amit
amit

Why a billionaire’s Instagram alternative is suddenly so popular →

So how does it make money? The short answer is that it doesn’t — at least, not yet.

It’s sad to see users leave one silo for another. Vero too will follow the same path, as it focuses primarily on engagement.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@amit .. time to start pushing sunlit @manton ? @cheesemaker

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kaa
kaa

@mmarfil Things will start to move as people start understanding that if they are not the customer, then their interests are not important and therefore they will eat a shit sandwich. Hopefully there will be enough places on the web to cater for these people when they eventually come looking.

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manton
manton

@JohnPhilpin @cheesemaker We are close to sending Sunlit off to Apple to approve. More last-minute changes. 🙂 Also, agree with @amit that Vero is just more of the same old thing: closed silo, mobile-only, runs away from the web instead of embracing it.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@manton nice to see it on its way - and ‘the same old thing’ is why Sunlit is important ... it isn’t!

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cheesemaker
cheesemaker

@JohnPhilpin @amit well if @Manton would stop giving me last minute bug fixes... 😜

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@cheesemaker 😇

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klandwehr
klandwehr

@amit Interesting article. After several days of seeing people joining Vero, I am now starting to see the backlash, with people questioning on who owns Vero itself and who owns the pictures you post to it (they do) and other practices that should make people pause before joining.

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manton
manton

@mmarfil I know we have a way to go, but I believe that blogs can be just as easy to set up and use. "Free" is a difficult one, though, for any service that won't be ad-supported.

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amit
amit

@mmarfil It is not to build your audience in a social network. Interfaces are new, users are new. And so are paradigms. I think sooner or later, we will the user grow tired. Hopefully, by that time we have open options ready for masses.

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In reply to
amit
amit

@manton Waiting. Get the troops ready people :-) We will need a lot of word-of-mouth publicity @JohnPhilpin @cheesemaker

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amit
amit

@klandwehr Yeah I guess the honeymoon period is over, may be time to face some real question from users. Once bitten, twice shy.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@manton don’t do 'free’ ... apart from unsustainable, it creates a barrier to insidious crap - imagine if you had to pay twitter even 10 bucks a year (2 lattes) ... if (say) you tweeted more than 5 times a day

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@manton ... or ‘free’ didn’t allow you to reply unless you had over 100, 500, 1000 followers ... there all kinds of models that could work - IF you are delivering a valuable service and not simply chasing eyeballs for advertising

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@amit I’m ‘ready’ ... 'willing' … though whether i am 'able' is an entirely different question!

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manton
manton

@JohnPhilpin I think some tweaks to the free plan will probably be necessary. We'll see how things go. Thanks for the thoughts!

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manton
manton

@mmarfil You mean follow a blog that doesn't have a Micro.blog account, right? We've considered it, and most of the plumbing is there to support it. Mostly a user experience question.

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dgold
dgold

@chrislopez @amit it doesn't appear to, it says that you retain ownership, subject to their interest in displaying it in their app and as promotional material. It does say that it will ignore EU Data Protection Laws, though.

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manton
manton

@mmarfil By the way, we shouldn't underestimate "wishful thinking". Many great things have started with a wish for how the future should be. Wish, plan, build. We'll get there. 🙂

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amit
amit

@manton Perfect. I appreciate your attempts to make micro.blog a flexible system built on accepted open web standards first. Kudos Manton! 👏🏽

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amit
amit

@dgold @chrislopez Yeah, at this point the terms clearly calls out "We claim no ownership rights over User Content created by you. The User Content you create remains yours". Of course, terms and conditions apply.

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amit
amit

@manton @JohnPhilpin I agree, some form of free tier may have to exists. At least a trial with some key feature missing or some limitation. I know this balance is a difficult nut to crack. But hopefully users find the promise of open attractive enough to move to paid tier.

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@amit yup - something like micro.blog is not something the average user is going to get the value of in two weeks … it will be fine for the foreseeable but - long term ... IF @manton wants to have a business servicing 'the many’, I think the model onboarding /engagement model will need to change. But that comes down to what his business plan says and what he wants to do!

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amit
amit

@JohnPhilpin Agreed. It is important the average user appreciate the benefit of such open solutions, no better way to lure them first with things they like to do. Share, and be social. Micro.blog and Sunlit have a great chance to succeed at that. @manton

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JohnPhilpin
JohnPhilpin

@manton NP .. i think we all just want this to work for you.

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