Give Found|READ a Report Card
Dear Readers: Tomorrow marks Found|READ’s three-month anniversary.
Your participation in the site has been fantastic over the last 12 weeks — besting our traffic estimates week-in, and week-out. We’ve hit the home page of “Digg”:http://www.digg.com/search?s=How+to+work+the+room%2C+www.foundread.com§ion=news&type=all&area=all&sort=score a couple of times, and “reddit”:http://reddit.com/search?q=www.foundread.com, too — real thrills for a young site which happily (if painfully) earned us that battle scar that every startup secretly desires: “Demand was so great it crashed our… !”
First, we’d like to Thank You for helping to launch this new community-of-founders with such enthusiasm.
So far it looks like Question of the Day is a big hit — so big that we’re still in the process of categorizing all your Answers! And the Fables and Blow-by Blow tales seem to really draw out first-hand accounts of founder-experiences in way that you enjoy. Then there is Om, whose perspective always adds a new dimension (enough said!).
Second, it’s time we ask you to give us some serious Feedback:
What do you like about the site?
What are we doing right?
What are we doing wrong?
What can we add to change/improve your experience with the community?
What new features would you suggest?
The success of Found|READ depends upon our ability to create a founders’ forum that works for you. Tell us how to we can do this better.
Dear Found|Readers, the importance of this site and its value proposition depends not only on the articles being written and published on Found|Read but also on the conversation following these articles. Think of it as a knowledge database, articles are being written but their value increase exponentially only if people reply to it and share their own views. Ideally, each article should draw around 10-20 replies that acts as supplement to what’s being said in the article and give opposite views or some information supporting the article. This is a call to all F|R readers to take a larger participation in all articles [Don't be shy!], in the long run, this should help each one of us.
Now few thing that should improve the site:
I’d like to see better integration of social bookmarks such as Digg/Reddit/del.iciou.us, if its there at the end of the post, it will enable the loyal core to submit the article to large social site and ideally increase the traffic [Again, increased traffic mean potential new readers and fresh and new views on articles].
I know it has been discussed in the past, but I would like to see the registration being optional [Register only if you want to use several features or speed up your posting], For a one time reader/commenter, commenting should be the easiest thing on earth.
I’d like to have a section with trackbacks in the comments, I like to read other blogs opinions on articles and it usually engage better conversation.
Decide on a posting pattern and stick to it for a while, I’d like to see you guys posting an article a day or twice a day, and stick to this pattern [Never post more than 3 articles in the same day as it will be too much for us to follow up].
Oh and one last thing, I know Om is busy, but [damn!] get him to post once a week, his articles are always interesting and his experience can work for us.}
Another point: - When you click on a profile like mine: “Adam Benayoun”:http://www.foundread.com/person/5103-adambenayoun I’d like to have the stories listed first and then the comments. I believe that my stories are more important (if there is no stories, then do not publish it).}
Hi Adam, Trevor from Red Canary here (another publicsquare-powered site). I’m using a temporary fix for the commenting problem….I created an ‘anonymous’ user and simply post the Username/Password for it at the end of each article.
Perfect solution? No, but better than nothing.
The Digg/Reddit/del.iciou.us stuff should be easy to implement on their end.}
I’d like to know who is commenting on my article (a name/email/link like wordpress is enough). An anonymous user isnt a good enough solution but can work temporary.
Regarding the Digg/Reddit/Del.icio.us it can be integrated in a few steps, that’s not a big deal. It will help boost the site traffic and also get a broader audience, which I think is crucial for us as “readers”. We need this.}
Another suggestion which I think is a MUST: - I would like to see a “subscription” option to a comment, which mean Once im suscribing to a comment or an article, I’ll get a mail everytime that someone post a reply. That way that will let users tracks their articles and their comments to see who’s commenting and allow a live discussion. Of course on another end, I’d like to be able to unsuscribe to an article (Trivial no?).}
Another request: - Implement some kind of Feed for Comments, that way it will be easier for us to track the commenting.}
First thoughts, as a reader of FoundRead: More than anything, I’d like to see more pragmatic how-to and advice articles like the margin manifesto, I’d like to see book reviews and even VC reviews. And I pretty much detest the whole “being a founder is like baseball” stuff– everything in Aces I could do without. I know it’s personal taste, but I’d much rather read a founder sharing what s/he learned in the field.
Second, as the founder of PublicSquare, here with a few updates…
Currently PublicSquare does offer feeds for comments, and Om just needs to add that line in the template.
Non-registered commenting is something we are working on right now, and it’ll be up to each publisher whether they wish to use it- I suspect Om will.
Subscribe to comments via email is a great feature; I’ll definitely throw it in the queue.}
I would like also to be able to invite people to read my articles or if the registration still stays, then invite them to register and comments (IF i invite them and provide their email, they will have only to fill their name and their password).}
When Found+Read launched, I was ecstatic that entrepreneurs could now get advice from the trenches. But as time went on, somehow I lost interest in how Found+Read was going about covering this area. I wasn’t sure exactly why but I thought about it and here are some suggestions:
The articles seem very random. To that end, I think that if you gave advance word that you were going to cover some area, that could be nice, ie. Monday we’re covering Financing advice all week. That way I know when I should tune in.
Deeper categorization would also help. Having a “Financing” category with an RSS feed off that would be really awesome as I am not as curious about some areas as I am on others.
Case studies and entrepreneur’s stories are OK as content if I want to read real-life experiences. But if I am to learn from them, I find it hard to pick out all the, for example, financing tips that are in them. They are scattered across all the story posts.
This idea is beyond Public Square potentially, but a Yahoo Answers style area could be really cool. Sometimes entrepreneurs have really focused questions and it would be really cool to provide a forum where they could get advice on their specific problem. I know you have a Q of the Day, but I am sure there are tons of questions out there beyond just doing one per day.
It would be great to categorize by industry and sector as well. There are certainly issues that span across industries/sectors, but there are definitely issues that are very specific. For example, E-Commerce should be a sector, and potentially Consumer versus B2B. That way, if I am working on a social networking site, I can subscribe/watch the Social Networking category for postings specific to my area.
Thanks for listening – If I have more thoughts I’ll add them later…}
I think an answers/Question such as LinkedIn, where people can ask questions and answers like David suggested can be a nice thing, This site need a daily interaction between the users. The articles are nice, but let the users have a much larger interaction at every hour of the day (forums anyone?).}
Love this site. The articles often inspire me to pursue my dream of founding a company. A couple points: – I like that you have the full article in RSS. – It’s great to read personal stories. It shows readers that there are other people doing what they (want to) do – RSS feed should include a link to the comments (including the number of comments) at the bottom. I’ve seen this on a few blogs and it does a great job of drawing feed-reader types like me into the conversation.
Thanks for a great site!}