My blog traffic has dipped a lot lately. Not sure if folks have lost interest in the subject, or if my writing has slipped, or if summer weather has caused readers to exchange laptops for mountain bikes, but I seem to have hit a wall in terms of readership growth.
But at least the readers I do have left are not likeing what they’re seeing at mycolts 
I noticed a link into my blog today from on of our beta testers. While he supports what we’re doing in general, he is not highly complimentary of the site:
It is great to see a technology-aware NFL organization jazzed enough to inspire their stoic head coach into self-publication. NOTE: Having seen the inside of the pre-Beta site, I think the imminent release of MyColts.net for public consumption is premature. At the moment, it seems to be a social site OF Colts fans, not a site FOR social Colts fans. Big difference. Still, this concept has a bright future, and Pay Coyle (et al) should be congratulated.
I cannot deny that we’re struggling to design this thing so that users can make it WHATEVER they want from get get go. We’re trying to walk a line between maintaining control and giving it away. I have had a few sleepless nights wondering if people will simply hate our site, and stay away in droves.
On the other hand, that handy term “iterative” keeps coming to mind. At some point, you just launch th sucker. You wait to hear (or see) what people do with it, and you begin making improvements based on that input. I’d rather be perfect from the beginning, but it’s simply not realistic.
So it’s good to get criticized, especially while we’re in beta, but even though I know what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I’m not looking forward to hearing the criticism we’ll likely get when we go live. You spend a year of your life working on something, you want people to love it. But not everyone will.
I hope you don’t lose too much sleep over it. It will never be perfect and that shouldn’t be your goal. I think the greatest feature you could give to your users would be that of a living, changing network that adjusts to the needs of it’s userbase over time. Look at MySpace… that thing is horrendously bad at interface design, usability, and only recently have they fixed many security holes. Yet, it’s at the top of the “social network” pile in terms of raw traffic, revenue, etc.
The designer in my wishes the MyColts site was a bit more stylish… but, with MySpace as an example, my idea of “good style” doesn’t always translate into a successful website. I think giving users lots of control over styling their own profile pages helps give people more of a sense of ownership of their content. If you look at Virb.com, there are some users that spend lots of time customizing their profiles. Of course, not every user has the time to go crazy on their profile.
That blog post was meant more of a test of ClipMarks than a critique of the site. The clip itself was the info you relayed about Tony Dungy being excited to start blogging. Regardless of what product you put out or how it is received, THAT is the big win in my eyes: changing a culture. Until there was some accessibility problems that prevented me from doing so, my feedback has been almost entirely in the site, using the blog tool there. I saw there was a new IP address in an email today, so maybe I can return tomorrow.
I’m sure I represent a different kind of user than the ones that are drawn to MySpace - I want the feel of a sports bar or a road trip to a game, not the relationships outside of that. From that perspective, I was struck by how little sports was in this sports networking site. It’s early and out of season (though not by much), so maybe that is coming.
It’s the right idea to iterate and get people involved. I’m just one guy in what will be thousands. It’s a great initiative.
Kevin,
I appreciate your feedback. It touches a nerve because my colleagues want to make sure the site is build in such a way that it could be all things to all people if they choose to use it instead of myspace…but my concern is that we overlook the obvious (i.e. making it a colts community).
Josh Evnin, a fellow grad from IU’s HCI program and now working for ThoughtWorks in Chicago, had some of his own thoughts to say about this very issue of development and iteration. Might be a pick-me-up.