Cooler.Chat
A place to discuss things on the Internet
I am 2 years into cooler.chat and I have not made much progress. Looking at the git commits was a bit of a wake up call that I am really quite passive about this project. I occasionally get visitors and I occasionally make changes but I am stuck in a chicken or the egg problem or promoting the platform or working on features. It feels like there is not enough there to promote. But I am not seeing any meaningful engagement that would make me think its a feature away. I have built replies and reactions, and share links, and shared specifically the communities with Users on reddit who I would think would be an ideal user for my communities but I can't seem to get the ball rolling. Google Analytics has me at about 2-3 users a day with engagement between 0-30s, and the occasional just shy of a minute. Where do I go from here is the question. Focus on promotion or focus on features. I think I could use a lot of help in the promotion department as far as the who and the where.
I am actually not sure this is when I launched but I launched some time between March and June. It still doesn't feel launched. I shared with some friends back in July/August and they used it for a day or two in the cooler.chat/c/stocks channel but they were very bemused / entertained by the conversations I was having with myself and that felt like something. I have also tried sharing the link on youtube videos I am genuinely interested in watching a discussing but have not seen people sign up with the exception of 2 people. Those feel like sort of soft launches, as well as posting this right here feels like a soft launch. Anyways there is an MVP out there, a lot more features I want to work on but not sure how to divide my time between trying to get this product out there and working on it. Also having trouble deciding what feature to do next.
I chose a chat application because it is the canonical example for elixir / phoenix applications, much like a blog is canonical for ruby on rails application. I read something by nassim taleb about neo mania old inventions are more interesting than new ones. Like spoons/ silverware is an old invention that isn't going anywhere. That is how I feel about chatting on the internet. It is literally one of my first memories from using the internet, so I figured it's an industry that isn't going anywhere, where there is room for more then one solution. Just think about how many chat applications you use today.
-Dan Clark
1 Comment
It's all about content
This comment was deleted 5 years ago