Working software and nice website -> no community
I am trying to grow my social web app focused around programming and quality discussions between coders. Unfortunately, despite the website being functional and clean, I am not sure how to jump-start this community to make it grow.
How can I add enough content for other people to also want to participate and engage with me on my website?
Do you have any ideas?
I'm having a bit of doubts but we will see what happens... Either way I sure learned a lot :)
What reason do people have to sign up for the site? Right now it's 11 links to popular sites with 0 discussions on each of them so it'll be hard for people to sign up and contribute if they don't even know if there's one other person using the site.
If you think about how Reddit started where the owners posted content / discussions with multiple accounts to fake activity you see how this could be done.
It sounds harsh but in the current iteration I don't see any reason for someone to sign up for your site when they can get a lot of high quality focused discussions on other sites like IH, dev.to and other developer focused communities.
What makes your site different or what provides "quality discussions between coders"?
Although this is harsh. You're right and I know this. At this point, the community is not useful. The reason I wanted to build it is because to be honest, content on dev.to (the only popular dev community) is pretty empty and clickbait. If you go to their webpage right now a lot of it sounds like corporate posts like "10 best websites for web design" or "10 new libraries you NEED to use". I just don't feel that quality interaction and that's why I wanted to fill that void but I just don't know how to grow a community like that and I don't want to fake it like Reddit did.
What kind of discussions are you missing from other communities? For example what kind of thread would you like to see on your platform that wouldn't be possible by posting a thread here in the technology group, on HN, on dev.to or the various programming subreddits on Reddit?
I guess what I'm trying to understand it what's the problem that you are solving because this also defines your target audience. Dev.to has the target audience of mostly beginner programmers it seems so of the topics are pretty general or corporate like you said. They don't have much depth. If you want to have in-depth topics about a specific topic you probably have to go into forums dedicated to this specific niche. If you want to be "in depth" but also cover all the topics that'll be harder to start as you are splitting your already tiny community into even smaller shards.
I'm not trying to be a downer, just sparking some discussion so people can chime in and you maybe can make the necessary adjustments.
Yeah I want a bit more depth to the content but it's true that if I do that in a general way I'm just splitting the community even more. Thanks for the feedback :)
yes. +1 on this.
i even tried commenting but was forced to sign-up... i mean... i don't feel like there's any incentive to hangout for too long...?
what am i missing?