• adarza@lemmy.ca
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    3 days ago

    Back when I used them, they were about meeting people,

    back then they didn’t suck (as much) because they were still in the ‘acquire users at any cost’ phase.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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      2 days ago

      20 years ago internet was a whole different place anyway. You’d set up a useful website as a hobby, it’d be monetized with either ads or a subscription if it was truly game changing, but it wouldn’t be invasive, if it makes you a living that’s great, if it doesn’t then you still have a day job. They were hobby projects. Now all the easy niches are filled already, you need to put a lot more effort into building something that people would want to use. That costs money. You start off by amassing costs, meaning you either sink a ton of your own money or investor funds into it. Now you truly do have to ‘acquire users at any cost’ and then monetize the shit out of them.