Tabulas 2.0 was a failure
I've been unable to sleep due to the implications of changing Tabulas 2.0. If you told me a week ago the mental wreck I'd be cause of Tabulas, I'd have laughed it off as unlikely. Oh, how the fates love to play with me.
I concluded (at roughly 4:58 AM EST) that Tabulas 2.0 was a failure.
That's not to say the changes that were made to Tabulas are bad. I use the term 'failure' to denote missed goals and my failure to support the minority of users who were inconvenienced. This should not be misconstrued as me feeling sorry for myself; I'm not. This whole project is one huge learning experience, and I'm gaining much more out of it sometimes that I feel I should be ... I am learning at your expense. So don't feel sorry for me! Don't feel guilty about what you've said or how you feel about the service. As emotionally tied to this project as I am, I am fully aware of how much I open myself to criticism and I'm ready to take it when necessary.
It's clear with social experiments of this magnitude that the lack of clear right and wrong makes each decision highly contestable. Running Tabulas, I have to balance out what I feel the rights people are obligated to have with the technological and economic limitations of this service. I have the responsibility to make sure that each action I take for this site is for the benefit of all users whenever possible.
In my eyes, the 2.0 was a failure for the following reasons:
- It did not provide an adequate transitional period. This was largely spurred by a financial problem more than anything. I've been rushed to push out the 2.0 release before I felt it was ready to meet a deadline.
- The featureset has actually shrunken rather than expanded. Although many features have been added, more people have noticed the features that were taken away ... simply because they have gotten used to those features and expect those. I expect as more people explore the UI, they'll be happy with the new features I've added. However, each release should not be removing features at all! I'm not sure why I pushed 2.0 out of the gate so quickly; a few more days to finalize some of the other features (communities, making sure each HTML template includes all relevant tags) would of been at least ten-fold better than what I did.
- I forgot the primary reasons why people use Tabulas. I never ran a metrics program to track usage in the old Tabulas because I thought I could generalize each user. Boy, was I wrong. I didn't know such a high emphasis was placed on the styling of each template ... I've been tracking users through the control panels for the past few days (seeing what features they use, etc.) and styling is the biggest feature. So maybe this goes back human nature; everyone wants to try to be unique. But it's funny to me because the biggest feature (the color selector) is still quite limited in its features ... yet people still feel like using these pre-selected options is making their journals more unique. Weird. I managed to isolate the user-base which made Tabulas popular, and this is why I failed.
I guess this is part of the evolution of Tabulas; I need to move away from the people who favor styling so much. The real people who will pay are those who truly have something interesting to say or show; those people will benefit the most from 2.0. So perhaps I'm making the right move by isolating a certain demographic of user.
I will make no secrets that I'm trying to make this more businesslike. That doesn't mean it's going to grow any less personal ... but in the end, I need the $$$ to maintain and expand this server.
A few days ago, I wrote a long poker entry about one hand where I won a large pot. I used that to finance the Xanga crossposting feature ... the first bit of Tabulas code that wasn't written by me. Do you have any idea how felt it good just to be able to get someone else to write the code? All I had to do was look over the code, get used to it, then link it into the main system. I want to do this more... I want to focus more on the general strategy of Tabulas and finance the drone work to programmers elsewhere. That is my goal.
I'm trying to shift the demographic of Tabulas to a more wallet-friendly demographic. That's not to say I don't value the existing demographic ... but I truly believe that 2.0 is a good first step in accomodating users who can pay. And if that isn't a good thing, what is?
Comment with Facebook
Want to comment with Tabulas?. Please login.
taris
<i>This whole project is one huge learning experience, and I'm gaining much more out of it sometimes that I feel I should be</i>
I wish I could have made something as clever as Tabulas =) Maybe some of the users think it's like livejournal or some other service that is run by people. And not everyone gets to read the tabulas journal or this so they don't really know what's going on.
2.0 isn't a failure =) It's just a new version that users would get used to.
Tallullah
Yes, there were things that could have been handled differently, but that is a learning process. As you have stated before, you are only one person doing the job of many, so it is understandable that you would not be able to anticipate every possible reaction, or every possible step in the change process.
This is a service and as such there are some things to consider: did you lose users (paid/free)? If any left, did they do so as a direct result of the changes? Are you able to work through the problems and come to amenable solutions? Most importantly, will this new version of Tabulas be more lucrative for you? It would be sweet if you could just make stuff like this and never have to worry about paying the bills. Unless you win a lottery, this project ultimately needs to be able to generate an income for you.
Keep in mind, you will never please everyone, no matter how hard you try. You handled the whole matter very well in spite of the complaints and frustrations. You were professional, helpful, and kept things under control. No, I don't see any failure in any of this.
bella_azzurri
Though I depended on the simplistic features of the templates and colour schemes of the previous one, thanks to the change I'm slowly dealing with CSS and manually messing with the styles/colours/templates. I'm actually <i>learning</i>. :)
bert
these are followed by the early majority, late majority, and laggards.
the early majority sits on the sidelines for a bit after release.. looks at it and waits for reccommendations from teh early adopters before leaping in. roughly 10-15% of your pop.
late majority is the lion's share of the pop. something like 50-60%. what does this tell you? yup.. majority of people dislike change. You can convert them with a quality "overall product."
laggards.. well. you can't help all people =P
anyway.. i think you'll find your community seperated pretty much as this. With your paid users being much more understanding or openminded with change, while your free users falling more under the late majority category. I think you haven't given yourself enough time to properly evaluate if Tab 2.0 is a failure just yet. Give people time to come around. Besides.. you know what it is your community wants. You are selling to those that want a little style but not too much hassle of running their own site. (me? =-p) if they wanted any more artistic control of their blog.. they'd just start one on their own. There's a reason i'm not on blogger.com anymore =P
dodozhang21
dodozhang21
evolution
I wish you success with Tabulas! :-)
Nighthawk
I work at a company where the software is customer driven: they say what we want and we do it. We don't get a lot of artistic liberty, or the ability to create new, innovative stuff. It's all based on need.
Creating software that's "concept driven" allows us to be more creative, to try the unexplored, to be innovative. But that's a hard sell when the customer has their own vision of what the product is. Don't let the initial reaction get to you; eventually, they'll accept and follow along. And you, in turn, will be given the opportunity to listen to the feedback and react accordingly.
You have to decide who you're creating this site for: for you or for them. That's what decides whether this is business or pleasure. And, as far as I'm concerned, programming must always be, in one way or another, pleasure.
PM5K (guest)
It's something I've also learned in the past few months.
I think any time you run a small business inititally the person running the business does everything, in your case you are customer service, billing, advertising, accounting, coding, and more.
You have to realize that for two reasons you have to have other people do some of your work.
The first reason is that you don't want to spend too much of your time doing simple, time consuming tasks that anybody could do instead of doing the more important things that maybe only you can do.
The second reason is that from time to time you find yourself doing things you really aren't qualified to do, all in the name of saving money.
In the end sometimes you have to bite the bullet and pay, say for example an accountant to do your accounting, because afterall you are a lot of things but you aren't an accountant.
Just some thoughts....