Ian (ijhedges)
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5 months ago
in cre8Buzz Re-Do: Ode to the cre8Buzz Departed, on cre8Buzz Blog
Sorry its taken me a while to comment on this, it taken me a while to work out what I wanted to say.
You've asked the question about why active members slow down, I think its a combination of many things. As mentioned above, summer and other family activities will take a hit on blogging time. I don't think the size of the community is directly a problem, it was tight when there were only a couple of hundred users, the growth in the communities has improved this in the communities that have grown.
When I joined Cre8Buzz last August, I already had my own blog and photo gallery and saw Cre8Buzz as a great outlet to promote these. It has been, and I believe it will continue to be. For quite a while I was part of the 'welcome wagon', greeting new members when they joined. I was moderately active adding pictures and posts to my profile. I'd join in the photo assignments and enjoy the challenge it provided. I took pleasure in customising my profile, adding additional sections, even created a test chat room for use by the community. After a while, I realised I was spending the limited blogging time I had trolling for new members and greeting them rather than actually posting content. When I realised this, it made me start to question what my purpose of posting on Cre8Buzz was. Looking at my blog, the posts had almost dried up and I had stopped uploading images to my gallery. What had started as a promotion of my content had over a period of time replaced my content. Chasing the buzzrank became an exercise in uploading images and getting views.
Like Jackal has commented, the frustrations of the reordering of photos has passed the point that I want to use it. The photos assignments are great, and credit to Jackal for driving this uphill battle. Unfortunately, as she said, very few people actually tried to give any critique on photos, there have been some great photographers who have joined Cre8Buzz, but have moved on because it didn't work. The forums have never worked like a normal forum and this should have been picked up at the initial testing/design stage; while acknowledging this problem is great, they still haven't been resolved, still sorting by last view.
I'm hoping after a bit of a break, I'll be able to come back and join in active and motivated again.
Ian
You've asked the question about why active members slow down, I think its a combination of many things. As mentioned above, summer and other family activities will take a hit on blogging time. I don't think the size of the community is directly a problem, it was tight when there were only a couple of hundred users, the growth in the communities has improved this in the communities that have grown.
When I joined Cre8Buzz last August, I already had my own blog and photo gallery and saw Cre8Buzz as a great outlet to promote these. It has been, and I believe it will continue to be. For quite a while I was part of the 'welcome wagon', greeting new members when they joined. I was moderately active adding pictures and posts to my profile. I'd join in the photo assignments and enjoy the challenge it provided. I took pleasure in customising my profile, adding additional sections, even created a test chat room for use by the community. After a while, I realised I was spending the limited blogging time I had trolling for new members and greeting them rather than actually posting content. When I realised this, it made me start to question what my purpose of posting on Cre8Buzz was. Looking at my blog, the posts had almost dried up and I had stopped uploading images to my gallery. What had started as a promotion of my content had over a period of time replaced my content. Chasing the buzzrank became an exercise in uploading images and getting views.
Like Jackal has commented, the frustrations of the reordering of photos has passed the point that I want to use it. The photos assignments are great, and credit to Jackal for driving this uphill battle. Unfortunately, as she said, very few people actually tried to give any critique on photos, there have been some great photographers who have joined Cre8Buzz, but have moved on because it didn't work. The forums have never worked like a normal forum and this should have been picked up at the initial testing/design stage; while acknowledging this problem is great, they still haven't been resolved, still sorting by last view.
I'm hoping after a bit of a break, I'll be able to come back and join in active and motivated again.
Ian
1 reply
great feedback.