I'll probably post occasional updates about it, and if it ever actually gets interesting, I may say something at Metafilter. Right now, it's like Imzy only with less fail, which doesn't mean "with more awesome."
Someday I want to post a long screed on How To Make A New Social Media Platform, which starts with "just hire some damn shills; pay someone - even if it's journalism students receiving intern-job-credit instead of cash - to make a few posts a week for at least a couple of months," so that the new platform has *something* that's not crossposted onto four other sites, and it can start developing a community around original content.
Right now, it's got intros, gifsets, bug reports, and feature requests. I'm not seeing anyone say, "THIS is the UI I've been waiting for! Move over, tumblr; I've found home!"
LJ/DW users aren't likely to tolerate the narrow column - it's wider than Tumblr's dashboard but still very limited. Tumblr users have already complained about the image limits - it won't do gifs larger than 1mb. They also won't like the lack of asks, but that's probably less troublesome; people who love ask-based blogs just won't bother with Pillowfort. Nobody's going to like the lack of profile pages (you get a paragraph, roughly) nor the clunky interface, that's no doubt going to improve, but in the meantime, people are going to give up as soon as they hit a point of frustration.
Those aren't insurmountable problems, but I'm not seeing why someone would leave a platform where they're active, even if PF has one or two features they'd like.
They need a jumpstart. I still believe that scans_daily is what made Dreamwidth viable: several hundred users who grudgingly moved to the new platform and kept it active enough that other people drifted this direction and got comfortable. PF needs something like that - a community that people will join in order to see. (Of course, they can't get that during closed beta. But they could be developing it - pick an under-represented niche of any kind, seek out a few people to manage it, and push them to stay active, so that when the next wave hits, there's something visible to do.)
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-06-01 04:25 am (UTC)Someday I want to post a long screed on How To Make A New Social Media Platform, which starts with "just hire some damn shills; pay someone - even if it's journalism students receiving intern-job-credit instead of cash - to make a few posts a week for at least a couple of months," so that the new platform has *something* that's not crossposted onto four other sites, and it can start developing a community around original content.
Right now, it's got intros, gifsets, bug reports, and feature requests. I'm not seeing anyone say, "THIS is the UI I've been waiting for! Move over, tumblr; I've found home!"
LJ/DW users aren't likely to tolerate the narrow column - it's wider than Tumblr's dashboard but still very limited. Tumblr users have already complained about the image limits - it won't do gifs larger than 1mb. They also won't like the lack of asks, but that's probably less troublesome; people who love ask-based blogs just won't bother with Pillowfort. Nobody's going to like the lack of profile pages (you get a paragraph, roughly) nor the clunky interface, that's no doubt going to improve, but in the meantime, people are going to give up as soon as they hit a point of frustration.
Those aren't insurmountable problems, but I'm not seeing why someone would leave a platform where they're active, even if PF has one or two features they'd like.
They need a jumpstart. I still believe that