plus is the most underrated thing I have ever seen.
Facebook now has 'Audience', which is quite analogous to 'Circles'
Apparently Facebook does/did support posting to certain groups? Maybe the UI isn't great as I never knew it was possible but a workmate told it was.
As I understand my FB account, I can easily post to a group. But I can't easily adjust the membership of that group. Otoh, I post maybe once a year, so who knows.
WeChat in China was early to implement friend group-based posting
It's a great idea in principle, but it requires some manual work, which most users aren't gonna bother with.
> it requires some manual work, which most users aren't gonna bother with
Dowsing a user's circles from their public information and Gmail inbox seems like a perfect task for AI.
Exactly.
Self-defining all of the semantic grouping metadata was too much onus on the user.
Not everybody has the patience to curate and groom their social circle labels and memberships. That feels like a full time job.
I spent way too much time stressing over how to define my "circles". It was not a good experience.
I don’t think it’s about the effort needed. The basic idea is just too complex for most people.
It would be easy to send a notification “you haven’t interacted with Sally in 6 months, so we’re removing her from your network. Click here to add her back” or something along those lines and nobody would be the least confused. They’d probably be annoyed often enough though.
Circles was a lot of busy work though
Messages group chats are the circles now.
Also Discord - tons of people use Discord as a social network and keep up with friends. I must have 5 friend groups that have their own Discords with some overlap.
What killed Google+ is the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good. They had a brief window where everyone wanted to use it, and they kept it locked behind a hard to get invite system for months and months.
It was worse than that: they forced _everyone_ into it, whether or not you had any interest in using it.
They did this before having notification control or usable filtering[1] so what this meant was for most of year, you'd login to Gmail and see the upper right notification badge be !!!LOOK AT ME!!! red only to click on it and see it was telling you that some dude who no-showed on a Craigslist sale 10 years ago in a different city had been forced to “join” Google+. Even worse, it took like 6 months for their iOS developers to give you any control over push notifications so you got all of that as push notifications until you deleted the app.
They also annoyed key communities like Google Reader users: that wasn't their largest popular social network but it was one which people actually liked and it disproportionately skewed towards people like journalists, bloggers, etc. who recommended technology to other people. The conversion to Google+ was really clumsy and they did things like replacing the popular Reader commenting system with a Google+ “integration” which didn't work at all on mobile devices[2], which meant that a ton of influential people had a really negative experience and told everyone they knew about it.
1. The “circles” idea reportedly worked well when it was Google employees using it internally but it relied on the poster picking an audience for a post, which failed in the real world when the spammiest people think everyone is interested in their every word.
2. The dialog was sized for a desktop display so the post button was inaccessible off the screen.
Thats not the only thing that killed google+ though. I think their aggressive push was their demise, forced all their users to use google+, mangled with youtube and gmail accounts and all that pissed off a lot of users.
> the same thing that prevented Bluesky from ever being good.
That's not it at all. Bluesky is simply just too political.
X is too political. Bluesky is too political. When you focus on content and sharing and having a good time, then the network takes off.
I'm not saying politics isn't important. I'm saying it can't become the miasma that pervades the entire service and makes the entire point of the social network complaining about politics, polarized attacks, etc.
Bluesky is political because their invite-only on-boarding process for months meant that only really tight knit subgroups and subcultures found their way in. By the time your average person who just wanted to stop seeing ads about Great Replacement Theory or whatever found their way into Bluesky, it was chock full of furry art, "fandom" posting from teenagers on the spectrum, and political rambling from people who haven't touched grass since puberty.
How does having a really tightly controlled and/or lengthy invite period translate into the user base being of one particular political viewpoint? I'm not seeing the causal link. Even if I take at face value your claim that "only really tight knit subgroups and subcultures found their way in," I still don't see how these subgroups or subcultures would necessarily have the same political views.
Twitter is a haven for people who are fans of generating non-consensual porn of others, white supremacy/white nationalism, murder of innocent civilians, and other reprehensible things.
Bluesky has become a refuge for people who liked Twitter before it became the above.
I would say that neither site is political in the traditional sense of the word. To call it that is to normalize the abhorrent things that are promoted and celebrated on Twitter as “just politics.”
“Too political” usually means “not my politics” IME.
Maybe? But that doesn't really have much to do with my point.
I was agreeing with you
I can only imagine someone looking over my shoulder on vacation to see what I'm posting: "oh, you have a 'close friends' group; why am I not in it?"
Arbitrary labels are great ... until they're not.
Arbitrary labels make it really easy to give groups of close friends silly in-joke names rather than "close friends"...
>keeping the overall network fresh and relevant
What does this mean? Like in practical feature terms and benefit to the end user?
Your system kills the social networks ability to act as someone's modern day rolodex of contact information of previous acquaintances. What do they get in exchange for that?
Nah, bad idea. The timeframe of an active connection really varies by age and type. Some important connections are once-every-few-years communications. A year, or two years, etc is too arbitrary.
For example, I know a gal who foolishly invited her whole friend list to her 26th birthday party.
Did that weird guy from 3rd grade show up? He sure did.
As someone who's been working on social networking and adjacent services for over 15 years, hard disagree.
An ideal social network should not have any agency of its own, period. If your feed is too crowded because you follow too many people, then so be it. It's your problem, you did this to yourself. Only you know how to fix it for yourself, if you do even want it fixed in the first place.
real world social networks have agency if you define ephemerality as agency. It's an accident of digital platforms that nothing is ever forgotten, not a feature inherent to normal human relations. In the real world you drop phone numbers, you forget events, unused relationships atrophy. And that's not a bug, forgetting is a feature. For anyone who isn't convinced of this, Black Mirror did an admirable job in its first season putting the pathologies of social technologies on display that record everything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You
It can be argued that humans actually hate forgetting things. That's why we invented writing. Spoken language lets us share arbitrarily abstract thoughts with others. But human memory is imperfect, so spreading knowledge or memories through word-of-mouth is unreliable. Writing lets us preserve that information as intended by the original author, potentially indefinitely. That's also why we always wanted to be able to record and play back what we hear and see, and our civilization only fairly recently, in terms of history, got advanced enough to have technologies to do that.
Wait Kim and Selena are irrelevant? I guess I'm not keeping up with the times
Yeah that was the most out of touch HN comment I’ve seen in a long, long time.
Persistent irrelevant celebrities are a real thing, but those two wouldn’t crack the top 500.
I mean Kim & Selena will always have a certain level of celebrity status but people like Sydney Sweeney are currently a lot more popular. This is in terms of "are they the most popular people right now" as their instagram count states. They are literally in the top 10 on instagram right now.
i think you're talking about trending vs popular.
The signals are working as intended. More people will know Kim K than Sweeney because Kim K is more popular and has had more time to be more popular.
why am i talking about kim k on hn lol
The signals aren't really working though. It's why algorithms are required, because people want relevance instead of popularity.
Having fading connections equates relevance with popularity.
Everything I learned about the Kardashians has been learned against my will.
haha yeah it makes her so obviously more popular and thus her follower count more "accurate". The parent's point is just hard to hold.
Pretty sure she founded or runs skims? She's Armenian, daughter of a famous lawyer in LA. Kanye. Sex tape. Early with the reality tv. I too did not seek out any of this knowledge!
Most just be a generational thing. Sweeney is still baking. She's actress from euphoria of which i didn't watch. That's about as much as i know. and the jeans ad controversy.
I honestly can't imagine a stronger indicator of somewhere I don't want to be than it having 400m Kim Kardashian fans
i understand the intent, but selena is still extremely popular, especially amongst women...maybe a bad example
I am confused... what is harmed by having stale connections? Why would connections be used as an editorial filter?
I would hate it if the system removed nodes from my network without my influence. Perhaps a rules engine with user defined criteria would be useful.
Ultimately, users define their network in current-day social media and the relevance of any celebrity or other person within it.
400M people still find Selena Gomez relevant to themselves - she’s simply not relevant to you. I asked Gemini very simply “is Selena Gomez relevant” and it responded with essentially “more in 2026 than ever.”
Could potentially show you withering connections you havent interacted with, almost an auto recycle bin with the option to dig on there and bring it back later on but dissapear from your main radius of attention if withered.
Instagram has something like this where it shows you "least interacted with". It seems broken to me though, as it showed me people who I do interact with.
Don't worry, Facebook already has Fading Connections
You can be married to each other and your posts won't show up on the other person's feed (there's a post on HN about this)
Xitter was kind of doing the same thing: I can’t see anything my mom posts, but I definitely have to see everything Elon’s mom does.
> Xitter
Is this an alternate front-end (Nitter) or shorthand for X/Twitter?
I usually call it Xshitter
The X is pronounced "sh".
The latter.
And the X is pronounced like “sh.”
I don’t post on Facebook—HN is my closest analogue. But I assure you my partner(s) have no interest in seeing whatever I post here. Any more than I want to be in the thick of the extended-family group chats. Or, frankly, Facebook.
In that sense, maybe this is Facebook doing its part for domestic harmony…
I think the point was two people can be the absolute closest of friends, and Facebook will still fail to show them relevant posts.
It sure justifies the creepy People You May Know though, doesn't it? Which apparently outs sex workers and whatever else
If you're going to move fast and break things and connect the world full steam ahead (and damn the consequences like what happened in Myanmar) your platform better be absolutely rock solid but Facebook doesn't even do that. Its implementation of 'connection' is laughable
What in the world lol
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16278631
A comically atrocious take.
Can you please not post shallow dismissals or call names in HN comments? We're trying for something else here.
You're of course welcome to make your substantive points thoughtfully.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I attended a concert last night and was wishing for this exact kind of app, being able to quickly exchange a follow with someone you just met in real life but will otherwise never see again unless you specifically ask for their name/number, which is awkward. Could spawn some special relationships.
This reminds me of the (also defunct) Bump app.
https://blog.bu.mp/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bump_(application)
This sounds cool and similar to something I’ve been building! I say similar as we have different ideas and target audiences — What I’m building is a niche network specifically targeting people who are travellers or friends that like holidaying together. I don’t want to seem like I’m spamming or self promoting so will keep the link out but will share if people want.
Anyway, I digress, it would be great to connect and exchange ideas if you have the time? I really like the idea of fading connections.
> So I created an iOS app
CTRL-F "android" "linux" "git" 0 results
sigh
PLEASE if you are developing only for the Mac ecosystem, you should be required to put (Mac only) in your title so the rest of us don't completely WASTE our time.
This is crazy, but unfortunately I don't have an iPhone otherwise I'd totally sign up.
Nice. Quick hypoyhetical. Meta offers $1bn in 5 years time when you have 2m users. Will you sell?
If so this is a meta-or-dead social network.
Making it federated etc. would make me trust it more.
If that's your standard, you basically can't interact with any entity other than megacorps, which you obviously disdain.
What is the benefit of that perspective? It's just social media. If it goes away tomorrow, no real loss. Use it accordingly.
It is good to point out this alternative is 90% likely going to be a rugpull on "nice cosy 90s style social network" by systemic factors. Regardless of the intent of the owner.
I just realised federated helps re. censorship but not privacy/secrecy needs.
Anyone will sell any project for $1bn, absurd take.
Craigslist never sold afaik, theres loads of other example companies worth more than a billion now that never sold. Depends how you define "project" of course, but you gotta make sure you don't define it such that this would no longer be a "project" when it's worth 1bn. Also everything that sells for more than 1bn is something that presumably nobody would sell for 1bn.
The idea that anyone would sell any project for 1bn is kinda nonsense, if a project looks worth buying for 1bn to someone, it may look to be worth keeping to the people who made it or are in control of it.
I'd probably sell any project of mine for $1m, I'm very cheap.
$1B is life changing money. More than you can reasonably spend, unless you start an airline or something like that. $1m is like two Ferraris. If you buy the second one used. Of course it's also life-changing amounts of money to many. It's enough to retire in a cheap country. But only if you are very careful about your money
There are a lot of projects I would sell for $1m, but it is little enough that I would carefully consider for anything I've invested serious time into
I dunno, if I spent even a couple years building something and could sell it for a million relatively quickly I probably would too unless it's something I'm really passionate about. I've sold side projects for waaaay less.
I’ve always wanted to own a sports team. I think I need 10-15 1B exits to make that a reality.
That is literally their point.
yea the moment 1bn was on the table id quickly think about how not-necessary social media is for humanity and id take the check and peace out like tom from myspace & proceed to drink liquor out of coconuts on a beach somewhere.
though id have the utmost respect for someone who could hold onto the possibility to threaten the facebook/instagram/snapchat moat, realistically i don't think anyone in here could stick to the ideals so strongly.
it's not even a valuable thought exercise. if this thing were to gain any traction at all it's assuredly gonna get acquired. you gotta be tech-buddha to resist that.
I think the point was that it should be unsellable. If it’s federated, how are you able to sell it? Then, it could be trusted.
> If it’s federated, how are you able to sell it?
The domain would dominate sign-up flows.
or already have enough money
Incorrect.
The only thing I liked when I did use Facebook was the "wall". To be able to post on a friend's wall semi- publically where their friends can see it. Most other Facebook clones have had the idea of tagging, but it wasn't the same. (E.g. Google+)
Off topic, kind of, but this was genuine and genuinely nice to read.
The tap-to-connect constraint makes this work. Every social network removes friction; this one keeps it on purpose. Won't scale to billions, but maybe that's the point.
When you're building a social networking site like this, when do you need to start to worry about laws from different states and countries (eg age bans, data export, etc)?
I mean, it's good to be aware from the beginning, even if you don't intend to follow them right away.
But, my rule of thumb is you don't really need to worry about laws from places where they don't have real jurisdiction on you. If they filed suit, would you rather respond or make a note to never visit that place / would you be ok if all your users from there were blocked from contacting you by law?
As a guy who used to run game servers[0] and some other small-web stuff, I hate that this is one of the first questions that springs to mind today, but I'd also like to know.
[0]: in ancient times when server meant an actual server
This is quite amazing. I remember being on the original friendster way back in the day. They had so much potential. And there was also orkut.com that was even better because of the simpler UX. Then came Facebook and you all know the rest.
We can't seem to be able to login from the website, it requires an Apple account? The UI might not be showing up properly.
It’s app-only, right?
iOS only unfortunately. Big shame.
Not for the operators, I expect. If they flip a couple bits in the webserver I think they can lock the API down to require a device attestation, which would inhibit much of the API’s attack surface from being exploitable without a physical device that can afford to be console-banned (but I haven’t done my research to prove that yet, so grain of feasibility salt). Certainly in this day and age there is no desire to be “search engine optimized” by anyone using a social network for IRL friends, so they lose nothing by lacking a website. And there’s lots of small but nice services that are or have been iOS only (and a couple big ones that collapsed once they opened to other platforms). They’re explicitly selecting against the network effect already in favor of a nice experience, so it’s not like it matters if it grows more slowly. Are there drawbacks you see besides “requires an iOS device” that I haven’t considered?
I haven't tried it but meeting functionality for smaller groups would be good, specially for different kinds of hobby meetups.
Why no android app?
I plan to make one in the future. It's just me
Why no website as well? Can't use it from a laptop, it's a bit strange for a social media, many don't like typing on a phone.
That's a great question, since the genesis of this was the domain name, which no one using the app will care about or visit. That is, the only thing that was actually needed here was the trademark, it appears.
Especially odd considering that Friendster began at a time when social media on phones was unheard of.
I remember when we considered a website that tells the user to download an app an anti-pattern (e.g. earlier versions of iMusic).
why not a proper Progress Web App so it can run on any device independent of app stores? it's not as though a social app needs deep OS integration. I'm sure Claude or Codex could vibe code that in an afternoon.
The central point of this app is to determine proximity of two devices. That's not possible today in a cross-platform way using web apps.
PWA has access to bluetooth (BLE on all platforms) and NFC on Android
> PWA has access to bluetooth (BLE on all platforms) and NFC on Android
This (EDIT: this app) is iOS only right now. And I hate the normalisation of giving websites access to Bluetooth and NFC.
I managed to make an ESP32-controlled RC car move by sending it commands from a webapp running on my Android phone last year. I don't believe I have telekinesis magic power, so I'd rather believe that this is not in-fact iOS only.
Sorry, clarified.
You can with the Geolocation API.
The main functionality to add friends is that you need to use the phones physically touching feature of iPhones. This doesn't exist in Android afaik.
The guy wants people to meet in person rather than doing social media the normie way.
Android has QuickShare which can be leveraged.
For the record, the feature you describe was first introduced on Samsung phones 14 years ago - and later removed, likely after poor adoption. Because Apple "reinvented it", it's now planned to be reintroduced on Android too.
https://developers.google.com/nearby no?
Clearly targeted towards a US only audience I guess?
Even in the US... something like half of people have an android.
Starting a network effect product like a social network where you exclude half the social graph seems like... quite a decision.
It's likely much more than half because I don't see a guy working on his laptop and switching on his phone to be able to answer messages, I personally never use social medias on a phone, it's annoying to type.
I prefer most communication to happen from my phone. Keeps the laptop less distracting when I don’t talk with people so much on it. Except Slack on work computer. That one I keep open and use for talking with coworkers. But that’s because it’s part of the job, and also relevant for me and them to be talking about things we are working on.
Worked for Facebook.
Love it!!! Businesses that have genuine passion like these are the ones that really blow up…or die :-)
I'm imagining one of those tiny libraries with a garden gnome in it with a cheap phone inside, connected to a garden gnome Friendster account.
And then it gets stolen and has a trip around the world, meeting new people.
What does "a domain that was making about $9k/year in ad revenue" look like? Is this domain one where people randomly stumble upon it and give ad views to a parking page? A website with regular use or other content that people visit for some purpose that is now under different ownership?
Probably a parked domain with ads that people stumble across. We used to call these guys cybersquatters.
They're still called cybersquatters, except for some unknown reason ICANN has decided to not actually do anything about them. :(
“My wife and I met on okcupid”
… 11 years going for me. Good on you. I don’t have any other social media accounts. I’ll do my best to join up on this one. Wholesome.
>I don’t really care about making money from [$project], but I’d like it to eventually pay for itself.
Warning bells. Slippery slopes. I think we should know by now that social networks do not mix well with the advertising business model. It would have been nice to see that eventuality ruled out explicitly here (PS: for the future as well as just for now).
"no ads" - it is explicitly stated on the website and app store page
Facebook also didn't have ads when it started
Facebook ads began in 2004 with simple "Flyers" for small businesses, but the official, targeted Facebook Ads platform launched in November 2007. While rudimentary banner ads appeared in 2005-2006, the 2007 launch introduced brand pages, social ads, and user insights.
Facebook launched in 2004. They always had ads.
The plot of Anaconda 2025, but Friendster.
I worked with the guy that created Friendster! IIRC he made it back in ‘06/‘07 and I had one of the first test accounts. Chill dude, really smart.
Had to be even earlier than that, I graduated college in 2006 and I’m pretty sure someone turned me on to Friendster at least a couple years before.
app is snappy and solid. missing a “invite friends” link… i know the point is in person, i’m with two people in person but had to go back to app store to find a share link.
Thanks, good feedback
Hi, congrats on the launch!
Firstly, it doesn’t seem to work for me and my wife - we hold the phones together but clicking start does nothing (and we’ve accepted Bluetooth etc).
Secondly, I wonder if you’ll have a massive chicken and egg issue with the physical feature. I get it’s the main feature but could you overcome it somehow initially while still maintaining your long term “gimmick”? Like could you allow people to connect with the first X friends (5? 10? 20? Whatever that can get virality and flywheel going) or connect with as many as you want virtually for the first X months etc. You could even have the contacts fade away slowly if they don’t get verified in person etc. You might want to model out different strategies (and be extremely conservative) otherwise you’ll be relying on lottery-level luck. Good luck anyway though :)
can rename it botster
Well, this sounds sketchy as hell. Pass.
Bought Friendster, posted about it on Medium. Can't wait for the Justin.tv live stream!
lmao i cannot stand medium. the amount of articles i've clicked into on medium that start with
"in todays fast paced business environment.."
the incentive structure on medium is so busted. just people churning out half-working insights to look good for job interviews or promotions, it's like the worlds laziest portfolio. it straight up isn't any sort of bastion of knowledge-share.
makes things like https://beej.us/guide/ an absolute treasure
> Friendster was the first social network
Friendster was not the first social network.
sixdegrees.com had it beat by 5 years.
AOL has them beat by another 5. You need to go back to ARPA to find the first one. Social networks are just networks with humans at each end.
Also LiveJournal, launched in 1999.
Probably being pedantic, but this is not buying Friendster to be precise, usually what is meant by that is that the company was bought.
In this case the domain Friendster.com was bought, and a trademark was conceded (a new different trademark), I don't know precisely the implications of the trademark though, I think it's a different trademark and you still cannot imply that you are a continuation of the previous trademark holder, it's just that you are given monopoly over that word as a trademark.
Now, is that different than buying "Friendster"? A really interesting legal question, I think it is, and I think it has relevant implications, I don't think you can for example restore the website as it was and pretend a continuation as you would if you bought the company.
I think the distinction is warranted.
Honestly if the prior Friendster company itself was bought - including all the assets, codebase and historical documents (no user details) that would've been such an incredibly interesting read.
Buying the domain and getting the trademark is still cool, just not as cool.
Related: Friendster Relaunch (28 points, 3 days ago, 14 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47883307
Ask HN: How to make Friendster great? (98 points, 11 months ago, 141 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44053119
(The one from 3 days ago never made the frontpage so we won't treat it as a dupe)
i bought friendster for 30k, heres what it taught me about b2b sales
Can you please make it (and keep it) so that friendships are symmetrical? I.e., "friend" rather than "follow". IMO that's the enshittification inflection point of Facebook.
Or at least use proper terminology for following someone with reciprocity: stalking.
do you mean "without reciprocity"?
Do we actually need social networks?
These, to me, feel like artifacts of a bygone era, now replaced by the boiled down version - group chats with friends. Telegram has every feature you need in a platform and you get the joy of "circles" as one poster mentioned, by simply having different group chats.
Plus it's not exposed to the public.
thanks for bringing it back!
judging from what i hear people say. all you have to do is be able to display who's online from your friends list, and a chronologically ordered list of their posts. thats it. the major platforms are optimising for ads so much they cant even achieve this level of basic functionality
Could you make it so you can have group chats but you can invite anyone you’ve tapped before and they can all talk together (but still not be able to talk outside the group chat)
yes this is already included
on the fading connection and monetization - you could let people pay to re-up the connection from fading as opposed to meeting in person again first, and its makes them really think about whether meeting in person is worth happening again or would ever happen again, is the connection itself valuable in another way any way
on instagram, there is a social disincentive to unfollow people and you can also make someone else unfollow you in a couple ways (the button that does just that, as well as blocking someone for a second and unblocking them), doing these actions has a real cost to confrontation. people you thought you would never see again will see you again and say "I thought we were following each other???? oooo :O ... ooooh >:O"
you are making that activity a first class citizen, with no presumption of ill will behind it, this has value to it
He gave the guy $20k dollars in bitcoin (I can’t say how much bitcoin that is because it fluctuates too much to be a stable currency), to buy a dead domain that makes $9k a year in at revenue.
What an absolute garbage economy.
> $20k dollars in bitcoin (I can’t say how much bitcoin that is because it fluctuates too much to be a stable currency), to buy a dead domain that makes $9k a year in at revenue
That's...a good deal? Assuming even 50% margins, that's a solid yield.