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My wife knew about this site, and she tells me that for a long time growth was somewhat hampered by their inability to scale. They had to manually allow users i

My wife knew about this site, and she tells me that for a long time growth was somewhat hampered by their inability to scale. They had to manually allow users into the site in chunks (you email them your info, they email you the following Friday when you can finally post on the boards). He obviously had some hiccups, but he managed them well and learned as he went. That's an admirable quality. I completely agree with patio11's comment about the other half of the population being under-served.

caseyf 17y ago
We had an automated invitation system - the usual, "put in your email, wait a while for the invite" thing. It was true that were only adding a couple hundred people a day during the early days. We weren't ready for more. We were so not prepared for the interest - it's funny to think back on it now. When we hit 5,000 users we were amazed. I think that we had actual performance issues for about a month (maybe a little longer?) when we outgrew our single dedicated server and hobbled along until we built a more permanent home. Luckily, people were very patient and understanding.
- randito 17y ago
  Cool! Thanks for the info. It's nice reading about people's efforts to scale mid-to-large sites. All the press is on how the "giants" (Twitter, Facebook, etc) do it.
petercooper 17y ago
My wife knew about this site, and she tells me that for a long time growth was somewhat hampered by their inability to scale. They had to manually allow users into the site in chunks It wouldn't surprise me if that "whoa, it's so busy that we have to queue to get in" factor actually contributed to its final success. I've seen it before with other apps. The "it's not really a big secret but it sorta is" beta of Stack Overflow was a little like that too. People wanna get into things they "can't" get into.
- kungfooey 17y ago
  Good point, that hadn't occurred to me.

caseyf 17y ago

We had an automated invitation system - the usual, "put in your email, wait a while for the invite" thing. It was true that were only adding a couple hundred people a day during the early days. We weren't ready for more. We were so not prepared for the interest - it's funny to think back on it now. When we hit 5,000 users we were amazed. I think that we had actual performance issues for about a month (maybe a little longer?) when we outgrew our single dedicated server and hobbled along until we built a more permanent home. Luckily, people were very patient and understanding.

randito 17y ago
Cool! Thanks for the info. It's nice reading about people's efforts to scale mid-to-large sites. All the press is on how the "giants" (Twitter, Facebook, etc) do it.

petercooper 17y ago

My wife knew about this site, and she tells me that for a long time growth was somewhat hampered by their inability to scale. They had to manually allow users into the site in chunks It wouldn't surprise me if that "whoa, it's so busy that we have to queue to get in" factor actually contributed to its final success. I've seen it before with other apps. The "it's not really a big secret but it sorta is" beta of Stack Overflow was a little like that too. People wanna get into things they "can't" get into.

kungfooey 17y ago
Good point, that hadn't occurred to me.