Active Lurking
I wanted to share something I've found really useful: "active lurking"
I'm developing an open-source e-commerce framework for developers. This is a pretty crowded space and there are a lot of alternatives out there. As part of my research I regularly lurk on the Slack channels/subreddits/Gitter channels/GitHub issues of many of these other projects.
It's a fascinating glimpse into the strengths and weaknesses of these platforms and the best way I've found to get past the marketing BS of their landing pages to see what life is really like once you adopt this platform.
So why is this "active"? I'm not just reading, I'm constantly thinking "how can I avoid this kind of issue?" or "this aspect seems to really help the developer community" and noting them. I've compiled a little collection of brutally candid developer feedback about these various platforms. I've got a really good feel for the pain points which I can work hard to avoid.
It's a little like the "Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come" from Dickens's "A Christmas Carol". Here's where you will end up if you make the following bad design decisions. "Oh god! That's awful! Let me spend a bit more time thinking about how I will solve this issue better!"
I think this is awesome. Not only you'd avoid the same design mistakes but you have collected enough information - specifically the pain points of the competition - this may be beneficial when you write articles, blog posts, medium articles and with marketing too.
That's a great initiative. It sounds a little time-consuming, but it also sounds like it's paying big dividends while you're still able to shift direction easily.
Not all that time consuming, surprisingly. I use Franz (https://meetfranz.com/) and have a bunch of slacks & gitter set up there. A couple of times a day (e.g. when tests are running) I look over new notifications there and that's usually enough to take in what is going on. Once a week or two I'll look over the GitHub issues of a few projects and read into any interesting ones.
But probably part of the reason I can do this is that I'm pretty obsessed with making this project a success and having this wealth of intelligence on the landscape is really really strategically valuable. With open-source development and open communities, there is just such a wealth of data, experience and perspectives to soak up!
I also admit a certain amount of Schadenfreude when reading rants about the failings of other platforms. Haha. I'm only human 😂 🤷♂️