I wonder why people get so fixated on "meme" solutions to company problems, e.g, with tumblr, people inevitably bring up how banning (some) porn doomed tumblr even though this doesn't appear to match what happened.
And the idea that you could just add porn back to tumblr to restore its former glory. It was acquired for $1B in 2013 and then reportedly for $3M in 2019.
Why would someone think that filling tumblr with porn will turn this $0 property that's losing $30M/yr into a $1B property?
With Twitter, I lost count of the number times I saw someone suggest that Twitter could become wildly profitable if they would only add an edit button and get rid of ranked timeline.
Those are both things I want, but an edit button is worth approximately $0 to Twitter and just allowing unranked feed at all is money losing for Twitter. As noted in https://mastodon.social/@danluu/109383845633490300, A/B tests show that, even among users who've chosen the linear feed, switching them to ranked feed is more profitable.
Another example is complaining about how no one makes small phones and how you could print money if you made a small phone. Of the people I know who express phone preferences, about 1/3 say that companies should stop making big phones.
Apple made a small phone with the iPhone mini line of phones, which they discontinued because basically no one buys small phones. I've bought small phones, but zero of the people I knew who complained about how big phones are bought an iPhone mini.
One that feels very similar to me car nerd forums are full of people explaining how BMW (or whatever) could make *so much* money if they'd only release a manual transmission wagon in North America.
My last car was a manual and my current car is a wagon, but these things very clearly don't sell. There have been manual wagons for sale in the U.S. and they just don't sell. Like with small phones, this is something people say they want but then don't actually buy.
Dan Luu
James Cape