Exactly. The platform will be increasingly more useful as user base is growing. The same is applicable to majority of other networks. It is most likely that we will have to continue onboarding users almost "manually" until we reach a critical mass.
> I have strong reservations about your apparent aim of making a single for-profit company the gatekeeper to the websites for every research group.
Good point. As researchers ourselves, we have tendencies to favor open-source projects/organizations over for-profit companies. There is no denying it. But considering all the things, I believe that for-profit companies achieve their goals much more efficiently. Simply put, we are a social purpose for-profit company started by researchers who got tired of redundancies, poor discoverability, lack of sane structure etc., and are trying to build a solution.
I am interested to hear your opinion on some of your points above. Could you elaborate on your reservations? What is it that you are most concerned about? What could we do to improve on that apart from going non-profit?
> An alternative way of making research groups discoverable would be to create a directory of researchers that links to their existing websites, rather than trying to replace them.
As you have said it, this approach will work to make research groups discoverable. However, it would be difficult to solve many other issues we are trying to solve. A single platform is a better option in this case, as it allows deeper integration and interconnection.