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Ask HN: Why did Prismatic fail to gain traction?

2 points by cryodesign ↗ HN
If you haven't seen the original post yet, here it is http://blog.getprismatic.com/next-chapter/

Prismatic is basically shutting down its news apps.

I remember signing up for it a few years ago, used it a couple of times but then never went back to it and stuck with twitter as my news feed.

Why do you think Prismatic failed to gain traction?

4 comments

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plinkplonk
I think it did gain some traction and had a lot of users. It was a very nice app imo, and quite useful, in spite of occasional weirdness. I think the problem was a lack of business model and/or 'hockey stick growth' that would bring in money sufficient to break even/break out.

They did write some very useful open source Clojure code which will live on. I am very surprised one of the BigCos (Google, Twitter) didn't acquihire them - a very talented team.

cryodesign
Reading about the team was what attracted me to the app a few years ago, but the app just didn't stick with me (force of habit of using twitter as a news feed). I'm sure it got better over the years and I should have tried it again.

And Microsoft did try to acquire them earlier this year: http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/01/prismatic-2/