I am now going to repeat what you said, but with more feeling:
We also considered refocusing Xmarks as a freemium sync business, but the prospects there are grim too: 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.
Ask me! Ask me! Why don't you ask me ?!!!
Native firefox syncing isn't going to help me sync my Firefox bookmarks to my iPhone, is it? Maybe that is worth something to me, ya know?
Isn't it completely ironic, that on top of HN right now is PG's Y-combinator screed, with how important it is to launch as soon as possible with as little functionality as you can in order to let users guide you to what they really want? So users are okay for telling you what features they want but they are not okay for telling you whether they want to pay ??
I mean okay, maybe I am a complete aberration in being willing to pay a few bucks for xmarks. But they didn't even ask. Maybe there would have been enough other aberrations out there to keep it going as a low-key low-turnover service.
This is the thing that bothers me with the start-up world - it seems so bi-modal: make it big or go bust. What about a quiet, modest little service that can pay for itself and maybe a bit extra?
Comments
I am now going to repeat what you said, but with more feeling:
We also considered refocusing Xmarks as a freemium sync business, but the prospects there are grim too: 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.
Ask me! Ask me! Why don't you ask me ?!!!
Native firefox syncing isn't going to help me sync my Firefox bookmarks to my iPhone, is it? Maybe that is worth something to me, ya know?
Isn't it completely ironic, that on top of HN right now is PG's Y-combinator screed, with how important it is to launch as soon as possible with as little functionality as you can in order to let users guide you to what they really want? So users are okay for telling you what features they want but they are not okay for telling you whether they want to pay ??
I mean okay, maybe I am a complete aberration in being willing to pay a few bucks for xmarks. But they didn't even ask. Maybe there would have been enough other aberrations out there to keep it going as a low-key low-turnover service.
This is the thing that bothers me with the start-up world - it seems so bi-modal: make it big or go bust. What about a quiet, modest little service that can pay for itself and maybe a bit extra?
Bah. I'm sad.
This situation always reminds me of @shitmydadsays:
"That woman was sexy...Out of your league? Son. Let women figure out why they won't screw you, don't do it for them."
Apparently they researched it, probably by asking some sample of the users: http://blog.xmarks.com/?page_id=1883#premium
FWIW, Mozilla has an app for syncing your bookmarks to your iPhone:
https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/mobile/home/
Yeah - thanks for pointing that out. It's not a true bidirectional sync though, like xmarks, right?
No, it doesn't do bidirectional sync, at least not yet.