Just to put it out there, we never said anything about warmer or fuzzier. We had no intention of having any press coverage for a few months, perhaps that was a mistake for this reason exactly.
I'm going to do a little bit of copy/pasting from some of my other comments on this thread to help respond to this one, so I hope you'll forgive me, but here's why I don't really agree with that description.
Why I think it's oversimplified and not really representative:
Our goal, and what we meant by using the word "positive" is that Imzy, and the communities on it, enrich people's lives in a positive way. That doesn't mean every comment, post, or discussion is positive. It means that I come away a better, more informed person from the discussions I have, or maybe I just enjoy my time there. Maybe we messed up using that word, and we'll need to change it. We're young, and we're learning how to describe and talk about who we are and what we're trying to do. What that does mean is that extreme or sustained harassment that makes people unhappy, fear for their lives, or feel like they can't participate isn't okay. Communities that exist solely for hate aren't cool. But disagreement and even voicing opinions that are very unfavorable can still exist. Saying mean things to people is okay, unless that's all you do all day following around a user or something. We all become better people when we can share our own perspectives and hear the perspectives of others, especially when they are different from our own. Otherwise you end up with an echo chamber.
Why I think it's extremely narrow and offbase:
This is the tiniest bit of what we're actually doing. We've focused on creating really diverse tools so that communities can exist and share however makes most sense for them and do the things that they need to do all in one place. We've built in a payments system. We've tried to give leaders AWESOME tools for making their communities exactly what they want and managing them the way that makes sense for them. We've tried to make things a lot more user and mobile friendly, as the places you referenced can be intimidating and not intuitive to a lot of people. Those are the things I'm most excited about--all the things we're adding to community functionality, not what we're taking away.
It sounds like therapy. it will attract people looking to be fixed.
I haven't really looked into it as I'm not interested in joining at the invitation-only stage, but I really like some of the ideas you laid out on your home page! Good luck!
Our business model will definitely have tipping and probably attract more creative people, but we'll slowly be adding more and more financial features to allow people to use money however they typically need to in a community structure, whether that's buying items, crowdfunding, paying for entry to an event, donating to people, putting rewards out for information, selling merchandise, and a whole bunch of other things. Hopefully as we do that, it'll start appealing to an even wider base as they'll be able to do all the things they want to on Imzy rather than using a combination of forums, Facebook, Slack, Paypal, Meetup, IndieGoGo, etc.
We'll probably leave invitation-only status and open things up a little later in the summer, but we want to make sure we establish a good tone for engagement and get our technology and features good enough before we do that.
Perhaps. However, many people here walked away with that impression...mostly from looking at your site.
I think it's highly likely this isn't just HN, and first impressions count. I would do a focus group or similar[1], and make sure your site is conveying the message you want.
Also, your front page says very prominently:
"Find where you belong and join in healthy, positive communities." ("warmer")
Along with a massive overload of overly cute imagery. ("fuzzier")
So really, I don't understand where you are coming from.
Start as you mean to go on, they say
Also, it's hard to have one's baby criticized and the author is in a difficult position in this thread, so I'm inclined to cut him a bit of slack.
People are probably envious of the publicity you got.
It is very obvious that a lot of hard work has gone into making the site. Well done. It looks very nice.
As a long-time reddit user, I like what I see so far. I submitted my email for invite, how long does that usually take?
The complaints about Imzy on this submission are justified by the commenters and, in my opinion, accurate.
We're trying really hard to purposely grow things slowly to keep them at a scale we can manage both on the community and technology side. Dumping a whole bunch of people into one place all at once turns into a free-for-all, and we want to make sure we're able to moderate communities to have the kind of quality interactions we want rather than a bunch of circlejerking, and that our technology is able to evolve at the same rate our userbase grows.
Right now the only way to get in is if you get invited by another person who's already a member (there are usually people on Twitter sharing their invites if you search for them), or requesting to join a specific community, and then the leader of that community can let you in. Otherwise, we'll be slowly letting people into Imzy in the order they signed up in, and unfortunately that may take a while if you just signed up, since the list is pretty long right now. :/ We really want to do this right rather than explode quickly and die a week later.
Nothing beats the Slashdot review of when the iPod was first released: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...