Over the past few years, it’s become clear that many web services have been built atop unsustainable business models. We’ve lost Google Reader, Posterous, and dozens of others. These are services that users have spent a lot of their time painstakingly filling with content, expecting that they’ll be around for the long-haul.
I’m growing tired with jumping from one burning platform to another. I’d like to plant my data down in one place and have it stay there. Over the next few years, it’s likely that tens or hundreds of millions of web users will be forced to move some of their data out of one collapsing silo and into a new one (that is probably also collapsing, but is simply in an earlier, less obvious stage of collapse). Every time a web service a large group of users depends on shuts, consumers will grow more wary of investing their energy filling a new one with their content.
Some have argued that if you “pay a fair price for the services you depend on”, you’ll be less likely to be shafted, and I agree, but only to a point. Even services that charge can be unsustainable, or can be acquired by larger companies that aren’t interested in keeping the service alive. If App.net collapses over the next few years as users trickle away from the platform, we’ll have proof that paying for a web service isn’t enough to keep it alive indefinitely. After all, even if you’re paying for the service, if nobody else is, it can’t keep running.
What I’m proposing, then, is that emerging web services lay out as clearly as possible the risks and challenges involved in running the platform, right from the outset. All Kickstarter projects are required to do this, because it lets the buyer understand what they’re getting into and cushions them against disappointment. If your web service costs $10 a month, let us know how many users you need in order to continue operating. If you ever did run into financial trouble, how much warning would you be able to give users before you had to shut down your service (a month would suck, but a year might be okay)? Can you guarantee that your team will not entertain acqui-hire offers from larger companies that show no interest in continuing to support the service? Is there a chance that you may need to switch from one pricing model to another if you don’t reach the critical mass of users required to support the current model?
Web users in 2013 are jaded. If you’re starting a web service now, work under the assumption that we believe we’ll eventually be fucked by you, too. Now, try to convince us otherwise. What makes your service sustainable?