Hi there, I'm Dan the CEO! I've written more about our launch here https://medium.com/imzyhq/imzy-y...
And will be hanging out in here all day in case there are any questions!
@kickme444 hey there, congrats on the launch!
Go figure, but here's some feedback:
I was trying to sign up with my phone number and received a verification code, but the iOS app claimed it was invalid. I tapped the "resend code" and it took several minutes for another code to arrive...
Also, there's a typo during on-boarding:
@chrismessina I'll let @kickme444 chime in regarding the other stuff, but I'll address the branding.
I thought some people might make that link but we feel like our branding is more focused and less nebulous than my____. Ultimately, we came up with our positioning after extensive user research with our Beta cohort.
Here's a couple thoughts on why we chose "Community as _______ as you are."
- We are community oriented. That's the foundation of what we're doing and we wanted that explicitly stated in our positioning.
- HOW people build community and with whom they connect is so diverse. We want to celebrate that and build our platform in a way that empowers that in the future, hence the ________.
- We need both of these aforementioned statements to be true for us to succeed.
@drew yeah, I was up late drinking. Definitely feeling punchy and stressed, so, my bad if I came across as a Debbie Downer. Not trying to dump haterade, it's just what came to mind. Stepping away from the keyboard. 🤐
The hardest part of growing a community is the "empty mall" syndrome – how are you guys crossing that gap? Would love to move the Pikazo community here if I can figure out how to get them to follow!
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@nrose their 7 month private beta period really got a bunch of great folks going on the platform.
@nrose This is definitely a really difficult problem. I don't know that we've found the perfect solution, but I'll tell you a couple things we'll done, and then the philosophy that we think solves it most:
1. We had a 7-month private beta, during which time we gained or first 50,000 users. So while we're certainly not as large as social platforms that have been around for several years, we do have some people already here and some really active communities!
2. We've worked on having a full onboarding process when you create an account to make sure you find communities that are the most tailored to your interests and are more active. We also make it easy to browse and discover new communities by topic, activity, etc, so that hopefully you can find the shops that have awesome stuff for sale just your style rather than wandering the mall endlessly.
3. Most importantly, we're focused on community interactions over content consumption. You have a great time with your best friend, significant other, or whomever else all the time, even when it's just the two of you! Because you have a really great connection. When you build quality communities and focus on the way people interact, you can make friends, and you come back to talk with those friends, rather than just coming to browse a feed of content and being disappointed if it runs out quickly. Because when you connect with others and really experience community, you can't "run out" of things to read. You just keep participating and creating those discussions!
Just saw imzy's $8m funding announcement. Congrats, @kickme444, @heathwblack, and team! As you know, I've been following imzy from a distance since the closed beta earlier this year.
As former reddit employees, how do you see this competing with reddit itself? There are some clear differences but the core focus on building distinct communities is the same.
@rrhoover@heathwblack Having worked at reddit for a long time, I see there there are a few really big differences. The biggest difference is that reddit is primarily focused on content. They are an advertising company and are focused on surfacing the best content to the most people on a daily basis, I think their words are something like, they set the international media agenda with their content or something. Reddit is AMAZING at content.
We are not focused on content, we are focused on communities and really digging in to what that means. So right now, while there are similarities in how communities are organized, you will see stark differences in how people have conversations and really form connections with one another.
Additionally, we are NOT an advertising company because being an advertising company forces you to make decisions that are not in line with community best interests. Instead, we recognize that communities have natural usages of commerce and we will be building those into the platform. When you combine this with our upcoming developer platform, where communities and developers can work together to build custom functionality natively into the platform, communities will really be able to innovate and build stronger, more authentic connections without having to fracture onto 3rd party sites.
Come hang out, it's a fun place!
Here's some more info on our business model plans - https://www.imzy.com/imzy/post/i...
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go imzy go! really love the platform, especially the ability to have multiple profiles under one account. want to be anonymous? go for it. real name? cool. fake gaming persona? awesome.
I was part of the beta. Even though I personally haven't gotten into Imzy as much as I do reddit. I've been very impressed with how active they are with the community. Every time I'd log in to mingle around Imzy, there's been a lot of interesting stuff to look at. I guess the community just needs to grow more to get that density of new content daily that Reddit does. That said, I do like Imzy's design and sense of community more than Reddit's, and feel they are on to something.
Congrats on the public launch and thanks for letting me be part of the beta!
@pddro Thanks so much for being a part of it! You can't have a successful community without commitment and a shared understanding from everyone, and that comes through communication and transparency, so it's been really important to us to be as involved as we can and get feedback from everyone. None of that will change as we move forward—the only difference is that anyone can sign up now without needing an invite. But we still want to be as involved with everyone as possible so we can build the platform you want!
Congrats on the launch! I've been very impressed by the team's transparency during the development process, while also keeping up a super fast release and iteration cycle. Great job!
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@samhouston consistently transparent which makes working with them an absolute dream.
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