My team and I launched a Reddit-like platform called Snapzu (
http://snapzu.com) in 2013, a couple years before Imzy launched and I know exactly what the struggles/hurdles are in building community and generating consistent but vital user growth.
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However, we are extremely lean (all of us are working part time and out of pocket) so our monthly costs of operations are extremely low, allowing us to keep going. We also have no outside funding, so basically no investors breathing down our necks, or any rush to monetize.
That being said, our original base plan (like Imzy's) never really materialized (because of the harsh "network effects" AKA "chicken or egg problem"), so we've since pivoted allowing us to use most of our core tech (of which we admit we slightly over-built at the time) in a separate (but still completely tied in) SaaS-like service that allows bloggers to have their own Reddit-like communities for their blogs.
Utilizing a voting community on a blog brings several previously untapped benefits which I won't get into here, but our recently launched landing page at the Blog Enhancement Suite (http://blogenhancement.com) explains it. Note: It's still a work in progress and we're playing around and A/B testing the copy, but the service is live.
I've been paying attention to and observing Imzy ever since I learned about it, which was shortly after their launch. Some mistakes I feel they made, right off the top of my head:
1. No front page (for lurkers): They force users to join to be able to view content. The 90/9/1 rule is real, ESPECIALLY in the "community" space. 90% of users just want to lurk and that's just the nature of the internet. It's probably the same here on HN. 9% will participate in some ways, voting, etc. 1% will submit and comment, etc.
2. Lacking in social media: I've been following the @Imzy Twitter account for the entire duration, and most of their Twitter activity basically stopped approx 5-6 months ago. At that point I had a feeling that they we're starting to "give up" because it likely wasn't effective enough for the time they we're dedicating to it. We faced that exact problem, but we split up our content into 15 main categories (science, gaming, politics, tech, etc) and have Twitter, Medium, Wordpress, etc profiles for each. We then automated them using IFTTT using our category RSS feeds so that each account automatically tweets/shares the best posts as submitted by our users into said category.
3. No real target market: It's really hard to get people to stick around when most of them DO NOT share most common interests. Again, it's why we made sure to categorize the content so that people that want Science stuff can easily find it and/or subscribe to the Science RSS, follow the Science Twitter account, etc. We now also only focus on attracting bloggers, our new REAL target market (in a business sense) after the pivot.
4. Giveaways: Imzy was giving away all these plushys and stickers and stuff in return for loyalty. I just don't believe many people care about gimmicky things like that and it must drive up the costs/expenses that could otherwise be spent elsewhere with more effectiveness.
Imzy IMHO also did a lot right. I envy their PR tactics/strategy, as they got mentioned on all the top tech sites numerous times. Their devs/team made a solid app/website.
I wish the Imzy folks best of luck in their future endeavors.