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🚀 Day 3 of Building Crowdwide — Teaching Users a Feature Is Surprisingly Hard

Three days after launching Crowdwide, I learned something I hadn't expected:

Building a feature can be easier than getting users to actually use it.

At the time, Crowdwide had:

• 6 members
• 13 posts
• 3 communities

The numbers were tiny, but having real users meant I could finally see how people interacted with what I built.

And I had seen this before.

Before Crowdwide, I built Rizzzler, a link-in-bio platform with a custom music feature. I documented it and even used it on my own page.

There were 10+ users, but only 2 were using custom music.

My first thought?

"I literally built this for you!" 😂

Crowdwide was teaching me the same lesson.

🗺️ Where Ideas Come From

Many of my features came from products I used or problems I experienced.

The Crowdwide community map, for example, was inspired by Obsidian's visual connections. I wondered:

> What if communities could have locations around the world? 🌍

So I built it.

At the time, my own community was basically the map's only resident. 😂

Crowdwide also had hashtags, community posting, scheduled posts, quests, co-authoring, recaps, and more.

But a feature existing doesn't mean users will discover it.

That's when I started thinking beyond:

Idea → Code → Test → Done

Users also need to discover, understand, and find value in a feature.

A feature nobody discovers is almost like a feature that doesn't exist.

So I wasn't just trying to build more.

I was learning how to build the path that leads users to what I'd already built. 🚀

And if someone actually discovered a hidden feature without me explaining it?

They deserved a chocolate. 😂🍫

#Crowdwide #BuildInPublic