Crime App 'Citizen' Lays Off Dozens of Employees
The crime reporting app has had difficulty in finding how to monetize its userbase.
www.vice.com
Crime App 'Citizen' Lays Off Dozens of Employees
- Thread starter blantonl
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www.vice.com
Hmm, I haven't used it in a while, but makes sense I guess about the monetization.
That's a ridiculous way of attempting to raise money. I sign of desperation.
I don't know why they don't charge for their regular service like all the pager companies do.
And if the media is so interested in broadcasting their on-scene videos on their news programs, they should have a special subscription for them, too....also like the pager companies.
AB5ID
Member
A lot of tech companies are having big layoffs.
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dispatchgeek
Control channel goes "brrrrr"
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"Citizen launched its paid-service, Citizen Protect, in August 2021. For $20 a month, Protect lets users be in touch with a Citizen agent who can follow their location and call 911 on their behalf."
Having a paid third party caller is one of the least helpful things you can do when you need emergency services. The dispatcher needs and wants information direct from you, not from some intermediary who knows nothing other than you pushed the panic button.
Having a paid third party caller is one of the least helpful things you can do when you need emergency services. The dispatcher needs and wants information direct from you, not from some intermediary who knows nothing other than you pushed the panic button.
MTS2000des
5B2_BEE00 Czar
That part. We don't need third party whacker wanna-be's flooding PSAPs...excuse me "ECCs" with third/fourth/fifth party hearsay. This only makes resources unavailable to legitimate first party callers.
Good riddance, for-profit whackerism has no business model. Whether it's funeral escorts gone wild or wanna-be cops, it just doesn't cut it.
They raised something like $133 MILLION DOLLARS and set fire to a ton of it. They were never going to make a profit. And my understand is they used a ton of our services and content in the process without ever licensing or formally partnering with us in any way shape or form.
We're extremely profitable here... but we keep it simple, focused, and I'm not out to elevate the radio communication's industry's consciousness and change the world. We're just plugging along and doing our thing.
It can difficult to ramp up an organization quickly and invest a large sum of money effectively. You often learn more by starting small and learning from small mistakes and operating a lean, efficient organization for a long time than the grow quickly / shrink quickly model that can occur with a large chunk of capital.
MTS2000des
5B2_BEE00 Czar
Stealing other businesses services, data and content is a a quick way to bankruptcy. They did it to themselves. Zero tears are being shed here.
I can't confirm that this was occurring, but I had heard through the grapevine that our services (both audio and data) supplemented their business model.
It would have been a lot easier for them to have just given me $25 million, and they could have added a couple of team members to the team, accelerated the timeline of some of the strategic plan that I have in place for the business, and they would have easily and quickly justified the multiple I would have been paid within a few years.
Oh yeah, then I could have retired and gone flying more. 😜
Had they opened up access to other places it would have helped as well.
Can't wait for it to go under IMO, it has ruined it for legitimate Photographers within the media Industry like me, News stations are using the users Videos for free and not buying as much from freelancers anymore.
Daddarussianews
Member
They are so rude to me
That's probably going to be happening anyway, with or without Citizen. It's a function of everybody having a video camera with them and sharing what they record.
Watermark in an obtrusive way.
Then what?
Do you really think that professional video editors who have been doing this work for 20 years or more are not going to catch a watermark?
And, if they do, do you think they are going to get into a discussion over it with the person who shot it? They'll just hit the "Delete" button and move on, and never accept the contributor's work ever again.
No one that works in the industry that has or works with a legitimate company would submit anything to the APP. And everything we send out to stations are already watermarked by us before sending.
Citizen going under won't reverse the course of that ship, though. Independent photographers selling their pictures is the old fashioned way of doing it, love it or hate it. People are willing to just provide all that for free and put it out there on the internet.
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