Slashdot Killed My Kickstarter Campaign

New submitter agizis writes "Alex from Connectify here. I wanted to say thanks to all of you who commented on the Slashdot story about our Kickstarter campaign It was super-educational discussing Switchboard with all of you: you wanted your own servers, and we weren't doing enough to communicate what was so special about Switchboard. Based in a large part on your feedback, we blew up our Kickstarter campaign, and changed almost everything. Thanks, Slashdot. This isn't reddit, but ask me anything."

Comments

You took slashdot comments seriously???

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this straight....

You had an idea on Kickstarter. You asked slashdot when they thought. You got tons of "you're doing it wrong"s. Now you're abandoning ship?

Someone wasn't taught to ignore the bullies in grade school. Slashdot posters will hate on everyone's ideas and suggest even stupider ones, just to be funny/trollish. You must be pretty new here.

Re:You took slashdot comments seriously???

[agizis]

Ha, no really, there were a lot of good points. I thought that the confusion as to what the core technology REALLY did, and the resistance to yet another cloud service/subscription really explained a lot of what I was seeing and hearing on Kickstarter. On Kickstarter, you hear from people who are excited, but very little from the 99% who don't decide to back you, they just wander off if they're not interested. Here on Slashdot, people were a lot more vocal.

I do get how unbelievably negative Slashdot can be. Take the first Slashdot story that ever covered Connectify. ... What did I get 200 comments on Connectify, probably all negative. But I got 20,000 downloads of the software in the 8 hours after the post went up. So it's not obvious from reading the discussion but there actually were 100x as many people who liked the idea, as hated it. (Oh and then we decided that this really could be company).

Re:You took slashdot comments seriously???

[Anonymous Coward]

Downloading something doesn't mean you like it. You may have just spurred enough curiosity, that's all. Not to mention how many of those downloads actually turned into installs that ever got any usage? I've downloaded tons of Linux distros just to try them out. Out of the 50 or so distros I've downloaded only 3 have ever made it past the LiveCD stage. Probably only 10 ever made it to the LiveCD stage. It's easy to get excited about and lose interest in free software, sometimes in the same breath.

In my rather limited experience with a few would-be-geeks, most production software is interesting but few ever actually use it but most have an opinion of it. It seems twisted and sad. That's because it is. But it still is the facts of the matter.

I'd be curious how many of the 20k downloads you got ever got beyond the download stage. My guess is less than 10%.

Linux Release

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you made the right choice in regards to your kickstarter campaign but at the same time I think we all knew you wouldn't reach your goal and had to rethink your strategy. No one can see a value in a monthly fee for something like this. My problem is you are releasing new software when I would be happy to give you money in exchange for Linux Dispatch. Do you still have the intention to release this for Linux or have you decided to move on to new products?

Re:2 Questions for you

[agizis]

More and more, I'm coming to think of myself as a guy who takes complex networking technology and tries to make it simple. I'm doing this because I want to give people not only faster internet access, but also free them from the companies that would control what we can do on the Internet connections that we're paying for. Well that's my big vision, mostly I answer emails, and wish I had more time to actually code.

Re:Stop feeding the trolls.

[agizis]

I felt like a lot people started off negative, but when I started actually answering, everyone seemed really well behaved. I was happy, I think that maybe more people from the stories should just jump into these conversations. In the end, I didn't have any bad "troll" experiences.

Re:why non FOSS sofware?

[VortexCortex]

I concur. I use crowd funding or private funding (commission) to pay for my work and working expenses. Then the work I do belongs to the private company (unless open source, but they still get a copyright assignment if negotiated), or in the case of crowd funding my work belongs to the public at large, and they can use it for free. Instead of selling bits which are in infinite supply (and thus Economics 101 says have zero price regardless of cost to create), I simply do more work to get more money... The bits aren't valuable. The ability to configure the bits (do work) is valuable. Just like when I was an Electrician, or small engine Mechanic before that, or Home Builder before that, or Data Entry Clerk before that, or fast food Burger Flipper before that, or Pre-Teen Lawn Mowing service before that... It's a proven model. The Artificial Scarcity Racket of selling infinitely reproducible information is Evil and economically untenable. The model where you sell bits is DUMB. Stop it. It's simple: You want to do work and get paid for it? Then DO WORK, and get paid for it. For a model that works see: Car Mechanics or any other labor industry where an estimate is given, price agreed upon, work performed. It's not rocket science. I have no sympathy for fools.

Re:I don't understand why you blame slashdot...

[Chas]

Actually, I find this sort of encouraging.

There's a whole raft of companies out there that simply can't let go of The Vision. And absolutely MUST ram The Vision down everyone's throats.

It's rather refreshing to see a company stop, mid-stride, and re-evaluate a product and actually be willing to make a change like this.

To actually, y'know, LISTEN to feedback. Instead of bulling ahead and damn the torpedoes.

Or worse, making some a pointless token gesture.