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End of the Road for Xmarks

(blog.xmarks.com)
201 points willwagner | 8 comments | 27 Sep 10 23:27 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
1. jsankey ◴[28 Sep 10 00:30 UTC] No.1734124[source]▶
with the emergence of competent sync features built in to Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, it’s hard to see users paying for a service that they can now get for free

After taking so many knocks, it's easy to be disheartened. But why not at least give this a go? It doesn't involve a large engineering investment - just charge for what you already offer! When the alternative is shutting down, where existing users need to move on anyway, you might as well. Those users might appreciate the value of what they have now that it is about to disappear...

replies(2): >>1734207 #>>1736163 #
2. scg ◴[28 Sep 10 01:08 UTC] No.1734207[source]▶
Maybe it's because it creates an obligation for them to continue the service for a reasonable amount of time.
replies(2): >>1734249 #>>1734412 #
3. jsankey ◴[28 Sep 10 01:29 UTC] No.1734249[source]▶
Fair point, but how about this: they've committed to 3 months anyway, so why not try charging for 3 months? Just don't touch the money coming in during that period. If they reach the end of that time, and it's not working, issue refunds and shut down. There is some cost to this (transaction fees etc), but seemingly minimal compared to other running costs they've already committed to (because if it fails, the number of transactions will necessarily be low).

They might struggle to get people to sign up when there is doubt about the service surviving. But that cat is already out of the bag, and as I alluded to earlier they could also play this to their advantage (charging now is not a money-grab, it's simply a matter of keeping a valuable service viable).

replies(3): >>1734685 #>>1734732 #>>1735074 #
4. webwright ◴[28 Sep 10 03:08 UTC] No.1734412[source]▶
I bet you're absolutely right. They have/had an amazing team. As such, 3 months of opportunity cost ain't cheap. And it's VC-backed (I believe). Given the long-term prognosis for the market, why would you spend 3 months in salaries if the upside isn't big enough to justify the the investment? Just return what's left of the cash to the investors so they can put it into a growth opportunity.
5. Goosey ◴[28 Sep 10 05:33 UTC] No.1734685{3}[source]▶
I agree 100%. This whole thing reminds me of reddit's recent budget issues and how their appeal resulted in a huge boost for them. Just looking at the comments on this blog post make me think that simply including a 'paypal donation' link at the bottom of this blog post ALONE would have generated enough funds to keep them running for for some time.

This is a bit of a harsh thing to say... but is it possible they were not able to find a business model due to lack of trying?

6. twidlit ◴[28 Sep 10 05:58 UTC] No.1734732{3}[source]▶
I think the main reason here more than anything, is the founder's are not just into it anymore.
7. sahaj ◴[28 Sep 10 09:22 UTC] No.1735074{3}[source]▶
do you have use xmarks?
8. chadgeidel ◴[28 Sep 10 16:17 UTC] No.1736163[source]▶
The beauty of Xmarks is that I can sync across browsers. I use Chrome, Firefox (on Windows, Mac, Linux), and IE and the ability to have all my bookmarks synched wherever I am is an absolute godsend.