Oh God. Queue this as a forthcoming trend. Sucks because this trend is really going to have a negative affect on new startups acquiring early users. People are no longer going to invest themselves into a product if they think it's simply going to close up shop a few months later.
This implies that "people" think much about the business behind the products they use. I'm not convinced people put that much thought into whether or not to test something out.
Person 1: "have you seen this new app?"
Person 2: "Oh, cool. I'd try it out, but I read on [insert tech blog] that they're practicing lean startup methodology so I'll wait to install it until after their series-A"
Yes, I know that's a strawman argument, but I have a hard time seeing people really thinking like this at all.
I think it depends who you are targeting. Even though Oink was targeting regular consumers, it does no favours for the reputation of start-ups trying to target businesses. I'm trying to sell a B2B startup's product into my office: one of the questions I'm asked is "it's a startup, what do we do if they shut it down in a few months"? Continuity can be a very important factor for certain types of startups.
from a personal example: I was really invested in the pool party app from Slide. Create groups and share pictures with groups of people, I convinced my friends to switch over. After they shut down, yeah I got my pictures off the service, but I will never invest in a new service like this again. Theres probably a lot of stories like this, and hes absolutely right that it doesn't help anyone.
I think they do though, not like that but. They will just generalise to all new products coming from places other than big well know companies. It will be more like "I started using [photo sharing app x] but then they shut down and I had to move my photos, I'll just stick to Facebook."
