What do with a project that has one user?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5540400

by coolsunglasses • 13 years ago

3 12 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have a small free link-saving service at http://scrooty.com/ that a friend of mine uses. I'd like to kill off the servers as they're the only one that uses it, but that seems rude.

I've showed them other projects but the user professes their love for Scrooty and only Scrooty. (I showed them Delicious, Historious, and like five other things)

User's unwilling to pay for the service, suggested advertising.

Any suggestions as to what I should do with this?

dangoldin2• 13 years ago

I have a similar project (http://www.twirlapp.com/) that only I and a friend of mine uses. The cost is pretty minimal for me to maintain since it's on a shared instance with a ton of my other projects so I just keep it up.

I do some occasional work when I need a break from everything else and I thought of open sourcing it but never really got around to it.

coolsunglasses5• 13 years ago

Sending my user to you in the hopes of offloading them. :)

dangoldin2• 13 years ago

Haha what have I signed up for?!

I mean the product is pretty different but may be good enough. Your friend can also take a look at https://kippt.com/ and https://collections.me/

ebrenes2• 13 years ago

Just provide your friend with a deadline for when you're shutting down the service along with the list of possible services he can use to replace the existing one.

I would also just provide him with the option of taking over the server account and paying for the monthly maintenance fee himself. Basically: "Here, please have this, I don't want to deal with this anymore."

coolsunglasses5• 13 years ago

They're not willing to pay anything for it.

Yeah, I know.

Thinking of making the end of the month the cut off.

ebrenes2• 13 years ago

Right, but just give them that option, just as part of being nice. That way if they ever bitch about it, you can always say: "if it wasn't worth $x for you, it sure as hell ain't worth $x for me!" :p

carlosn2• 13 years ago

Taking a look at it just because. Don´t mind me.

coolsunglasses5• 13 years ago

Just be aware that I'm going to either bring on a paywall ($5/month) or shut it down eventually.

carlosn2• 13 years ago

  I know. Like I said, just taking a look, trying to understand why your friend wouldn´t want to switch to something else

jameswyse• 13 years ago

Funny thing is that by making this post you may just end up with even more users.

You could move it to Heroku (or another similar service) who offer a free plan.

coolsunglasses5• 13 years ago

>Funny thing is that by making this post you may just end up with even more users.

It occurred to me, but then I trusted in my repellent design skills.

>You could move it to Heroku (or another similar service) who offer a free plan.

I have religious objections to Heroku, but I might do it for the sake of my friend.

What do with a project that has one user?

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