6 ms·

Would love to see a retrospective. Why didn't it succeed? What did you try? Did you say no to early acquisition offers?

msoad 14y ago
This was my first time visiting their website. I'll not sign up for a service when they don't show me what they have. I like StackOverflow because they show their content, they allow you to use their service without signing up. You will signup when you got familiar with the service enough. My rule of thumb is, show user the content, the value and then expect them to sign up. A video or some nice buzz words are not enough.
- rattray 14y ago
  I understand your frustration but I'm not sure it's relevant here. Formspring's issue certainly wasn't lack of signups; they claimed over 30 million.
- eurleif 14y ago
  Formspring does let you see someone's questions and answers without having an account if you go to the profile. I guess they could highlight some accounts on the homepage, but people mostly used it to ask their friends questions, so that wouldn't really reflect the normal use of the service.
- iampims 14y ago
  Yeah, you can check out everybody’s profile without signing up: http://www.formspring.me/pims http://www.formspring.me/pims and you can see every public thread. And until very recently, you could even ask questions without being a registered user to the users who had this feature enabled. The only “private” features you don’t see when not registered are your stream (similar to your Twitter timeline) and your inbox (similar to your FB messages).
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
raverbashing 14y ago
My guess: it was an experiment, with a limited expiry date It's one of those things that, after the initial novelty factor passed, has limited usage. Some have managed to find a use for it (like answering consumer questions for certain brands) but it was limited tool.
revorad 14y ago
It's sad Formspring had to shutdown. But this must be a tough business to be in. They had millions of monthly active users, and yet couldn't pull it off as a business. This is why I find Entertainment vs Productivity to be a much better way of thinking about startups than B2C vs B2B. When you're in the Entertainment business, you're competing with everyone. Getting successful is a lot about staying in vogue for a long long time. And even then, someone well-established like Facebook is constantly threatened by little upstarts like Snapchat and Whatsapp. In the productivity market, you compete a lot more on product (see Evernote, Dropbox). It's not as easy to get early traction, but once you get it, it's a lot more defensible too. Some stats from Formspring's site (2011-2012) - Web Stats: • 365M page views per month • 20M unique global monthly visitors • 4.5M US unique monthly visitors • 28M global registered users • 8.6M US registered users • 3M monthly active users • Avg. 4.5 pages/10 mins. per session • Avg. 8K questions per minute • Avg. 2.5M responses per day • 4B+ responses to date • 60% connected to other social media • Avg. 50+ followers per user Mobile iOS Stats •Nearly 500K downloads •55M page views per month •250K unique monthly visitors •Avg. 12.5 pages per app session •Avg. 1 hour+ per app session Site Stats & Demographics •54% Female 46% Male (Global) •96% in the 13-34 age group •28M global registered users •4B responses to date •60% connected to other social media •Avg. 30 followers per user http://cdn.formspring.me/images/about/downloads/Formspring-BriefOverview.pdf http://cdn.formspring.me/images/about/downloads/Formspring-B...

msoad 14y ago

This was my first time visiting their website. I'll not sign up for a service when they don't show me what they have. I like StackOverflow because they show their content, they allow you to use their service without signing up. You will signup when you got familiar with the service enough. My rule of thumb is, show user the content, the value and then expect them to sign up. A video or some nice buzz words are not enough.

rattray 14y ago
I understand your frustration but I'm not sure it's relevant here. Formspring's issue certainly wasn't lack of signups; they claimed over 30 million.
eurleif 14y ago
Formspring does let you see someone's questions and answers without having an account if you go to the profile. I guess they could highlight some accounts on the homepage, but people mostly used it to ask their friends questions, so that wouldn't really reflect the normal use of the service.
iampims 14y ago
Yeah, you can check out everybody’s profile without signing up: http://www.formspring.me/pims http://www.formspring.me/pims and you can see every public thread. And until very recently, you could even ask questions without being a registered user to the users who had this feature enabled. The only “private” features you don’t see when not registered are your stream (similar to your Twitter timeline) and your inbox (similar to your FB messages).
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

raverbashing 14y ago

My guess: it was an experiment, with a limited expiry date It's one of those things that, after the initial novelty factor passed, has limited usage. Some have managed to find a use for it (like answering consumer questions for certain brands) but it was limited tool.

revorad 14y ago

It's sad Formspring had to shutdown. But this must be a tough business to be in. They had millions of monthly active users, and yet couldn't pull it off as a business. This is why I find Entertainment vs Productivity to be a much better way of thinking about startups than B2C vs B2B. When you're in the Entertainment business, you're competing with everyone. Getting successful is a lot about staying in vogue for a long long time. And even then, someone well-established like Facebook is constantly threatened by little upstarts like Snapchat and Whatsapp. In the productivity market, you compete a lot more on product (see Evernote, Dropbox). It's not as easy to get early traction, but once you get it, it's a lot more defensible too. Some stats from Formspring's site (2011-2012) - Web Stats: • 365M page views per month • 20M unique global monthly visitors • 4.5M US unique monthly visitors • 28M global registered users • 8.6M US registered users • 3M monthly active users • Avg. 4.5 pages/10 mins. per session • Avg. 8K questions per minute • Avg. 2.5M responses per day • 4B+ responses to date • 60% connected to other social media • Avg. 50+ followers per user Mobile iOS Stats •Nearly 500K downloads •55M page views per month •250K unique monthly visitors •Avg. 12.5 pages per app session •Avg. 1 hour+ per app session Site Stats & Demographics •54% Female 46% Male (Global) •96% in the 13-34 age group •28M global registered users •4B responses to date •60% connected to other social media •Avg. 30 followers per user http://cdn.formspring.me/images/about/downloads/Formspring-BriefOverview.pdf http://cdn.formspring.me/images/about/downloads/Formspring-B...