Soup.io Will Be Discontinued(kitchen.soup.io)
kitchen.soup.io
Soup.io Will Be Discontinued
https://kitchen.soup.io/post/696483222/The-sadest-news-in-the-soup-history
153 comments
I hope no one sees this as insensitive but would they consider open sourcing the platform? Might find a 2nd home amongst people that would self-host?
On the latest post on their site:
> The infrastructure and micro-services of soup became more and more complex over the years and the amount of data is huge, really huge. To serve nearly 6 million users is a resource-intensive duty.
> This is also the reason why we dropped the idea of open-sourcing soup. It's too complex to maintain and to hand-over.
> The infrastructure and micro-services of soup became more and more complex over the years and the amount of data is huge, really huge. To serve nearly 6 million users is a resource-intensive duty.
> This is also the reason why we dropped the idea of open-sourcing soup. It's too complex to maintain and to hand-over.
Missed that thanks. Sounds like their tech was too complicated to maintain cost effectively.
However, that isn't a valid justification to not open-source the code.
I also read this comment on their blog 'We do this for free, invest our time and money and try to keep this site up and running. So please don't insult us. Instead you should donate to support us.'
Sounds like they weren't really running it like a business and didn't have much idea on how to monetise it. Shame.
However, that isn't a valid justification to not open-source the code.
I also read this comment on their blog 'We do this for free, invest our time and money and try to keep this site up and running. So please don't insult us. Instead you should donate to support us.'
Sounds like they weren't really running it like a business and didn't have much idea on how to monetise it. Shame.
Their tech was also notoriously unreliable to the point where I stopped using the site because eventually it was more likely to find it not-working than working.
This might have changed in recent years, but most users were already gone when I last checked.
It's a pity because when it worked, it was a really great site and many people I knew were on it.
This might have changed in recent years, but most users were already gone when I last checked.
It's a pity because when it worked, it was a really great site and many people I knew were on it.
Reading posts like these always makes me wonder... how high are the costs of running these setups... and wasn't there a way to get funding from the users (and limit costs, so a low income would suffice)
They say here[0]:
We are currently paying near the 10,000€ mark per month and our revenue streams are at 1,500€.
The infrastructure and micro-services of soup became more and more complex over the years and the amount of data is huge, really huge. To serve nearly 6 million users is a resource-intensive duty.
This is also the reason why we dropped the idea of open-sourcing soup. It's too complex to maintain and to hand-over.
Hard to know where the $ are exactly going, but $11k/month will buy you a lot of server. Sounds like maybe just wasn't worth it given the revenue but I've got to believe it could be rearchitected so at least the hosting portion was profitable.
[0] https://kitchen.soup.io/post/696542642/Thanks-for-your-feedb...
The infrastructure and micro-services of soup became more and more complex over the years and the amount of data is huge, really huge. To serve nearly 6 million users is a resource-intensive duty.
This is also the reason why we dropped the idea of open-sourcing soup. It's too complex to maintain and to hand-over.
Hard to know where the $ are exactly going, but $11k/month will buy you a lot of server. Sounds like maybe just wasn't worth it given the revenue but I've got to believe it could be rearchitected so at least the hosting portion was profitable.
[0] https://kitchen.soup.io/post/696542642/Thanks-for-your-feedb...
Let this be a lesson to people that rationalize AWS high cost as something that won’t matter. If you have a low margin product like this, infrastructure costs can sink you. This isn’t too say they were using AWS, just that infrastructure cost is sometimes more important than development velocity.
Egress costs of AWS are straight up robbery. 0.05 per GB (assuming you use that much bandwidth, otherwise it is even higher) adds up very quickly when you have a lot of users and page clicks.
> 10,000€ mark per month
holy chowder!
holy chowder!
AWS is cheap to start with, but once you got some scale, the numbers starts racking up quickly. It's a really bad idea to use AWS for a project with lots of users and low earnings per user. Of course, for some kind of eCommerce project with millions in turnover the server costs doesn't matter, but for a small company or individual project hosting choice can be the difference between making a decent living or burning money.
Absolutely, and "can I see the billing" is one of the first questions I ask in my head whenever some new platform technology is announced.
6 mln registered accounts - sure that's totally possible but real users number was definitely way lower than that. The banner with premium membership [1] posted on discord shows 17 purchases out of 200 offered by price of 988 PLN which is approx. 250€ and 221USD.
[1] - https://i.imgur.com/h2NzFF1.png
[1] - https://i.imgur.com/h2NzFF1.png
Why do software companies shut down like this instead of finding someone that may be interested in taking it over? All I ever see are notifications of services shutting down, many of them "labors of love" that have been around for X years. Why not find someone that will take it over and keep your dream alive?
Presumably they tried and failed.
Or overvalued the business and/or assets. “Welp, no one wants to pay asking price, nuke it” when it could’ve lived on as a one person shop at a lower sales price.
If the value of the site were enough that they could make any money after transaction and transition costs, they would likely have taken that step. Given the time horizon on which they are shutting down, I would guess that they have been out of money, and that the service makes less than it costs to run even with a skeleton crew. Another comment in this post cites information that confirms this.
> If the value of the site were enough that they could make any money after transaction and transition costs, they would likely have taken that step.
...if it occurs to them. They have to do the calculations in order to make that decision, after all.
...if it occurs to them. They have to do the calculations in order to make that decision, after all.
You don't have to guess whether it occurred to them, since you can read the information in the other comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23805099
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23805099
Handing over a site with user data requires a lot of trust in the new owner. If they were not vetted and turn out anot good stewards of the data (e.g. end up hacked with all the databases leaked, even if not actively malicious), some of the moral culpability lies with original owners.
User data is toxic. It's your responsibility to make sure it gets disposed of properly when winding down a failed venture.
User data is toxic. It's your responsibility to make sure it gets disposed of properly when winding down a failed venture.
> If they were not vetted and turn out anot good stewards of the data (e.g. end up hacked with all the databases leaked, even if not actively malicious), some of the moral culpability lies with original owners.
I appreciate your point, but I'm struck by the impression that this never results in consequences.
I appreciate your point, but I'm struck by the impression that this never results in consequences.
That's why I wrote the "moral" part there. I agree that it's basically guaranteed there will be no legal consequences, but you'll still know it was your fault.
Capital is amoral, though. Which, I appreciate your point, but it's literally not a term in any capitalist transaction. Ethics? There's a reason why people make jokes about "Business Ethics" being the shortest class in any Business major curriculum. You can advocate for inserting religion, PBCs, or any number of "hey come on guyz" strategies, but none of it carries any significance. I'd certainly like to hear of post-Industrial Revolution capitalists taking shame or guilt into account.
Creators might have another venture they want to work on in the future. Being seen as amoral could increase customer aquisition costs and lower lifetime NPV
That is a pretty heavy burden you are placing on site creators... if you follow that requirement out logically, you are going to end up with some weird consequences.
So you say you shouldn't sell your site because the new owners might mess something up and harm users; does this mean you can't ever leave a company that you start? If you leave, the new people running it after you are gone might mess things up and harm users.
How is that any different than selling the company? In both instances, you are handing full control off to someone else. Just in one case, you are turning over control to someone you chose to hire instead of someone you chose to sell to. Either way, you are making a judgment call on their worthiness.
Are you really trying to say that if you start a company and want to leave, you have to shut it down?
This also seems to imply that when people sign up to a site, they are doing so because they trust a particular individual. Most people don't even know who the people behind a site are.
I think you are making out selling your company to be a bigger moral issue than it is.
So you say you shouldn't sell your site because the new owners might mess something up and harm users; does this mean you can't ever leave a company that you start? If you leave, the new people running it after you are gone might mess things up and harm users.
How is that any different than selling the company? In both instances, you are handing full control off to someone else. Just in one case, you are turning over control to someone you chose to hire instead of someone you chose to sell to. Either way, you are making a judgment call on their worthiness.
Are you really trying to say that if you start a company and want to leave, you have to shut it down?
This also seems to imply that when people sign up to a site, they are doing so because they trust a particular individual. Most people don't even know who the people behind a site are.
I think you are making out selling your company to be a bigger moral issue than it is.
> Are you really trying to say that if you start a company and want to leave, you have to shut it down?
No, that was not at all what I said. I said that the user data is your responsibility, and you need to be careful about who you hand it over to. You've made the leap to a far more extreme position of "OMG, you can never sell or leave the company" all on your own.
If you're selling the company for real, you're evaluating the purchaser just like they're doing it diligence on the business being sold. If they're a reputable and already operating in the same space, they can reasonably be expected to handle the site responsibly.
But that's not what was being proposed in the OP. It was a suggestion to just hand the project off to anybody who wants to make a go at it, rather than shut it off. Do you really not see how irresponsible that is, and how different that is to an orderly business transaction?
No, that was not at all what I said. I said that the user data is your responsibility, and you need to be careful about who you hand it over to. You've made the leap to a far more extreme position of "OMG, you can never sell or leave the company" all on your own.
If you're selling the company for real, you're evaluating the purchaser just like they're doing it diligence on the business being sold. If they're a reputable and already operating in the same space, they can reasonably be expected to handle the site responsibly.
But that's not what was being proposed in the OP. It was a suggestion to just hand the project off to anybody who wants to make a go at it, rather than shut it off. Do you really not see how irresponsible that is, and how different that is to an orderly business transaction?
Fair enough, I didn't realize you were just talking about a casual handoff
Having been in a similar spot - user data and reputation. If you spent a bunch of years building a site, you really want to trust someone to not exploit the site by spamming users and so on.
Even if the site is sold, your reputation will still suffer if the new owner has a data leak or starts selling user data.
Also, a bunch of people will say that they want to take over the site, but finding someone that you think is competent enough to maintain it is really difficult. In my case, I tried two different people and both of them made some really bad decisions regarding the design during the trial period.
Even if the site is sold, your reputation will still suffer if the new owner has a data leak or starts selling user data.
Also, a bunch of people will say that they want to take over the site, but finding someone that you think is competent enough to maintain it is really difficult. In my case, I tried two different people and both of them made some really bad decisions regarding the design during the trial period.
Having also been in a similar spot, it was a combination of things: 1) I just wanted to be done with it, I was totally sick of the project and wanted to move on with my life, and 2) the money offered wasn’t that great, and 3) it would have had to be decent money to persuade me to be involved in the handover (which would have been required).
It's costing them 10k/month to run it, and they are getting 1.5k/month revenue from it.
Now it is quite possible that they are using more server resources and bandwidth than are actually necessary to support their current users and the current usage patterns of those current users.
But there is quite a gap between 10k/month and 1.5k/month, so if you take it over with the intent of making it profitable as opposed to simply making it less unprofitable you are probably going to have to find a way to increase revenue substantially even if you can reduce costs.
It's hard to see a good way to do that. Their revenue comes from ads shown to their free users and subscription fees from the users who have paid for an ad-free experience.
To increase ad revenue you can either try to get advertisers to pay more per ad or show more ads.
Getting advertisers to pay more seems unlikely. It's too random a user base to really be valuable.
Showing more ads might increase revenue. But it might also make the experience for free users worse, leading some to leave. Free users leaving does reduce operating costs a bit...but if it also reduces new content, it might make the experience worse for paying users, so you might lose some of them.
How about increasing subscription revenue? Maybe you can impose limits on free users to encourage them to subscribe--but that might drive some away. Maybe raising subscription prices would work...or maybe lowering them so more buy them would work. Or maybe adding features for subscribers beyond ad-free would entice more to buy.
The problem is that you can't really tell how well any of these things will work. All you know for sure is that they have somehow built a user base of 6 million apparently somewhat satisfied users and if you take over you are going to have to poke it with a few sharp sticks to get it going the right way and hope it doesn't get too annoyed.
Now it is quite possible that they are using more server resources and bandwidth than are actually necessary to support their current users and the current usage patterns of those current users.
But there is quite a gap between 10k/month and 1.5k/month, so if you take it over with the intent of making it profitable as opposed to simply making it less unprofitable you are probably going to have to find a way to increase revenue substantially even if you can reduce costs.
It's hard to see a good way to do that. Their revenue comes from ads shown to their free users and subscription fees from the users who have paid for an ad-free experience.
To increase ad revenue you can either try to get advertisers to pay more per ad or show more ads.
Getting advertisers to pay more seems unlikely. It's too random a user base to really be valuable.
Showing more ads might increase revenue. But it might also make the experience for free users worse, leading some to leave. Free users leaving does reduce operating costs a bit...but if it also reduces new content, it might make the experience worse for paying users, so you might lose some of them.
How about increasing subscription revenue? Maybe you can impose limits on free users to encourage them to subscribe--but that might drive some away. Maybe raising subscription prices would work...or maybe lowering them so more buy them would work. Or maybe adding features for subscribers beyond ad-free would entice more to buy.
The problem is that you can't really tell how well any of these things will work. All you know for sure is that they have somehow built a user base of 6 million apparently somewhat satisfied users and if you take over you are going to have to poke it with a few sharp sticks to get it going the right way and hope it doesn't get too annoyed.
I wrote a very simple soup content downloader some time ago, you can get it here: https://github.com/urxvtcd/soup-io-downloader
It has some shortcomings, mainly content is saved under random file name without extension. Hm, maybe I'll try to fix that now.
It has some shortcomings, mainly content is saved under random file name without extension. Hm, maybe I'll try to fix that now.
I'm working on my own (don't trust noone), that parses everything into a neater JSON file that I can use later. I download the files with just bash magic.
https://github.com/ikari-pl/downsouper
Still has some downsides, but getting better. It doesn't download the posts from discussions yet. You can get your own posts and links to full-size images (no resize means both better quality AND faster download), includes the jq-xargs-wget pipes I used.
Then I want to add an exporter that would be able to convert it to, whatever, wordpress export format? Cry and go to tumblr? No idea. :(
https://github.com/ikari-pl/downsouper
Still has some downsides, but getting better. It doesn't download the posts from discussions yet. You can get your own posts and links to full-size images (no resize means both better quality AND faster download), includes the jq-xargs-wget pipes I used.
Then I want to add an exporter that would be able to convert it to, whatever, wordpress export format? Cry and go to tumblr? No idea. :(
What is it? The site makes no effort to explain what it is or did.
It was a microblogging platform; it had a chance to become a worthy competitor to tumblr from Europe but sadly, instead of gaining funding, it got spambots. Over the last 10 years a devoted community managed to grow around the site - it's hard to say how large in numbers but now it seems it wasn't enough to keep service running.
Spammers really do ruin everything. The guy who acquired delicious says as soon as he turned it back on after several years of read-only mode it immediately started getting hammered by spambots again. https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1281285876388106247
There were periods on soup when main activity stream named here everyone was filled with nothing but some spambot posts; most likely these were green-lighted by staff itself up until few last months when they tried to introduce premium accounts, while basic ones were supposed to come with ads (disguised as native posts) and tracking. Majority of users were angered when a big banners shaming them for using adblocking and tracking extensions were introduced.
what’s so hard about keeping spambots out? not all sites seems to suffer from spambots after all.
Site was always pretty much left alone beside serious issues like hardware failure that wiped most of the content from 2016; my problem with being unable to load and post within a particular group was never resolved (I was a member and confirmed to never being on blacklist; obviously the group always loaded within private mode without issues).
The simplicity of account registration, the possibility of creating sub-profiles within main one (similar to tumblr) were probably the sources of spambot thriving on soup. While we had post report and flagging features, only ignoring was the best way of getting rid of all that trash.
The simplicity of account registration, the possibility of creating sub-profiles within main one (similar to tumblr) were probably the sources of spambot thriving on soup. While we had post report and flagging features, only ignoring was the best way of getting rid of all that trash.
Those are all GET requests, how can you attribute that to spammers? Seems like crawlers, aggregators etc are more likely.
Did they charge money to use it?
Aren't spambots, and by extension spam, an indicator of market interest in advertising to the userbase.
Tuning up the opportunity cost of spamming while making semi-targeted advertising more accessible and less obtrusive could tap into that market.
Tuning up the opportunity cost of spamming while making semi-targeted advertising more accessible and less obtrusive could tap into that market.
Spambots just post pages full of plagiarised content peppered with links, a hangover from SEO days when the belief was that a Google paid attention to word count of pages linking to your content.
What’s the point of their explaining what it did when they are closing down?
For reasons I've never been able to understand many sites that have a separate subdomain for news and blogging about the site either do not have any kind of link on the blogging site back to the main site, or do but fail to make it obvious.
In this case the main site is https://www.soup.io/ and the submitted story is to their news/blog site at kitchen.soup.io. Go to the main site and it is clear there what they do.
There is actually a link to that at kitchen.soup.io, but it is easy to miss. It's the small red circled "soup" in the very upper right.
In this case the main site is https://www.soup.io/ and the submitted story is to their news/blog site at kitchen.soup.io. Go to the main site and it is clear there what they do.
There is actually a link to that at kitchen.soup.io, but it is easy to miss. It's the small red circled "soup" in the very upper right.
This always bugs on doc sites as well (I think readthedocs based stuff is guilty of this a lot) - no link back to the 'main' site. Forum software often does this too (no link to main site in the forum directory).
I find it really annoying...
I find it really annoying...
I've heard dogma from seo wizards that running the blog on a subdomain yields either negative or positive seo outcome, depending on the phase of the moon.
Also, it could just be the result of some bad ops/sysadmin decisions.
Also, it could just be the result of some bad ops/sysadmin decisions.
[deleted]
k33n(1)
I have to wonder. Could this be profitable if the costs of AWS were not so casually hand waved away like many are prone to do?
People treat the cost of infrastructure as irrelevant as it should just be a fraction of the costs, at least starting out. But there would be numerous smaller opportunities which could be profitable if costs were managed properly.
People treat the cost of infrastructure as irrelevant as it should just be a fraction of the costs, at least starting out. But there would be numerous smaller opportunities which could be profitable if costs were managed properly.
Well if AWS was the sole culprit then they could have spent time to migrate to a Hetzner or OVH.
I think I read their revenues were 1500/mo - not nearly enough to pay for running costs and a single founder salary.
I think I read their revenues were 1500/mo - not nearly enough to pay for running costs and a single founder salary.
That's the real issue. Even if all costs are zero, €18k/yr really isn't that much.
If I remember correctly, at some point after a year-lasting downtime due to hardware failure (whole 2016 was the-year-that-didnt-happen), users were told that site relies on local (to the Austrian creators) ISP infrastructure and it will continue to use it out of costs - no word was given when soup.io moved elsewhere since that time but they did and it wasn't AWS.
They report 10k€ monthly costs and 1.5k€ revenue.
I may be full of it, but I'm fairly confident I could reduce their server costs to below their revenue in a matter of days or weeks. 6 million users is a lot, but it's not vast even if they have real-time connections and a lot of storage.
I imagine that a lot of HN more experienced users could do the same.
Assuming I'm not full of it, that suggests soup.io could be marginally profitable as long as nobody is paid to run it.
At 1.5k€ MRR, it would still have to be a labour of love for someone.
I couldn't afford to put in the time for free, but surely there are others who can.
I may be full of it, but I'm fairly confident I could reduce their server costs to below their revenue in a matter of days or weeks. 6 million users is a lot, but it's not vast even if they have real-time connections and a lot of storage.
I imagine that a lot of HN more experienced users could do the same.
Assuming I'm not full of it, that suggests soup.io could be marginally profitable as long as nobody is paid to run it.
At 1.5k€ MRR, it would still have to be a labour of love for someone.
I couldn't afford to put in the time for free, but surely there are others who can.
I believe they sold exclusive servers as a benefit of their paid subscription. That'll quickly get expensive.
Also, s3 quickly sums up if you host content and its difficult to replace.
Also, s3 quickly sums up if you host content and its difficult to replace.
> I believe they sold exclusive servers as a benefit of their paid subscription. That'll quickly get expensive.
Ouch. If they are selling servers that cost more to run than they are getting from the sale, that's foolish and difficult to back out of.
If the servers don't cost more to run than they are getting from the sale, cost shouldn't be a problem as it's net income. Doesn't matter if it's expensive.
> Also, s3 quickly sums up if you host content and its difficult to replace.
It's a lot of work to replace S3 if it's deeply embedded in all the code, and especially if people have been linking directly to S3 buckets.
Depends how much data they are storing of course, but S3 migration can be done when there's a compelling need. It's not the cheapest storage around.
Ouch. If they are selling servers that cost more to run than they are getting from the sale, that's foolish and difficult to back out of.
If the servers don't cost more to run than they are getting from the sale, cost shouldn't be a problem as it's net income. Doesn't matter if it's expensive.
> Also, s3 quickly sums up if you host content and its difficult to replace.
It's a lot of work to replace S3 if it's deeply embedded in all the code, and especially if people have been linking directly to S3 buckets.
Depends how much data they are storing of course, but S3 migration can be done when there's a compelling need. It's not the cheapest storage around.
MinIO has an S3 compatible API: https://docs.min.io/docs/aws-cli-with-minio.html
Do you think they might have explored options to reduce costs before deciding to discontinue the service?
I'm usually pretty quick to dismiss such claims as well but in this instance I agree with GP jlokier. I do these kinds of massive emergency cost reductions fairly often with my clients and there's always a story of the current maintainers either missing some critical knowledge about what they're currently using / could use instead; or simply massive tunnelvision.
Some key factors here:
- Discontinuing expensive parts of the product is better than discontinuing the entire product.
- I see the M word being thrown around and that… uh… potentially says something.
- "We're not open sourcing because the product is too complicated" is also extremely telling.
- VERY often, "I'll discontinue because I can't afford to run it anymore" hides an underlying "I don't want to run it anymore"; one the maintainer sometimes doesn't fully realize themselves. I've seen this a lot on GDPR day, people shutting off services because it's "too expensive to comply". Talked to a bunch of them, and after a lot of chatting it always boils down to "This will give me a much needed break from the stress of running this thing which doesn't pay my rent, and I get to dodge the blame".
I'm going to go ahead and extend the offer GP can't make. soup.io maintainers, if you're reading this, are indeed spending 10k+ EUR on infra, and do want to keep your service alive and running, please reach out, I'll work pro bono. I also have some good contacts in the archiving world if it comes to that.
Some key factors here:
- Discontinuing expensive parts of the product is better than discontinuing the entire product.
- I see the M word being thrown around and that… uh… potentially says something.
- "We're not open sourcing because the product is too complicated" is also extremely telling.
- VERY often, "I'll discontinue because I can't afford to run it anymore" hides an underlying "I don't want to run it anymore"; one the maintainer sometimes doesn't fully realize themselves. I've seen this a lot on GDPR day, people shutting off services because it's "too expensive to comply". Talked to a bunch of them, and after a lot of chatting it always boils down to "This will give me a much needed break from the stress of running this thing which doesn't pay my rent, and I get to dodge the blame".
I'm going to go ahead and extend the offer GP can't make. soup.io maintainers, if you're reading this, are indeed spending 10k+ EUR on infra, and do want to keep your service alive and running, please reach out, I'll work pro bono. I also have some good contacts in the archiving world if it comes to that.
Any pain point will push marginal companies out, but it will also turn other non-marginal companies into marginal ones.
>I'm going to go ahead and extend the offer GP can't make. soup.io maintainers, if you're reading this, are indeed spending 10k+ EUR on infra, and do want to keep your service alive and running, please reach out, I'll work pro bono.
If you do this, and you manage to make significant process, I'd love to read a writeup of it.
If you're doing the work pro bono, then the least they could do would be to allow you to generate some content for yourself to use for self-promo.
If you do this, and you manage to make significant process, I'd love to read a writeup of it.
If you're doing the work pro bono, then the least they could do would be to allow you to generate some content for yourself to use for self-promo.
Your last point is vital. I've negotiated to cost cut services for people several times where the sticking point in the end was that they just wanted out. One of them ended up giving away a site I could have made highly profitable in days in order to be able to cut and run.
Well it was a guess. That's why I qualified myself with "I may be full of it". There isn't enough information about their system to make a serious assessment.
Maybe they did. Maybe they decided it's possible but would take too long and they can't afford the loss meanwhile. Maybe they explored options but don't have the right knowledge.
But 10k€ monthly cost for serving 6 million users seems avoidably high unless it's something compute and data intensive like gaming.
It seems like a perfectly normal cost, even a sensible choice, for a cloud-based, invested-in startup with cash to burn that is optimising for speed to market and growth. But not for one that is cost optimised.
All that said, I wonder if their cost is actually mostly on people to run and develop the thing. Other comments have taken it as meaning the cost of infrastructure, and I ran with that. But soup.io's own note does not say it's all on servers.
If that's the case, obviously it's a different situation and there may be no reasonable way to reduce the costs below revenue.
Maybe they did. Maybe they decided it's possible but would take too long and they can't afford the loss meanwhile. Maybe they explored options but don't have the right knowledge.
But 10k€ monthly cost for serving 6 million users seems avoidably high unless it's something compute and data intensive like gaming.
It seems like a perfectly normal cost, even a sensible choice, for a cloud-based, invested-in startup with cash to burn that is optimising for speed to market and growth. But not for one that is cost optimised.
All that said, I wonder if their cost is actually mostly on people to run and develop the thing. Other comments have taken it as meaning the cost of infrastructure, and I ran with that. But soup.io's own note does not say it's all on servers.
If that's the case, obviously it's a different situation and there may be no reasonable way to reduce the costs below revenue.
Is it possible to design a piece of software that is identical to soup.io but runs at a fraction of the cost?
The answer is almost certainly "yes, if you're willing to rewrite it from scratch". Unfortunately the capex required to do that weighs heavily on the opex saving.
"They should have designed it from the start to be efficient" would normally be my next thought - but there by grace go us all.
The answer is almost certainly "yes, if you're willing to rewrite it from scratch". Unfortunately the capex required to do that weighs heavily on the opex saving.
"They should have designed it from the start to be efficient" would normally be my next thought - but there by grace go us all.
> Do you think they might have explored options to reduce costs before deciding to discontinue the service?
Possible. But they might not be very good at it if they’re serving 6M users with 10K/month in cost in the first place, so they wouldn’t know where to get the wins either.
Of course, it’s also possible us armchair devs are just wrong.
Possible. But they might not be very good at it if they’re serving 6M users with 10K/month in cost in the first place, so they wouldn’t know where to get the wins either.
Of course, it’s also possible us armchair devs are just wrong.
From my experience evaluating projects like this: Maybe, but many don't. There's decidedly a market in identifying services like this and taking a cut from making them profitable. If I ever go back to contracting, it will be the market I focus on - so many low hanging fruits.
I'd focus on the 1.5k€ revenue. That is the problem -- even if you reduce server costs 10x, you still need someone who wants to run a charity to take over.
> I'm fairly confident I could reduce their server costs to below their revenue in a matter of days or weeks.
> I couldn't afford to put in the time for free, but surely there are others who can.
OK.
> I couldn't afford to put in the time for free, but surely there are others who can.
OK.
From my past experiences you could run a site (and we have) with 200k daily unique visitors for <1000$ in hosting costs if it doesn't anything demanding (like write heavy).
This is why we need to scrape services like this and keep copies for posterity. For every site like this that can't sustain itself well into the future, a part of the Internet and its culture dies. RIP Soup.io
Who’s going to pay for that?
OP may have a different answer, but the Internet Archive[0] and the /r/DataHoarder[1] communities are really obsessed with digital archival and preservation. The latter has gone to great lengths to, well, hoard anything and everything imaginable that they can.
[0] https://archive.org/
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/
[0] https://archive.org/
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/
Doesn’t the Internet Archive have a collection of websites they backed up just before they went down? Do they plan on backing up Soup.io? Do they even know about it?
I think you are thinking of the Archive Team: https://www.archiveteam.org/
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The Internet archive...or just individuals sharing the cost.
Who’s going to pay for that?
The "Imperial We", obviously. Goes along with "someone should do something ...".
It's true it would be nice to keep copies for posterity, but it's not realistically possible to archive everything created for all time.
OTOH, state actors like the NSA should be archiving lots of things like this, because "you never know ...". But, unfortunately for us, a meme from years ago nailed this: "My computer hard drive crashed. NSA won't send me their backup copy."
The "Imperial We", obviously. Goes along with "someone should do something ...".
It's true it would be nice to keep copies for posterity, but it's not realistically possible to archive everything created for all time.
OTOH, state actors like the NSA should be archiving lots of things like this, because "you never know ...". But, unfortunately for us, a meme from years ago nailed this: "My computer hard drive crashed. NSA won't send me their backup copy."
[deleted]
k33n(1)
I'd not heard of this site before but I'm surprised they've got 6 million users, 11k monthly server costs, and aren't profitable.
I clicked around for a few minutes and saw a lot of user activity and no ads. If I owned the site, rather than trying to close, I'd just make every tenth post in a feed be an ad.
That plus some actions to curtail server costs, depending on whatever their high cost items are... Seems like you could probably monetize that userbase somehow.
I clicked around for a few minutes and saw a lot of user activity and no ads. If I owned the site, rather than trying to close, I'd just make every tenth post in a feed be an ad.
That plus some actions to curtail server costs, depending on whatever their high cost items are... Seems like you could probably monetize that userbase somehow.
I see quite a few people in this thread blaming the high cost of AWS. I don't understand, why is this a problem with AWS - isn't it a problem with freeloading? Yes, moving hosting may save you some bucks, but fundamentally isn't the problem the large number of freeloaders?
If even 5% of the 6 million users paid $20 a year, Soup would have $6 million a year - more than enough to run a small company on.
FInally, i'll point to my favorite post on the subject, Don't be a free user by idlewords: https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
If even 5% of the 6 million users paid $20 a year, Soup would have $6 million a year - more than enough to run a small company on.
FInally, i'll point to my favorite post on the subject, Don't be a free user by idlewords: https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
I agree. The AWS complaints don't address the fundamental issue with this "business" and other startups like it, lackluster revenue. I think sometimes in the tech industry all the freely flowing angel and VC money makes us a bit unrealistic about how things work out in the real world. Low marginal cost of distribution does not mean no marginal cost of distribution. There are no bandwidth fairies riding rainbow farting unicorns sprinkling hosting and bandwidth dust on startups. At some point, you have to get serious about what you're doing.
>Yes, moving hosting may save you some bucks, but fundamentally isn't the problem the large number of freeloaders?
I find this viewpoint problematic. Are the users freeloaders, or is the product just not compelling enough to attract paying users?
Self reflection is sometimes painful but there's a reason "lack of market fit" is a common startup story. Insulting the users by calling them freeloaders, when you are overtly offering them a free service, seems self-defeating.
I find this viewpoint problematic. Are the users freeloaders, or is the product just not compelling enough to attract paying users?
Self reflection is sometimes painful but there's a reason "lack of market fit" is a common startup story. Insulting the users by calling them freeloaders, when you are overtly offering them a free service, seems self-defeating.
> Are the users freeloaders, or is the product just not compelling enough to attract paying users?
There’s no cognitive dissonance in believing both of these things at the same time. The non-paying users are freeloaders because they’re gaining value with no intention of paying for it. The service isn’t compelling enough because, despite all of the attention it’s getting, it can’t attract paying customers.
They’re both causative to some degree, but from the entrepreneuer’s perspective, there’s nothing that can be done about human nature— you just have to account for it when designing your offerings.
There’s no cognitive dissonance in believing both of these things at the same time. The non-paying users are freeloaders because they’re gaining value with no intention of paying for it. The service isn’t compelling enough because, despite all of the attention it’s getting, it can’t attract paying customers.
They’re both causative to some degree, but from the entrepreneuer’s perspective, there’s nothing that can be done about human nature— you just have to account for it when designing your offerings.
The dissonance I see is in blaming "freeloaders" when you're the one offering them the product for free in the first place.
Right, it's the business model that's at fault - if you give away dollar bills, you blame people for picking them up
Also worth noting that according to Crunchbase, Soup received at least €80,000 in venture capital in 2007 and 2008: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/soup-io#section-fund...
Yes, that's not a massive amount of money and it was a long time ago, but it should still mean that they're not totally in control of the company, and that there are investors that have been expecting a return out of it eventually. Just reaching a break-even/moderately-profitable state probably wouldn't have been good enough.
I also see this article on TechCrunch talking about "soup.me" receiving $530,000 in VC in 2012: https://techcrunch.com/2012/02/14/soup-me-lands-530000-lets-...
It specifically says that it's a "reboot service" of soup.io, but the soup.me site no longer exists, so I'm not certain. Their inactive Twitter account (https://twitter.com/soup_me) does have an identical logo and a location of Vienna (same as soup.io), so it's probably true that it's the same company.
That's definitely a much larger amount of VC, and would make it even less possible for "sustainable" to be an acceptable end goal for the site.
Yes, that's not a massive amount of money and it was a long time ago, but it should still mean that they're not totally in control of the company, and that there are investors that have been expecting a return out of it eventually. Just reaching a break-even/moderately-profitable state probably wouldn't have been good enough.
I also see this article on TechCrunch talking about "soup.me" receiving $530,000 in VC in 2012: https://techcrunch.com/2012/02/14/soup-me-lands-530000-lets-...
It specifically says that it's a "reboot service" of soup.io, but the soup.me site no longer exists, so I'm not certain. Their inactive Twitter account (https://twitter.com/soup_me) does have an identical logo and a location of Vienna (same as soup.io), so it's probably true that it's the same company.
That's definitely a much larger amount of VC, and would make it even less possible for "sustainable" to be an acceptable end goal for the site.
it was 80k over 2 rounds. That means that they weren't able to raise even 80k at once. That's not "I'm investing money because I expect you to turn a profit for me money" that's "here, I'll float you a little because i like you / your idea and maybe... maybe it'll pan out and I'll get a nice return."
Outside of SV, thats plenty of money to bootstrap a company. Watch an episode of Shark tank -- there 'investments' typically are in the 100K to 200K for the bigger deals they do and many are less than 50K.
50k? Serious question from someone who's never tried: why not just get a loan? I've only watched one episode (I hated it, it reminded me way too much of black mirror's "15 million merits") but the deals they were cutting were... not good. Is it really that hard to get a loan for 50k as a business? Isn't that what small business loans are for?
1) A lot of the people who come on there are 1st time business owners and don't have much experience negotiating with investors
2) The "Sharks"/investors really push the whole "yes I'm taking 30% of your company for $30K but I bring in a ton of value in advice and connections" thing alll the time and most of the time, the people go for it
3) I'm pretty sure the whole pressure of appearing on TV and getting grilled for 6 hours in front of cameras (apparently the 10-20 minutes they show on TV actually takes around 6 hours) and then walking home without any deals feels like a missed opportunity for the business owners so they eventually just give in and end up taking any "deal" the sharks throw out which is almost always terrible
2) The "Sharks"/investors really push the whole "yes I'm taking 30% of your company for $30K but I bring in a ton of value in advice and connections" thing alll the time and most of the time, the people go for it
3) I'm pretty sure the whole pressure of appearing on TV and getting grilled for 6 hours in front of cameras (apparently the 10-20 minutes they show on TV actually takes around 6 hours) and then walking home without any deals feels like a missed opportunity for the business owners so they eventually just give in and end up taking any "deal" the sharks throw out which is almost always terrible
If you're on shark tank it's because one of
1) you think the company would benefit from the publicity (even if you don't get an investment)
2) it's a total last resort
3) you want to meet the investors / have your fifteen minutes
1) you think the company would benefit from the publicity (even if you don't get an investment)
2) it's a total last resort
3) you want to meet the investors / have your fifteen minutes
Business loans do not happen without a personal guarantee where you have to put your home or other hard assets as a collateral or have a ton of incoming revenue that can be scalped .
Nonsense. A cosigner can also suffice in many cases because it splits the rate payment risks for the bank.
Loans are way harder to get in Europe, especially for entrepreneurs.
So, first of all - it’s virtually impossible for someone to take a $50k loan unless they have a “stable” job.
Secondly: $50k in Poland would take 4-5 years to repay for a programmer. I don’t think it’s smart to take that much risk when you’re young.
So, first of all - it’s virtually impossible for someone to take a $50k loan unless they have a “stable” job.
Secondly: $50k in Poland would take 4-5 years to repay for a programmer. I don’t think it’s smart to take that much risk when you’re young.
> FInally, i'll point to my favorite post on the subject, Don't be a free user by idlewords: https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/*
I used to believe this. Now Google Play Music is dead despite my $20/month.
I used to believe this. Now Google Play Music is dead despite my $20/month.
Google doesn’t need more money. It’s sometimes a blessing, as unprofitable projects face no pressure, but sometimes a curse because profits don’t motivate them to keep products alive
Dead? They just have two competing products, the older Google Play Music, and the more modern YouTube Music. The app is dead, but the Music Streaming Service by Google is still here, under a different name, and at a similar price.
Youtube music isn't an equivalent product.
Frankly it's garbage and when they finally pull the trigger and kill google music I'm going to stop paying them.
Frankly it's garbage and when they finally pull the trigger and kill google music I'm going to stop paying them.
Definitely a bit different but as a whole, it's performing the same task for me. Stream songs I like, and I get the ad-free YT perk!
I actually switched to YT Music a year ago as I preferred the UX. But it's indeed subjective.
I actually switched to YT Music a year ago as I preferred the UX. But it's indeed subjective.
> and I get the ad-free YT perk!
GPM and YTM are identical subscriptions and always have been for as long as I can remember, if not forever, save for that short time when YouTube Red was inexplicably a few dollars more per month compared to GPM.
GPM and YTM are identical subscriptions and always have been for as long as I can remember, if not forever, save for that short time when YouTube Red was inexplicably a few dollars more per month compared to GPM.
YouTube Premium is still $2 more than GPM/YTM. GPM/YTM is included in YouTube Premium if you want YouTube Premium.
It consistently plays thing which are clearly not songs in it's auto playlists, it has no consistent normalization or quality, and makes finding albums more difficult than it needs to be.
It is an algorithm slapped over youtube rather than a music service.
It is an algorithm slapped over youtube rather than a music service.
I am switching from Android to iOS and if they do that I will do the same and just susbcribe to Apple Music.
> The app is dead
Huh? I'm still using it every other day or so.
Huh? I'm still using it every other day or so.
There is literally absolutely nothing wrong with the Google Play Music app. On the other hand the YouTube Music app is forced upon me when I am on regular YouTube listening to music to read lyrics of songs. Their culture makes it so stuff get cancelled for the shiny new toy nobody asked for.
I've been watching the development of YouTube music for the last several years knowing my preferred platform's days were numbered.
YouTube Music fills the needs of some, perhaps many users, but it is not a 1:1 replacement and I'm not a fan of what they have to offer.
Also I hold a bit of resentment for YTM since the YouTube app no longer allows backgrounding podcast-style content or playing it with the screen locked. It tells you to go to YouTube Music instead but that's definitely not the right UX for watching/listening to that kind of content.
YouTube Music fills the needs of some, perhaps many users, but it is not a 1:1 replacement and I'm not a fan of what they have to offer.
Also I hold a bit of resentment for YTM since the YouTube app no longer allows backgrounding podcast-style content or playing it with the screen locked. It tells you to go to YouTube Music instead but that's definitely not the right UX for watching/listening to that kind of content.
> the YouTube app no longer allows backgrounding podcast-style content
Can you give an example? I can background Joe Rogan with the regular YouTube app (I have YouTube Premium).
Can you give an example? I can background Joe Rogan with the regular YouTube app (I have YouTube Premium).
I am listening to a backgrounded YT content right no so I’m confused about your comment.
It's YouTube premium only
Google Play Music is not dead, still running. They are only moving it to YouTube Music, which is the same thing, but with a bigger library and shittier UI.
> which is the same thing, but with a bigger library and shittier UI.
That's really not true at all. They are only now adding some of the feature set. Anecdotally, their radio stations are not nearly as good. Sometimes in a list of 15 songs, 12 of them might be from the same artist. If YTM does, in fact, have a bigger library, I could not tell.
Additionally, now my music suggestions are polluted by my video watching and my video watching is polluted by music listening. Neither of those things are desirable.
I'll be keeping the service, since I'm grandfathered in to YouTube Premium. But I'm probably going to switch to Spotify for music after using GPM since it came out.
That's really not true at all. They are only now adding some of the feature set. Anecdotally, their radio stations are not nearly as good. Sometimes in a list of 15 songs, 12 of them might be from the same artist. If YTM does, in fact, have a bigger library, I could not tell.
Additionally, now my music suggestions are polluted by my video watching and my video watching is polluted by music listening. Neither of those things are desirable.
I'll be keeping the service, since I'm grandfathered in to YouTube Premium. But I'm probably going to switch to Spotify for music after using GPM since it came out.
Google Play Music is dead? That's news to me, as I'm still using it and have been for the last several years.
Even if hosting costs weren’t a problem, doesn’t the complexity of maintaining Soup sound like a bigger one?
> This is also the reason why we dropped the idea of open-sourcing soup. It's too complex to maintain and to hand-over.
> This is also the reason why we dropped the idea of open-sourcing soup. It's too complex to maintain and to hand-over.
I think they've confused 6m users with 6m sign ups. Very different things. 6m active users to 1.5k revenue doesn't compute on a site with ads.
The analytics for their site are 632.67K total visits in June. Interestingly 30% from Poland.
Those aren't the figures of a site with 6m active users.
The analytics for their site are 632.67K total visits in June. Interestingly 30% from Poland.
Those aren't the figures of a site with 6m active users.
Does archive.org plan on backing it up?
It's the last 9 days for soup until it finally boils out; users from what I can see on discord are trying to backup their accounts with tools made by other users and most of them seems to have troubles achieving that. Servers were never particularly in a good shape - most of the times we could see 502 and 503 errors.
Amount of user posts, spambot trash would made rather pointless for achive.org to scrap soup content, I believe
Amount of user posts, spambot trash would made rather pointless for achive.org to scrap soup content, I believe
I posted the thoughts after another similar blogging service died, and I still think it's relevant:
This is one of the main reasons I tried garnering interest around a blogging app idea I had: If you write with a third party service such as soup.io, eventually your writings will go away due to an acquihire, company shutdown, merger, or 'it became too expensive to run' in this case. If you want to write seriously with a multi-decade perspective, you need to host it yourself, and I wanted to make that easy to manage for an average Joe. Unfortunately I haven't had any luck gathering interest! Technical people understand the idea but just roll their own using eg Jekyll; and Non-technical people don't get the idea, or dont seem to care: they post on eg soup, their writings last a few years then vanish, they shrug and move on. I worry that it's a cultural thing: Few people care for the permanence of deep thoughts, and that's a big pity.
The idea is here: http://www.splinter.com.au/2020/06/07/chalkinator/
Anyway if anyone has advice i'm all ears :)
This is one of the main reasons I tried garnering interest around a blogging app idea I had: If you write with a third party service such as soup.io, eventually your writings will go away due to an acquihire, company shutdown, merger, or 'it became too expensive to run' in this case. If you want to write seriously with a multi-decade perspective, you need to host it yourself, and I wanted to make that easy to manage for an average Joe. Unfortunately I haven't had any luck gathering interest! Technical people understand the idea but just roll their own using eg Jekyll; and Non-technical people don't get the idea, or dont seem to care: they post on eg soup, their writings last a few years then vanish, they shrug and move on. I worry that it's a cultural thing: Few people care for the permanence of deep thoughts, and that's a big pity.
The idea is here: http://www.splinter.com.au/2020/06/07/chalkinator/
Anyway if anyone has advice i'm all ears :)
I use posthaven.com, they seem to be trying to address the same problem
I wonder if the native app could use something like Terraform to manage the hosting on the user’s behalf?
They’d need to register an account with a supported provider and do the initial domain registration & dns pointing, but a step by step guide could be made for that.
They’d need to register an account with a supported provider and do the initial domain registration & dns pointing, but a step by step guide could be made for that.
[deleted]
18k/year with 6 mil users is... 0.003 euro per user per year? Certainly even running ads would meaningfully improve this.
I think the majority of those users aren't active.
I saw somewhere that only around 20K users are actually active.
I saw somewhere that only around 20K users are actually active.
then why do you need 10k/month to support traffic for 20k users. Their numbers really don't make sense on either side.
It doesn't sound right to me either. They claim 10K per month in just hosting fees but the owner of Soup ("Euphoria hosting") is actually a hosting business. Maybe they're charging themselves a bunch of money (perhaps as a tax write off).
Why is a site that has been around for 13 years announcing an abrupt closure with a mere 10 days notice? If this is due to money (like they said) then they could have predicted this significantly earlier and chosen to notify the community with a more reasonable time frame.
I know this is off-topic but since this startup is gone let's talk about their domain name potential for a second.
A real soup startup could exist where outdoor (on plastic) pressure cooker based temporary kitchen operations could create a monthly soup festival / contest with pressure canning standards and inspectors on premises. It sounds like a festival and not a technology company at first, and I admit that the Atlanta Chili Cook-off (atlantachilicookoff.com) is similar, but imagine something like this with an app designed to enable monthly soup distribution teams who collect order forms during each cook-off type event. They could deliver the soup through the app during each cook-off event or through the mail.
Because soup is limited in how it is produced a standards based environment (based on pressure cookers / canners) could enable swift build-outs of kitchens on grass and plastic tarps each of which could utilize propane and cook soup with a process that is designed to ease inspection through conforming to a standard that the app explains. Food hygiene inspectors could be present and essentially all kitchen processes could be better inspected than any restaurant during this event (in theory) where massive amounts of soup could be produced and then pressure canned. This could be a distribution hub for homelessness if a donor model was included to help there be free cans as well as a subscriber model so that each team could have a monthly recurring revenue based on their popularity where they are doing everything during the event except procuring ingredients from farmers markets and whatnot. You can have a dozen pressure canners lined up next to each other and make a heck of a lot of soup all at once unlike what you can do with bread, or many different types of food. This should enable a new type of festival to exist.
Anyone could be a chef with this model if they knew their ingredients like that back of their hand and they practiced with a pressure cooker at home until they had it down pat. They could lease pressure canning and/or cooking infrastructure during the event to reach their goals if they qualify in and stay popular.
Please feel free to run with this idea if you think you can move it forward. I simply am busy with other projects. Others have probably thought of this before, and I'm probably missing something, but I'm just seeing what people think.
A real soup startup could exist where outdoor (on plastic) pressure cooker based temporary kitchen operations could create a monthly soup festival / contest with pressure canning standards and inspectors on premises. It sounds like a festival and not a technology company at first, and I admit that the Atlanta Chili Cook-off (atlantachilicookoff.com) is similar, but imagine something like this with an app designed to enable monthly soup distribution teams who collect order forms during each cook-off type event. They could deliver the soup through the app during each cook-off event or through the mail.
Because soup is limited in how it is produced a standards based environment (based on pressure cookers / canners) could enable swift build-outs of kitchens on grass and plastic tarps each of which could utilize propane and cook soup with a process that is designed to ease inspection through conforming to a standard that the app explains. Food hygiene inspectors could be present and essentially all kitchen processes could be better inspected than any restaurant during this event (in theory) where massive amounts of soup could be produced and then pressure canned. This could be a distribution hub for homelessness if a donor model was included to help there be free cans as well as a subscriber model so that each team could have a monthly recurring revenue based on their popularity where they are doing everything during the event except procuring ingredients from farmers markets and whatnot. You can have a dozen pressure canners lined up next to each other and make a heck of a lot of soup all at once unlike what you can do with bread, or many different types of food. This should enable a new type of festival to exist.
Anyone could be a chef with this model if they knew their ingredients like that back of their hand and they practiced with a pressure cooker at home until they had it down pat. They could lease pressure canning and/or cooking infrastructure during the event to reach their goals if they qualify in and stay popular.
Please feel free to run with this idea if you think you can move it forward. I simply am busy with other projects. Others have probably thought of this before, and I'm probably missing something, but I'm just seeing what people think.
So 10 days to let users get their data and Archive Team to do their thing? Kind of shitty.
What part of this site couldn’t be served off a laptop in a closet?
Link is now taken down, but last I heard, they were selling the soup.io domain for $40k
https://flippa.com/10566726-advertising-entertainment
The owners listed the domain on flippa asking for 40k+ and stated they had an existing offer of $40k and wanted to see if they could get a better offer from flippa buyers.
update: minimal listing details are available from bing cache: https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=https%3A%2F%2Fflippa.com%2...
The owners listed the domain on flippa asking for 40k+ and stated they had an existing offer of $40k and wanted to see if they could get a better offer from flippa buyers.
update: minimal listing details are available from bing cache: https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=https%3A%2F%2Fflippa.com%2...
Haven't they tried donations? I think that users would throw some monies for running their beloved service like soup. I think for such site it would be better solution than paid accounts or even ads.