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Imzy is shutting down

imzy.com

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Re: Imzy is shutting down

#201

Post by betenoire »

m3rc wrote: post #200
betenoire wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say their community is their primary _asset_. All products are (ought to be?) built around an advantageous asset, whether it is exclusive data or a novel workflow or special insight. But you design, engineer, build, and test a product, not a community. Though we do try.

Hmm that's a pretty ephemeral "asset"... and it's an asset that is directly tied to your ability to pull funding. Even if you technically don't directly mold the community, it doesn't do you any favors to try and think of something else as your "product" just because you're uncomfortable with the definition.

I never said anything about what their product is. I said their users aren't a "product", they are an "asset".

Value doesn't come only in the form of software. Only software devs believe that.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#202

Post by prodmerc »

Angostura wrote: post #165
munificent wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not exactly sure I'm sure what Imzy is for If I recall, it got started right around the time there was a lot of shenanigans going on at Reddit around corporate drama, censorship, and the nastier subreddits. Imzy and Voat popped up to try to offer an alternative. (My impression is that Imzy was aiming for less awfulness and Voat aims for less censorship.)

It was basically aiming to be a nice, polite version of Reddit.

So, what would Imzy do when a user started acting "not nice"?

Because if they're forced to act nice, most people will just quit. Nobody's nice all the time (everybody has problems), and online communities are great for when you want to vent once in a while.

Plus, all the nicety invites narcissistic assholes who think they are better than everyone else.

I've never heard of Imzy either, and I think I keep up with all the potentially interesting stuff online. Launched in 2016 and not a single time I've even read the name.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#203

Post by pervycreeper »

This was inevitable from the very beginning. Disagreement forms the kernel of worthwhile discussion.

An argument can also be made that "echo-chamber bubbles" are affecting people personally, intellectually, and culturally in tremendously harmful ways, so this is a very tiny step in the right direction.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#204

Post by prodmerc »

antonber wrote: post #52

I run an online community. Building a safe space is extremely difficult and full of grey area, online or offline. There's a fine line between the freedom to express yourself and offending someone else. As a community moderator, choosing what is and isn't offensive is by definition subjective. It's an impossible task for a global, multi-cultural community. You end up with a vanilla message board where most interesting…

You really don't want to cater to the easily offendable, imo.

I remember writing an ebook on affiliate marketing when it was a new thing (free for email subscribers), which had the word Bullshit stamped on an image. Two people said maybe I should tone down the language heh.

Fuck right off, buddy :D

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#205

Post by aklsjdalksdjk »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #144
kickme444 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I hadn't considered this, thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks for doing this. Saves Archive Team time having to grab the site before it goes dark.

honesty question, why should they give a darn about the internet archive?

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#206

Post by aklsjdalksdjk »

kickme444 wrote: post #69
sprt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you have done differently?

TL;DR - we over built. We were too close to the problem from our experiences at reddit and built WAY too much stuff that only really matters if you are operating at scale. If we had done better with this, we could have gone to market quicker and probably done a better job finding product/market fit. There's of course more, but this is the biggest thing.

hey thanks for doing this, could you elaborate on what you mean specifically by built too much? are you talking about specific features? any examples of specific ones you'd have held off on?

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#207

Post by prodmerc »

owenversteeg wrote: post #114

That's too bad. I tried it out, made an account and posted and everything, but there were too few people and everything was very tricky to figure out. I wish there was a simple Reddit clone that focused on positivity, like Imzy, but it seems that all of these things are way too expensive. I mean cmon, eight million dollars (in the last round alone) wasn't enough to keep a link sharing site alive? How is that possible…

I sort of don't like how centralized Reddit is, but there is indeed a subreddit for everything.

UpliftingNews, Wholesomememes seem to be very popular, positive shit being the main content

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#208

Post by [deleted] »

geofft wrote: post #24
seibelj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't this a real-world, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is bet that people wanted a heavily moderated forum for communication?

Yes, but it's not at all clear to me that it failed because that bet failed. It's not at all clear to me why it failed, period -- the post says that they "were not able to find our place in the market", which could mean lots of things, e.g., that there were lots of users but no obvious monetization strategy. In general, "Startup X failed" is extremely weak evidence for "People don't want the product that startup X wa…

[deleted]

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#209

Post by spiraldancing »

rjbwork wrote: post #145
nebabyte wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, as much as I love them: Imzy in its current form was never going to catch on. Other sites can get away with some bad choices like login-required because of momentum, but... The culture and userbase they were hoping to attract was more akin to tumblr, and Tumblrites were never going to leave it for Imzy. Those used to reddit, meanwhile, saw a signup/login screen (or even a "request an invite" screen) and bor…

>Those used to reddit, meanwhile, saw a signup/login screen (or even a "request an invite" screen) and boredly clicked off. First time I've heard of Imzy I believe, and this was my exact reaction when I went to their front page.

Ditto

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#210

Post by [deleted] »

paulsutter wrote: post #194
austenallred wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish the founders well, but I feel like people nowadays give up too early. It's really difficult to offer perspective like that on something you don't really understand and haven't seen from the inside. It's pretty clear if you don't have product-market fit as a founder. And if you don't have a really good idea of what you could do to get to product-market fit, it's entirely possible it's wise of the founders to…

What's going on with raising $11M if it's pretty clear you don't have product market fit?

[deleted]
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