9 ms·

Zurb Acquires Forrst

109 points by ojr 14y ago

codegeek 14y ago
Cool. As an alternative to Bootstrap, I really like the foundation framework (being a non-designer)
bluetidepro 14y ago
Wait, I thought Forrst was bought out by Colourlovers back in March[1]? [1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/26/design-community-colourlovers-acquires-forrst/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/26/design-community-colourlove...
- kylebragger 14y ago
  It was. It was sold to Zurb by CL.
  - bluetidepro 14y ago
    Oh, okay. I guess it was just confusing to me since they didn't mention CL at all in the post. Any known reason why they didn't mention CL? Seems interesting that CL didn't really seem to do much with Forrst since they acquired it in March.
  - lominming 14y ago
    No wonder I was confused. I wonder whether they are really buying the team or the community. It seems that there are less activities going on at Forrst these days.
- dariusmonsef 14y ago
  FYI We acquired Forrst because we're community people and we saw a great opportunity to help Forrst grow as a place for creatives to get better at their craft / share information. With COLOURlovers we have have a thriving community for creative inspiration and we recently launched CreativeMarket.com as a place closer to the execution side of projects. Forrst played well as a opportunity to connect with users along the spectrum. What we noticed though was that with all our attention on the successful launch of Creative Market, we weren't finding the time to really devote to Forrst to make it great. And being respectful to quality communities, we thought the best thing to do for it would be to find a home for it that could dedicated those resources. We've known ZURB for several years and had partnered with them on a creative project before. We reached out, had a conversation and mutually saw an great opportunity for them to grow the Forrst community.
  - bluetidepro 14y ago
    Thank you for the response and explanation, Darius! That makes a lot more sense on the sale now!
clappydingo 14y ago
[Posting under a throwaway account] I used to be a diehard Forrst user. It was an awesome community--a core site that I contributed to and drew from everyday. Then, last March, they sold to Colourlovers...and everything went to hell. The quality of the posts went way down. Feedback went down. Comments became vehicles for spam. Community standards were no longer enforced. Forrst right now is a wasteland compared to what it was a year ago. What ZURB is buying is not what Colourlovers bought.
- codegeek 14y ago
  May be Zurb can get it back to what it was ?
  - kylebragger 14y ago
    That's my hope.
    - crisnoble 14y ago
      Kyle, do you still have any day to day involvement since selling to CL? I am grateful for the community you built up and hope that ZURB can help bring it back up to snuff.
    - kylebragger 14y ago
      > Kyle, do you still have any day to day involvement since selling to CL? I am grateful for the community you built up and hope that ZURB can bring it back up to snuff. I left mid-summer, so not presently, no. Appreciate that, and I'm hopeful that it's in good hands with Zurb.
    - eps 14y ago
      Have you at all considered relaunching it under a different name? There must be things that you would've done differently now, with all the experience you got from running Forrst.
    - patricklz 14y ago
      Mine to, people need to stop lamenting and work on their post and replies.
gourneau 14y ago
I didn't realize ZURB had so much cash.
- bluetidepro 14y ago
  I didn't see any mention about the price they bought it for, and based on the recent downfall Forrst has had with users, it could have been pretty cheap for all we know.
  - holgersindbaek 14y ago
    Would be interested in hearing this as well. Any guesses?
    - t1 14y ago
      100,000 first sale, 50,000 second sale. So wait CL lost money? No, they bought the property to try to convert as many Forrst users to CreativeMarket vendors/buyers and probably succeeded to some extent.
- crisnoble 14y ago
  They have several tools for sale, http://zurb.com/apps http://zurb.com/apps, all of which seem to be very mature and [presumably] quite profitable.
  - Kerrick 14y ago
    Not to mention, they are still a web shop with clients.
mnicole 14y ago
ZURB is fantastic, and I really hope they follow through on their intentions for the service as listed in the blog post. Like other commenters here, I couldn't justify spending time on Forrst vs. Dribbble + StackOverflow because the quality just wasn't there. While there's definitely great content to be found, the current layout isn't conducive to finding it quickly, and you run into enough bad design and code during that process that you're turned off (although it does make you feel better about your own work!). It's faster to just close the tab and look elsewhere than hope you find the diamonds in the rough. If they want to be a 'relaxed' platform for criticism (which I have been looking for, and would even pay for if the community and incentives were top-notch), I would highly recommend that the "like" button has an opposing "dislike" ability and force the user to give feedback through highlighting areas of the code or image like many existing tools, browser extensions and services like LayerVault already offer. Why do people like it? Why do people not like it? A "like", even on Dribbble, means nothing to me. I want to know specifically what I can improve upon.
depoll 14y ago
Ermagerd! Zurb aquers Ferrst!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
car54whereareu 14y ago
Rrst! Could this spell the end of Forrst?
justhw 14y ago
Anyone from zurb reading, please put a direct link to your home page. There is no link to your home page in your blog. First time readers need to know what you do without a hassle. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4146888 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4146888
faramarz 14y ago
I have an overly simplified answer as to why Forrst is getting passed around like this. ..and that is; It took me two long years to wait and finally earn an invite to Dribbble. Signing up for Forrst was just a matter of clicking a link that was submitted on HN. Interpret that how you want, but that simple paragraph reveals how and why you should strive to build and foster a community, not just push out MVP's, see if it bites, close shop and/or sell for cash. That's counter intuitive to creating value.
- mnicole 14y ago
  Dribbble suffers from this same problem too though, as evidenced by the somewhat depressing "Everyone" feed. It's more about who you know (or follow) rather than how talented you actually are. A lot of people just invite friends, co-workers or random people that get picked from a hat. There are "Get your invites!" contests every day that don't require anything but a reply, a retweet, a link to the inviter's website. There's no way to reprimand players who [consistently] invite poor designers or people that don't post (likewise, there's no way for those of us who have invited people who don't use their invite to revoke it), or compensate those who have added valuable contributors. I wish there was a feature like StackExchange's bounty where you receive praise, a Pro account or additional invites for onboarding someone prolific in their field or just someone that does fantastic work but hasn't really surfaced in the community yet. Personally I'd love to see more dev/designer hybrids and ways to find those people (or use the bounty feature to promote people inviting the types of users the site is lacking). Right now there's the ability to add skill tags, but those have little to do with what my actual roles are within the organizations I work for. Being able to search by "product" or "motion" or "type" designers would help me find users to follow a lot more than just hoping I come across them through other means. Then we get into their follow cap, which.. I won't even go there.
jpkeisala 14y ago
Forrst used to have good Podcast I wonder what happen to that?

109 points by ojr 14y ago

Cool. As an alternative to Bootstrap, I really like the foundation framework (being a non-designer)

Wait, I thought Forrst was bought out by Colourlovers back in March[1]? [1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/26/design-community-colourlovers-acquires-forrst/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/26/design-community-colourlove...

kylebragger 14y ago
It was. It was sold to Zurb by CL.
- bluetidepro 14y ago
  Oh, okay. I guess it was just confusing to me since they didn't mention CL at all in the post. Any known reason why they didn't mention CL? Seems interesting that CL didn't really seem to do much with Forrst since they acquired it in March.
- lominming 14y ago
  No wonder I was confused. I wonder whether they are really buying the team or the community. It seems that there are less activities going on at Forrst these days.
dariusmonsef 14y ago
FYI We acquired Forrst because we're community people and we saw a great opportunity to help Forrst grow as a place for creatives to get better at their craft / share information. With COLOURlovers we have have a thriving community for creative inspiration and we recently launched CreativeMarket.com as a place closer to the execution side of projects. Forrst played well as a opportunity to connect with users along the spectrum. What we noticed though was that with all our attention on the successful launch of Creative Market, we weren't finding the time to really devote to Forrst to make it great. And being respectful to quality communities, we thought the best thing to do for it would be to find a home for it that could dedicated those resources. We've known ZURB for several years and had partnered with them on a creative project before. We reached out, had a conversation and mutually saw an great opportunity for them to grow the Forrst community.
- bluetidepro 14y ago
  Thank you for the response and explanation, Darius! That makes a lot more sense on the sale now!

clappydingo 14y ago

[Posting under a throwaway account] I used to be a diehard Forrst user. It was an awesome community--a core site that I contributed to and drew from everyday. Then, last March, they sold to Colourlovers...and everything went to hell. The quality of the posts went way down. Feedback went down. Comments became vehicles for spam. Community standards were no longer enforced. Forrst right now is a wasteland compared to what it was a year ago. What ZURB is buying is not what Colourlovers bought.

codegeek 14y ago
May be Zurb can get it back to what it was ?
- kylebragger 14y ago
  That's my hope.
  - crisnoble 14y ago
    Kyle, do you still have any day to day involvement since selling to CL? I am grateful for the community you built up and hope that ZURB can help bring it back up to snuff.
  - kylebragger 14y ago
    > Kyle, do you still have any day to day involvement since selling to CL? I am grateful for the community you built up and hope that ZURB can bring it back up to snuff. I left mid-summer, so not presently, no. Appreciate that, and I'm hopeful that it's in good hands with Zurb.
  - eps 14y ago
    Have you at all considered relaunching it under a different name? There must be things that you would've done differently now, with all the experience you got from running Forrst.
  - patricklz 14y ago
    Mine to, people need to stop lamenting and work on their post and replies.

gourneau 14y ago

I didn't realize ZURB had so much cash.

bluetidepro 14y ago
I didn't see any mention about the price they bought it for, and based on the recent downfall Forrst has had with users, it could have been pretty cheap for all we know.
- holgersindbaek 14y ago
  Would be interested in hearing this as well. Any guesses?
  - t1 14y ago
    100,000 first sale, 50,000 second sale. So wait CL lost money? No, they bought the property to try to convert as many Forrst users to CreativeMarket vendors/buyers and probably succeeded to some extent.
crisnoble 14y ago
They have several tools for sale, http://zurb.com/apps http://zurb.com/apps, all of which seem to be very mature and [presumably] quite profitable.
- Kerrick 14y ago
  Not to mention, they are still a web shop with clients.

mnicole 14y ago

ZURB is fantastic, and I really hope they follow through on their intentions for the service as listed in the blog post. Like other commenters here, I couldn't justify spending time on Forrst vs. Dribbble + StackOverflow because the quality just wasn't there. While there's definitely great content to be found, the current layout isn't conducive to finding it quickly, and you run into enough bad design and code during that process that you're turned off (although it does make you feel better about your own work!). It's faster to just close the tab and look elsewhere than hope you find the diamonds in the rough. If they want to be a 'relaxed' platform for criticism (which I have been looking for, and would even pay for if the community and incentives were top-notch), I would highly recommend that the "like" button has an opposing "dislike" ability and force the user to give feedback through highlighting areas of the code or image like many existing tools, browser extensions and services like LayerVault already offer. Why do people like it? Why do people not like it? A "like", even on Dribbble, means nothing to me. I want to know specifically what I can improve upon.

depoll 14y ago

Ermagerd! Zurb aquers Ferrst!

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

car54whereareu 14y ago

Rrst! Could this spell the end of Forrst?

justhw 14y ago

Anyone from zurb reading, please put a direct link to your home page. There is no link to your home page in your blog. First time readers need to know what you do without a hassle. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4146888 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4146888

faramarz 14y ago

I have an overly simplified answer as to why Forrst is getting passed around like this. ..and that is; It took me two long years to wait and finally earn an invite to Dribbble. Signing up for Forrst was just a matter of clicking a link that was submitted on HN. Interpret that how you want, but that simple paragraph reveals how and why you should strive to build and foster a community, not just push out MVP's, see if it bites, close shop and/or sell for cash. That's counter intuitive to creating value.

mnicole 14y ago
Dribbble suffers from this same problem too though, as evidenced by the somewhat depressing "Everyone" feed. It's more about who you know (or follow) rather than how talented you actually are. A lot of people just invite friends, co-workers or random people that get picked from a hat. There are "Get your invites!" contests every day that don't require anything but a reply, a retweet, a link to the inviter's website. There's no way to reprimand players who [consistently] invite poor designers or people that don't post (likewise, there's no way for those of us who have invited people who don't use their invite to revoke it), or compensate those who have added valuable contributors. I wish there was a feature like StackExchange's bounty where you receive praise, a Pro account or additional invites for onboarding someone prolific in their field or just someone that does fantastic work but hasn't really surfaced in the community yet. Personally I'd love to see more dev/designer hybrids and ways to find those people (or use the bounty feature to promote people inviting the types of users the site is lacking). Right now there's the ability to add skill tags, but those have little to do with what my actual roles are within the organizations I work for. Being able to search by "product" or "motion" or "type" designers would help me find users to follow a lot more than just hoping I come across them through other means. Then we get into their follow cap, which.. I won't even go there.

jpkeisala 14y ago

Forrst used to have good Podcast I wonder what happen to that?