We deployed ScoopStream in late August and had friends, family, and some others try it out.
We learned a lot, including:
a.) Building a new social graph is very, very tough - People (generally) have already built the best social graph that they’re going to have… it’s called Facebook.
b.) People weren’t creating communities - It’s too big of a barrier to entry. I considered them an easy way to assemble a temporary collection of people, but they weren’t what people wanted. Considering that this is (was) the core of the site, it presented a big problem.
c.) Simple is better than beautiful - A cool user interface is awesome, but it needs to be completely clear. When you’re so close to a product for so long, you take for granted little intricacies that the average user may not understand.
The analogy I’ve been using lately to explain ScoopStream is that it was like having a party in a mansion with a thousand rooms. There’s one or two people in each room… people get bored, and they leave. It’s a classic problem that social websites often encounter.
I love the concept of ScoopStream, but it’s the sort of thing that would’ve been better starting with 100,000 users. Obviously, we didn’t have that luxury. The site scaled too fast… it would’ve been smarter to launch a single community and focus on building one great one before trying for a hundred.
I saw issues soon after we launched, and have spent the past few weeks thinking about different things we could try.
I’ve been considering a few concepts that we could pursue, but one thing is clear - using the ScoopStream name doesn’t make sense anymore. The brand/website is very black and white, which calls back to when we were news-focused. I still love the logo and name, so I’m holding onto it (I actually renewed the domain today for another year)… I’d like to do some sort of news-related project with it in the future.
I’m working on a concept that takes the issues we encountered with ScoopStream (at least the ones I was able to observe) and addresses them. I’m still carving out exactly how the site would work, but it’s coming along. I’ve already got a name (and domain) picked out, and I’m hoping to begin development within a month and get it up soon. I don’t know if this one will work, but it’s an interesting idea that has me really excited. The most anyone can do when building stuff like this is try something, learn from it, adapt, and try again.
Stay tuned to this blog for updates!
-Adam
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