Double Digit Users

We finally reached more than 10 users on our first product. To reach this small milestone we've used our own product to follow users on Medium. Our Medium account bio has a link to the Chrome store to install the browser extension. We've also written a blog post on Medium outlining how to use the Chrome extension and it's various features.

Finally, we've added some code to provide feedback to the user as to what the bot is doing by hijacking the error message modal on the Medium page. Previously the bot started scrolling to the bottom of the page without providing any feedback to the user, but now it will provide a helpful message informing the user how many scrolls it will take to get to the bottom of the page and why the bot is scrolling. There is also feedback when the bot starts to follow people.

The reason this feedback is necessary is because the automated following happens at the top of the page after the bot has finished scrolling to the bottom of the user's list, so there is no visual feedback that anything is happening after the bot finishes scrolling to the bottom of the page.

Ideally, the bot would scroll back up to the top of the page, or do the follow clicking in batches, but this was more difficult and I didn't want to spend too much time on it until I was certain there would be a big enough demand for the software. If the extension starts to make revenue I will consider a more robust long term approach to this problem, but for now the feedback will have to do.