The crowdfunding campaign for rich text formatting in shrib.com is over. It is about 99% off target. Below target, that is. And I am thrilled. «What!?» I hear you say.
In recent months, the feature requests for shrib.com have skyrocketed. In part, because I had enabled a feedback form on almost every visit. There was that little megaphone in the bottom left corner, remember?
Some of the feature requests are pretty easy to implement (like printing) or deemed a useful fit for shrib.com (like read-only pages). However, there are others that are either way more complex than useful, or they are useful but very complex.
Once I had implemented all «simple enough» most popular features, the next one in the line ended up being a pretty complex one: rich text formatting.
People kept voting it up, others added more requests that were basically the same («Change fonts», «add colors to text», etc.).
Then I thought I should test how serious those requests are. Why not start a crowdfunding campaign for it!
In a crowdfunding campaign, one effect is to raise money. Another one is to see how serious fans are about their enthusiasm for a product (or a feature).
As it turns out, over the period of almost two months, 8 people made pledges – out of hundreds of thousands of shrib.com sessions, and out of tens of explicit voters for the feature request!
That is a very clear result. I am glad I did not blindly invest several weeks to implement and optimize and test this complex new feature!
[UPDATE: article updated after the end of the campaign]
I am glad too. This is not really necessary to exchange thoughts in writing. It might be convenient, but so are fast loading times and a simple and uncluttered interface.
Yep. What can I say…