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End of the Road for Xmarks

(blog.xmarks.com)
201 points willwagner | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.212s | source
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ajg1977 ◴[] No.1734276[source]
Man, I'm gutted. I use Xmarks every day to sync from my work & windows machines (Firefox) to my MacBook (Safari) and thus to my iPhone / iPad. I'd have happily paid $5 a month or so to use Xmarks and I imagine I'm not alone.

It's really unfortunate that they won't even try the freemium, or (shock!) even the outright pay to play approach. I'm sure with two million users there would have been enough paying customers to create a profitable business.

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japherwocky ◴[] No.1736237[source]
I cannot comprehend how they aren't even going to TRY to charge for ANYTHING.

How the fuck do they think this whole cash flow thing works?

2 million users, and they don't even put out a god damn paypal donation widget? Show ads? Freemium anything? Charge something outrageous, lose 90% of your 2 million users, and you'll still have a significant monthly income.

This is just the stupidest news I've heard in a while. Zero respect for these guys, they clearly don't have even a shred of business sense.

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raganwald ◴[] No.1736296[source]
Zero respect for the people behind the service, really? I have zero respect for your comment but I stop well short of saying I have zero respect for you.

Things are probably not that simple. They have investors. It may not be a case of "Hey, we can make a business that pays for three guys to eat." Perhaps their investors need to see a certain minimum return or else the investors would rather close up shop.

Maybe they have a better buysiness idea and it's better to close this one and put 100% of their energy into the new idea. Have you heard of justin.tv? IIRC, a large number of people on reddit were criticizing Justin and his partners for selling their previous startup on eBay. They got some money and started again with a blank piece of paper.

I am not saying that you're wrong about what to do given the information you have. I am saying that (1) It is difficult to be absolutely certain that they are making the worst possible business decision in this case given how little we know, and (2) Even if they are making the worst possible business decision, how does this extend to having zero respect for the complete human beings who laugh, love, play, and built something many people value?

p.s. The company is for sale. If you have an opinion of how it ought to be run, there's no better way to make your case than to buy it for a fire sale price and run it. In all honesty, I would be absolutely delighted if you were to make a go of it. That would be a very inspiring story.

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raganwald ◴[] No.1736768[source]
p.p.s. I was exaggerating when I said "zero respect for your comment." I was just trying to make a point about the difference between criticizing someone's point and criticizing them personally. But now that I think about it, I was a little rude. I apologize.
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japherwocky ◴[] No.1736964[source]
I'm a big boy on the internet, I don't mind a flame at all, especially in response to a provocative post.

If you spend years, and millions of dollars, and don't make _any_ attempt to bring _any_ money in the door, I think you are making a mockery of the entire startup culture.

It's a business. What part of that do they not get?

Maybe maybe maybe, maybe they could try being a business and not seriously expect that some magical revenue stream is going to come knocking at their door with sacks full of cash.

Who funded these people? How can you seem to be so technically competent and marketing savvy, and not have a shred of business sense?

Are they going to go "focus on the next thing"?

Do they really deserve to be given funding for anything?

I think if you take someone else's money under the pretense of creating a business, you have some responsibility to the entire system to actually _try_ to create a business. And they haven't!

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dillydally ◴[] No.1744380[source]
They made plenty of attempts. You're just ignorant of them.
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1. japherwocky ◴[] No.1762538[source]
like what? There's no mention in the article, and I don't see anyone linking to anything?