A madman dropped $30,000 on the dead corpse of Friendster. We dive into the Hacker News chaos to see if it's a genuine indie project or a Web3 rug pull.
Any millennials here remember Friendster? Yeah, that prehistoric social network you probably abandoned before you even learned what an API was. The place where you aggressively styled your profile with terrible HTML/CSS. Well, out of nowhere, some absolute madman just dropped 30,000 bucks to buy the rotting corpse of this platform. Why? Do they hate money? Let's dig in and grab some popcorn.
The drama started from a Medium post by a guy named ca98am79. He casually dropped the bomb: "I bought Friendster for $30k, and here's what I'm doing with it."
Here’s the TL;DR for you lazy scrollers:
With a post racking up over 700 points on Hacker News, you know the armchair architects were having a field day. The comment section essentially split into three factions:
Speaking as a dev who just wants his code to compile on a Friday afternoon, this is a masterclass in marketing. Dropping $30k to secure the #1 spot on Hacker News and getting massive traffic is actually a galaxy-brain move.
But building a sustainable product is a different beast. We all know the drill: nostalgia doesn't pay for AWS bills. If you build an ad-free, algorithm-free social network, how are you keeping the servers from catching fire?
The bottom line: It's fun to watch from the sidelines, but don't go blowing your life savings on dead startup domains thinking you're the next tech messiah. Stick to learning new tech stacks, optimizing your DB queries, and keeping your production environment stable.
Source: I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it (Hacker News)
