Comment to 'Community and the New Blog'
Comment to Community and the New Blog

  • Andrew, I'm very appreciate your work, but, with all due respect, the only thing I can tell you here: do not touch the pavlova before you finish your goulash. Make, please, your main product working stable in old, ancient, broken world meanings : bugles, intuitive, convenient. simple end efficient. After that - make ever experiment you want, I'll be your most involved tester there, with all passion I can offer. But, please, don't turn your product to experiment playground, we want to use it, to get social, political and money profit on it and now we can't because of endless experiments. There is always something "different and revolutionary" half-baked thing: strange and useless native app in D7, strange approach to privacy in UNA, three different timelines and multiprofile - for what??? You working so hard to crystallize new vision, maybe it not so bad idea to make something working just like others do : FB, OK, VK, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Insta? Just working stable and simple - all we ask.

    It takes me a lot of time to understand (and i still don't) why I can't see in Timeline my friend's posts, like in ALL TIMELINES IN THE WORLD and instead  I need to go to my OTHER timeline in profile to get friends and subscriptions. I can not understand what revolutionary is in Albums without option to add single photo, what the point to have standalone Photo module without ability to make an Album. What exactly I have to tell to my users on question  "what is secret purpose of the groups - w/out albums, blogs, polls?" How exactly would showing out the members list of closed group make our user's world different (except cultivating jealousy, of course)? I can't even imagine why one can't invite to group THE LIST of users and have to do it ONE BY ONE (try to invite 37 mmbrs to your event here and try to do it in FB just to understand the difference). I was shocked when have face the fact that group/event inventor have to join it! and then to make himself an administrator! - are that things not obvious? And why do not to plan it well from first time? Why multiply pic uploaded - is the thing we have to claim? Who decide to NOT put it there? And I don't ask why: I pretty sure - because of being busy on the new revolutionary thing.

    The true revolution is about to make world better, means: more safe, more simple, more convenient, more efficient. My impression is you trying to ensure me that it's very revolutionary to drive on square wheels.

    No offence, please, I'm talking to you from the bottom of my heart. I'm trying to get enjoy of your product almost 5 years, And I can't. Because of endless experiments.

    • Thank you for this comment. Indeed, it may be very very confusing to take UNA in "stock" variant and work with it as if it's a conventional social network. The whole idea of it is that you can build a network like Twitter or like Quora or like reddit or like Facebook, and in order to have those capabilities that "default" setup has to be rather generic. Once you go through all the implementation stages you can get a conventional experience, but it can be quite frustrating if you have to learn and do all of it by yourself. You see, UNA is a platform, not a solution. 

      So, in order to address that issue we are now making the first "solution", which is focused on a generic "social network" setup, like Facebook. We are basically just pre-configuring UNA to already have the right combination of modules and settings to work like you would expect a typical social networking website to work. This is an ongoing process and we hope to be able to present it in a few weeks. 

      Next we will build more solutions - for LMS, business networking/customer community, team collaboration, etc. They all require different combinations of settings and apps. 

      As for experimenting, what you see is perhaps 5% of our time going into exploration of "new" ideas. Most of the day is spent on improving current features and working with clients directly, configuring live sites (which is also helping the system evolution). 

      It is very important to keep trying and experimenting with new approaches. This is the only way we can give you the tools that will make your projects stand-out. Some of the experiments are done in attempt to solve the ongoing pain-points that simply don't have conventional solutions.  

       

       

      • It sounds very nice, Andrew, indeed. And it definitely make sense. In eyes of  Boonex/UNA newcomer.

        Less on me,  I'm close to 5 yrs here. And I KNOW that there is ALWAYS something unexpactable, something smaaaaaal that makes everything unusable.

        "We are basically just pre-configuring UNA to already have the right combination of modules and settings to work like you would expect a typical social networking website to work." - you tell?

        Nice. 

        But look at reality

        1. WHO decide that in close groups list of members HAVE TO BE OPEN TO ALL WITHOUT OPTION TO HIDE IT? It wasn't in D7, it isn't in FB , so  where is promised "to work like you would expect a typical social networking website". I begging Alex not to do it, I'm feel ashamed when I trying to explain  it to my customers but I have no words for it!!! there are no words in no one of 5 languages i speak to explain this stupid thing. 

        2. You make half-baked Albums and half-baked Photos... for what??? make one good working module - it IS what you call "to work like you would expect a typical social networking website", so where it in UNA? in this very "solution"? It suppose to be here, because in ALL social networks it is.

        3. You talking about new approach to networking and in fact you are pushing people out. NOBODY WANTS TO JUMP BETWEEN  T-H-R-E-E   T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E-S!!!! Why? Why? Why you can not integrate In Outline My Friends an My Subscriptions?  It done already in FB, in OK, in BK if you talking about "to work like you would expect a typical social networking website", why you struggle with it? Customers just looking on  site and going back to FB, because they see UNA as unclear, inconvenient, stupid engine.

        And of coarse, we can not change it - nobody can change this small list of disappointing things, and I ensure you, there are more. And I'm not talking about round avatar or square, do mandatory location or not , html_purifier filter or embed.ly - this can be finished by neat and attentive admin. I'm talking about principal things, which you leave unfinished, inconvenient, non-logical. Can you answer - why? No, your previous answer can't be count, because UNA now - is the opposite of "to work like you would expect a typical social networking website to work". Maybe in few weeks we finally could see one good known Timeline with all our user BASIC needs? privacy of gorup's members going to be changed?  one photo upload will not starting with open a new album any more? we can expect it finally here? I would be glad to hear one simple Yes. But can you say it?