That’s funny because it’s not difficult at all to build an app like this. The value in buying such a business would be the scale of its user base, which is likely only several thousand at this point. And, if it were sold, most people would leave since most of those users are just dipping a toe in at this point to see what the app is like. Frankly, the content sucks. People are using this app out of goodwill and an interest in helping to build an alternative to the corpo apps. If dansup sells or does not open source, then that goodwill evaporates.
The Loops app certainly feels like it. Not to diminish a solo dev doing something on his own, but it just seems like a standard video player with like, comment, follow. Search feature is only by user; when you type a comment, it doesn't wrap the text, it just moves horizontally until you post it. I think the feed is literally just a chronological list of every video posted, and for some reason, most of the videos I see on it are just like...atmospheric videos. Still camera, nature background, rain in someone's backyard. People love the concept, but I don't see how it's anywhere near ready to compete for users like other options are right now.
The web UI has been teased for so long, too. I'm losing trust with dan. I mean im glad he found success with pixelfed, and i wouldn't even have a problem with how long it takes loops; but he's just dishonest. If he was more honest, transparent and open sourced the code early on i would've had no problem. But this? what is this?
Dan is constantly talking about buyout requests he's receiving for Loops and Pixelfed, so much so that it makes me a bit suspicious of those claims. Nearly every other post I see from his Mastodon feed is bragging about another alleged buyout offer, and how he's not for sale.
Has he ever shown proof of any of these offers he's received? It's not that I want to doubt him, but he's been very persistent with this claim and I think it's fair to scrutinize it at this point.
it might be useless gossip but for some reason a lot of fedi has various problems with this guy. for various reasons… he just has like … off vibes?
i guess similar to how lemmy devs are marxist lenninists—at least making it open source means projects can be forked if the founders go off the deep end.
It is a time of predatory billionaires grabbing all forms of media. It would not surprise me if he did get offers. It would also be very unprofessional to broadcast the valuation of Loops and Pixelfed while turning down the offer. It would be like recording and showing someone asking for a date and getting rejected.
It wouldn't surprise me at all. Pixelfed got mainstream notice, and there's always someone willing to give you money. Pretty much every popular Firefox/Chrome addon developer gets emails about buying it, but those are usually just shady companies looking to push malware onto the existing install base.
Even apart from those, it wouldn't really surprise me to see some VC interest when Pixelfed hit #1 on the play store. They love the idea of glomming onto something that looks like a rocket and trying to ride it to the moon
It wasn't. He had previously said that he would open source it after it had become more stable, but there was a lot of skepticism that he would follow through.
Pardon my ignorance, I am new to the fediverse and have no idea what I’m doing.
But, when I signed up for loops on the website, I had to wait 3 days for them to send me a link to download a test-flight app for loops. I cannot recall if TestFlight is standard on iPhone or if I downloaded it previously.
Test flight is opt in if I remember correctly and allows you to download beta versions of apps. So I would assume you signed up or activated it or whatever for an app.
edit: I honestly would have pursued it as far as legally possible first just to know how much of a fuck you I was sending ... can someone offer to buy Bluesky now?