Not All Features Belong In Your App

I wrote recently about a problem I was seeing with the alpha testing results for Perligo. I came to the conclusion that a lot of writers do not already have a writing group in place, so they couldn’t use Perligo.

While I originally had plans to add public groups to the app that people could join, I’ve really been against the idea and decided to scrap it entirely. So, how do I solve the problem of writers who don’t have a writing group yet? Rather than build match-making into the app and rather than build an overly complex system of public groups (which requires far more monitoring and logic), I decided to start a Discord server.

Writers don’t need extra features in an app to find writing friends. They need a community. Discord makes a great product and it already has a ton of great features for community building. So, I created the server, created some channels, and started testing it with some early Perligo alpha users.

It’s working great so far, and it means I don’t have to build extra features in my app. Sure, it’ll take work to funnel writers into the community and then get them to sign up for Perligo, but that also present an interesting distribution channel. I would essentially be marketing the community and the community markets the app.

We’ll see how it all turns out, but I love the idea of not building features into your apps when the problems those features might solve could be handled through some other means. Curious if anyone else has done something similar?

App: Perligo - https://perligo.io
Discord: https://discord.gg/TabfgWZK