Does upgrading a social site truly equate to remaining viable?
After reading this question in the meta section, I decided to ask if development is truly a benchmark or a curse to a social site such as Fluther.
As an example:
Answerbag over developed and evolved to a degree that a mass migration of users left- no longer feeling welcome there.
Wis.dm overdeveloped and fragmented so fast that the servers could not bear the load. The site then failed. The owners, after attempting to sell without success, folded the site.
Fluther has steadily grown with a large growth spurt in 2010. The growth created anxiety- the addition of “social” and “general” was met, according to the archives, with trepidation and concern. Now Fluther is in a state a suspended animation- and this seems to be of concern as well.
So I ask:
With the two prior examples of sites that continued to develop, where one lost it’s base and the other ceased to exist, is it such a bad thing that this site has slowed its development?
If Fluther had continued with its creative staff- would it have succumbed to potential overdevelopment?
Keep in mind that, as @Augustlan stated, essential development does continue here, Fluther is not completely abandoned. Is it truly a bad thing that there is not a team of developers seeking to perfect what may not need perfecting?
Please feel free to post any thoughts.
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7 Answers
I am clueless about the technical and “features” developments. I favored the change to General and Social, and have not seen anything bad about it.
My worst fear has been that the links with facebook and twitter brings in a segment of the general population that is more interested in “what is your favorite toy”, “my boyfriend doesn’t like me anymore” and “am I pregnant” than the more thought provoking questions.
I have already cut my participation from all day every day to a few questions a day.
@YARNLADY Then perhaps Fluther developed a bit too much before settling in?
@NightStalker No, I think it’s more like too many cooks spoil the broth.
Is it a bad thing? Not by me. I think major additions and changes could have stopped quite some time before they did.
When it comes to changes of websites I frequent and interfaces I use, I’m pretty much of a stick-in-the-mud. I’ll put up with inconveniences for the sake of familiarity and comfort. True, I had my own wish list for Fluther development, consisting mainly of tiny housekeeping items such as default treatment of certain punctuation. But I would gladly have tossed my list out the window if that could have prevented some other large-scale changes that just weren’t improvements as far as I was concerned.
So just as long as there’s somebody who can fix us if we actually break down, I think it’s fine that changes are few and slow in coming.
My opinion has nothing at all to do with either Answerbag or Wis.dm, though. I don’t think our guys needed to be taught by those examples. I think they did and do know what’s great about Fluther, and even if they added too much window dressing, they wouldn’t compromise the core of it.
I don’t think we know yet. If it becomes way behind the times in terms of interface design or interaction, I think it could affect the addition of new users.
I have never seen a good reason for the changes here at fluther. Maybe you’re right. Lack of development is a good thing.
If it’s good for nature, why not good for fluther?
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