zlacker

Yeah, for app.net I think it was more chicken and egg that killed you than paid per se. Pay presents an especially difficult chicken and egg problem because not only do you have to get people to part with their time to sign up you have to ask them to pay for what may potentially be no value provided.

I remember trying to explain why it wasn't a stupid idea to people way back when it launched on HN, and had kind of assumed that it'd died years ago.

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Hypothesis: If you can find a way to provide value while you build up the network, the product would do better.

Second hypothesis: If you can find a way to acquire valuable users with a low-effort funnel and 'leech' users with a paid funnel that would also make the product perform better.

Taking these as assumptions for a moment, this would imply a natural advantage for federated networks if they provide interoperability between different services that have value on their own without network effects.