It does have an app. See https://joinmastodon.org/apps for not only the official app, but also literally dozens of third-party apps.
Although the Angel investor expects a few shares of a company, I like the analogy of an 'angel sponsor'.
When all you know is a hammer...
Anyway, it doesn't matter. The gist is, someone else than the user paid for the experience without immediate expectation for profit from side channels and that's how we had free and awesome things.
Hetzner will give you a powerful server for ~30 bucks/month and includes 20TB of bandwidth for free (and overages are charged at ~1$/TB, almost 90x less than AWS). That's enough to host and serve a lot of content.
Some of them included ads but they were mostly in a sidebar.
(seriously, this is a very silly way of using terms to cover extremely small amounts of capital)
Are you saying that anyone that pays for anything is a venture capitalist?
That doesn’t seem like a very useful definition, so I think I’ve misunderstood you ’:-)
What are you talking about? The old web was filled with ads. They just weren't tracking you every nanosecond of your life.
Google's AdWords was launched in 2000. DoubleClick that Google acquired in 2008 was launched in 1995. Ad exchanges are from 1998. And so on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_online_advertising
Exactly.
But only some if that was paid by ads.
Ah yes. They were paid by altruists who had the foresight to know that 30 years later they will be able to track everyone and collect their dues.
Also, you're pretending that all of those sites were making a profit, or operated under the assumption of making a profit. There was a lot of money thrown at any and all internet companies by the end of 1990s. It's just that the market was much smaller.
And even that, content distribution was handled by a volunteer happy to chip in a few bucks to pay for shared hosting.
Content distribution (and infrastructure in general) nowadays is cheaper than ever thanks to technological advances (today's entry-level MacBook is more powerful than a lot of servers from 10 years ago).
There is absolutely a way to distribute content for very cheap nowadays if you know how to - you just have to avoid the rent-seekers like cloud providers.
That site is seemingly frozen in time from the early 2000s. There are no trackers - there's no need, since it is already filled with a self selected group. The ads are just simple banners. And best of all it filled with a group of passionate, kind and helpful folks. A simpler site from a simpler time. One of my favorite haunts on the web.
Well, it does, but does nothing user hostile with it, so doesn't gain anything from coercing them to install it.
Doesn't have an app, so doesn't have to try to make you install the app.
Doesn't do registered users growth hacking, doesn't have to have sign-up dialog.
The problem is, if and when they decide to monetise this thing they will have to have all of these because the money people and the analytics will tell them they have to.
Everything is much more fun when it's paid by someone else, that's why the old web was so nice. The content was produced for free and the distribution was handled by VCs. Today, these VCs are recouping their investments.