Thanks for the Memories!
To those of you who supported the CrowdAbout experiment: THANK YOU! With your help, we were able to vett a great technology, and learn from a phenomenal base of users just how our technology could best be put to use. Your feedback and critiques were all brilliant, and the Social Media Player that has emerged is stronger as a result.
However, keeping the site live did not make sense from an economic or strategic standpoint. As the parent company, Intrascopic Media Inc., considered what we had learned from our experiences and what the real value in our work continues to be, it was decided that killing the site made sense for the long run. Why?
It turns out that podcasters, the original target market for our Social Media Player, already had their hands full in managing to turn out their shows on a regular basis. Being involved in audio and video production ourselves, it’s a reality we understand intimately: good content takes a real commitment of time and energy. So while everyone thought we had a cool service, with people like Adam Curry, Leo LaPorte and Twit.tv taking an early interest, and John Havens, Mark Blevis and Chris Brogan hip to the idea, in the end, it was a layer of complexity and brand management that turned out to be too much for busy podcasters.
But that was okay, because while we remained focused on podcasters, another market began to find us, and really USE our social Media Player technology: educators.
From the moment we opened the doors to our site, we saw the potential of an educational tool, and evidently educators at all levels agreed with that assessment. During the 18 months or so that the site was live, we had literally hundreds of educators tell us how, with a few tweaks of the application, they could use the site to stimulate learning in a fun, interactive and participatory environment. The Social Media Player technology continues to have huge implications in distance learning.
So this brings us to the “why” of our decision to shut the site down.
Our podcasting friends were not using the application as rabidly as we hoped, due to the management overhead it implied. Our educator friends were telling us the site needed modifications to be fit for educational access restrictions. So rather than let the site languish, we chambered a round, drew a bead, and pulled the trigger on Crowdabout.us.
Will the educational version of our technology ever hit the streets? Good question. We hope to one day explore that market. But in order to really enter it with the long haul in mind, we would need some funding.
Would we consider selling the technology? Honestly, it’s always been a possibility, and while the phone isn’t ringing off the hook, we have had a few conversations along those lines.
So we want to thank you. Thank you for using our service, for embracing us as thought leaders in the emerging social media playground that the web is quickly becoming. And although our site now sleeps, we do not look upon this grand experiment as a failure. Not at all. Rather, the lessons it taught us, the experiences and relationships it fostered, and the foreward momentum it provided continue to etch themselves into the fabric of our lives. We have been truly blessed to have shaped the world’s conversations and communities, if only in a small way.
Best to all,
Carter Harkins
Daniel Nelson
The Team at CrowdAbout