I believe the term is "debt". When you launch an app to the public, you're creating debt for yourself, forever.<p>Magnolia just managed to transfer the debt from time/work debt to "image" debt. In other words, now they just look really really bad but they don't have to maintain anything anymore.
A good thread over at Wired around popular social bookmarking alternatives: <a href="http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/01/magnolia-suffer.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/01/magnolia-suffer.html</a>