It seems like you've identified a problem that Hubski hasn't grown much in its 10 year lifespan. My experience is that there is never enough content (posts & comments) on the site each day. I'm not sure how showing users even less content (comments from new users) is supposed to address this. The digital marketing growth hacker types like to image a funnel that tracks a user in their journey towards a desired endpoint. Some percentage of users drop off or fail to stick around at each level of the funnel. This makes the higher levels of the funnel the most important places to influence behavior, because you have more users to work with. The experiment here seems to be fiddling with the Retention of users who have already found hubski and registered an account in the Acquisition and Activation levels. I have no insight into this site's actual traffic numbers or how many new visitors check it out, but that is where the focus should be to grow this community. More potential friends need to be browsing the front page so they can be compelled to register some day. It's hard to see names that we know and recognize leave the site, but attrition is natural. Without a consistent source of new members, this site will inevitably shrink into a devoted core. At that point there probably isn't critical mass to keep a site like this alive, and the remaining few will probably transition to a group chat or other private discussion to keep in touch. I love this site because of the serendipitous nature of the content and people here. Without that new energy, I may as well just subscribe to the kleinbl00 newsletter and move on.
I think you’re right. This is not a problem atm. With the exception of maybe #pubski I never have a situation where I am annoyed by the number of comments I have to weed through to get to someone I “follow.” mk, if I’m 100% honest I think the biggest problem with Hubski is that it lacks new users and new comments. We used to spend the time we now spend on other pursuits encouraging others to come to Hubski. Insane amounts of my time were put towards new users and retaining those that came. We don’t have that now. That, imo, is the biggest deficit. I don’t mean just any old person.. but many of the familiar faces here came from links that myself and others would drop on other sites to get them to kick the tires. I don’t think it’s even worth implementing new functions such as this without also actively attempting to court new users. I, like you, have no intention of ever monetizing Hubski and I love it here so fucking much. But it would benefit from some new users. Not thousands, not even hundreds but 5 new, active (Not lurkers) users a month. Seriously. The site functions well. It needs people and new opinions. New functions won’t give the site energy. People will.
You make a joke of it but there's truth lurking there - what's the impetus for engaging with the site? I just checked. I'm 7 of the last 30 posts that I can see and I've been busy this week. What do I get from sharing? What risks do I run? Why post shit here rather than Facebook? Why post shit here rather than Medium? Why post shit here rather than Reddit? I post here because there is a core group of people whose opinions I'm curious about. I presume that core group will attract like-minded people. It's not really anymore, it did occasionally. And I think that's key: if you get into a fight here, it's with someone whose opinion you care about a whole lot more than someone on Reddit. The engagement is a great deal higher even as the activity is much lower.
With basically all other websites I don't feel like starting a new account would mean all that much. Maybe annoying to have to manually follow people, but that's it. With hubski I feel like it would mean something.
I dont think we’ve interacted much but I think I remember when you first joined the site.. apparently in the same year that I did. Good to see ya around!
It's partly a problem of bringing in enough new blood. For a few years, we did. However, the interactions/discussions on the site have evolved over time. Retention is an issue. New and old users find a different site today than they did last time we had this level of activity. I have experienced, and I have been told by many, that comment threads are tiring now. They often cause regret. Showing less comments might make the situation worse, but I am ok with taking that risk given the current trajectory.