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Imzy is shutting down

imzy.com

221–230 of 268 posts

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#221
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> You really don't want to cater to the easily offendable, imo. This attitude rings with the dismissive tone of the unapologetically privileged who — rebelling against the slightest whiff of shame — are quick to marginalize any and every voice with whom empathizing would require their stingily hoarded emotional labor and energy. Ironically, communities populated by such misers enthusiastically take umbrage with the p…

The advantage of being someone who doesn't cater to the offended is you can respond to something like this by saying:

"Lol! You nailed it. Fortunately for me, I don't care. You mad bro?"

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voat never raised millions in venture capital, though. (and can't given their content/userbase)

They will probably have a hard time raising from institutional investors, but my guess is their userbase is primarily single men who spend large amounts of time on the computer, a decent subset of whom have spending cash. The "goats" are also people who feel like they've been politically badgered into a corner, so I suspect they will spend to maintain their last refuge. Your will to fight goes up as the space you are…

opposite of feminism/social justice is not 'women should be raped', opposite is 'weak should not be helped and left to die'.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#223

I wish the founders well, but I feel like people nowadays give up too early. And this is one of the most extreme examples of that. Most community sites take a while to grow and you really never know what will happen. Even Reddit was sort of a failure vs. Digg and they sold it off to conde nast. It was only later AFTER the sale when Digg messed up on their own and Reddit enjoyed success as a side effect. You really sh…

[deleted]

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#224

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…

A community isn't a product. It is not at all clear from the inside or the outside whether a community is going to gel and take off within a year. Communities =/= products. An entirely different kind of thinking and patience is required to grow a community as opposed to build a product.

Peter Reinhardt has a great talk about that. You need to understand the feedback that you receive and sometimes is better kill fast your ideas to move on. If it is a product or a community doesn't matter, if your growth is flat you still didn´t hit the market that you need so you could eventually successful monetize your company.

People that really love what you do will "spread the word" and bring new people.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#225

I wish the founders well, but I feel like people nowadays give up too early. And this is one of the most extreme examples of that. Most community sites take a while to grow and you really never know what will happen. Even Reddit was sort of a failure vs. Digg and they sold it off to conde nast. It was only later AFTER the sale when Digg messed up on their own and Reddit enjoyed success as a side effect. You really sh…

I was there from early in the beta. The thing that annoyed me, when I suggested that people should take a look at it was the decision that you had to make an account to see content. Most people visited the homepage and then said 'no'.

The Gardened Wall model. Interesting gambit.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh...sadly Voat. They recently ran into budget problems (they run at $6k/month) and were able to raise enough to keep running for a few months and get volunteers help move it off Azure's overpriced hosting. So there's an example of site, without much money, building off their community. It's filled with a lot of hate, racism and extremism. I still like browsing it, just to see the opinions, try to understand where o…

> without much money, building off their community. It's filled with a lot of hate, racism and extremism Probably not helped when they get kicked off payment processors or fundraiser sites for openly hosting underage nudity, sorry, "jailbait"...

Their front page right at this moment has several unpleasant articles, including three Islamophobic items, one anti-Semitic item, and one joke accusing liberals of equating conservative economic policy and racism. So that's probably not helpful to their prospects.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#227
post #148

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. | 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 als…

I'd be interested in snapzu, but when I put in my email to request an invite, it says "already registered", yet when I try to log in, it says "email not in our database".

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#228
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, ~10 employees in SF + office rent + other various costs (lawyers, accountants, the odd office party, etc.) will easily burn through $4M a year. Edit: oh wait, that's $8M in October 2016, not 2015 - ie 8 months ago. Burning $1M a month does seem quite high. Maybe they're shutting down early to give some money back to investors?

We're in SLC and still have the majority of that money left.

I know it's probably out of your hands but if you could AGPL the codebase, pitch decks, etc. It would be wonderful to help ppl learn, if nothing else.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

With an initial login/signup screen they definitely should give it at least 5 years, if not 10, to get going.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#230
post #6

Turns out the vast majority of people don't want to spend their lives in a permanent "safe space"[0]. That was a fast flameout [0] https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/25/a-chat-with-imzy-co-founde...

I don't see what's massively objectionable about wanting to build a community based on tolerance, kindness and mutual respect.

Problem is, that's not what it was in reality.

Worse, several of the interaction, UI/UX, and management decisions simply amplified the initial bias (as is often the case).

Imzy was doomed out of the gate, despite some interesting ideas.

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