๐ Day 4 of Building Crowdwide โ The Hard Part Isn't Building Features
On Day 4 of building Crowdwide, I was starting to realize that writing code wasn't necessarily the hardest part.
At the time, Crowdwide had:
- 6 members
- 20 posts
- 3 communities
The numbers were still tiny, but they were enough to reveal something important.
๐ง Features Don't Automatically Create Users
I had already built things like hashtags, community posting, scheduled posts, quests, co-authoring, recaps, recommendations, and community discovery.
But then I looked at the usage...
Nobody was using half of them. ๐ญ
That made me question something I had also experienced with my older project, Rizzzler.
You can build a feature, document it, explain it, and still have users completely ignore it.
So I started thinking beyond:
Idea โ Code โ Test โ Done
A user also needs to discover the feature, understand it, see its value, and have a reason to return.
That's a completely different challenge.
๐ฐ Giving Creators a Reason to Stay
I was also exploring partner-style monetization for Crowdwide.
I had contacted several companies, but there were no replies yet. ๐ญ
The bigger idea wasn't simply putting ads everywhere.
I wanted to eventually create a system where creators and community owners could get something back for the effort they put into building communities and creating content.
Because if users are helping keep a platform alive, the platform should give them a reason to keep contributing.
I was still figuring out exactly how.
And honestly, that was becoming the real challenge.
Not:
"Can I build it?"
But:
"Can I give people a reason to use it, stay, and build something here?"
That was the question I was taking into Day 5. ๐
#Crowdwide #BuildInPublic
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