Pillowfort!

[alias_sqbr]

I joined the latest beta round of the social media site Pillowfort. So I made sqbr and joined some communities. It's nice enough, very quiet.

Structure-wise it's a sort of mix of dreamwidth/lj and tumblr: posts have a comment section, but can also be reblogged if marked rebloggable. Communities also have chat posts in a sidebar organised by "most recently commented on". Making posts is very tumblr-ish, including in-built image hosting (that crashed when I tried to use it :/)

Also: it seems like you have to write your posts in rich text D:

The "friendslock" feature is weird, unless I'm misunderstanding it: the only option is to show posts only to people who follow you, rather than only people you follow. That seems open to abuse.

You can turn on reblogs, comments, and "nsfw" on a post by post basis which is nice.

Most of the communities I joined haven't had any posts in months, or have one dedicated poster doggedly talking about their OCs to the void.

There's an in-built tag blacklist function. To test it out I added a tag on the top post of my feed and the post vanished entirely, which I don't like. I much prefer xKit's "a post has been blocked for containing X tag" approach, that way I can decide if I want to check it out based on my mood, who posted it, the other tags, etc.

It's a little slow, but it did just get an influx of new users and is still in beta.

Based on the most popular communities, the people there skew fannish, creative, and queer, which is no bad thing.

They got their initial costs paid for by an indiegogo compaign but I can't see any way for them to make money long term, unless they're planning on adding paid accounts/ads later.

Overall I see them going the same way as imzy and soup: a nice idea that won't take off. But we'll see.

Comments

[winterbird]

Yeah, I got an email saying they were rolling out invites, but then got no invite, so I think the beta invites are also very staggered as well.

I'd like it to work out, but I also can't see an exodus happening from over Tumblr or something, unless Pillowfort allows a Tumblr x-posting option the same way that Dreamwidth does? And even then, DW is still very quiet (though I love you Dreamwidth).

I'll keep my fingers crossed that they fix the image hosting! That seems like a pretty big thing to not be working!

[alias_sqbr]

It seems to be working in general, I've seen plenty of other people post pictures. I was just unlucky.

[zulu]

I'm interested in registering--how does one get an invite?

[alias_sqbr]

HMM. So there's a "want to register?" link on the main page but it seems to be broken! That's not good /o\

Anyway, when that link isn't broken, you sign up for the next beta round there.

[alias_sqbr]

I sent a bug report, I'll let you know if they get back to me with a working link!

[zulu]

I noticed that link was broken! Maybe I just missed the beta. But thank you for checking into it for me.

[alias_sqbr]

That's cool! If they open another round of beta I'll make a post.

[sanguinity]

I got my invite this round, too! You did a much more thorough job of exploring than I did (thank you for the write-up of your discoveries!), but my general impressions/questions were similar: so, sooooo quiet (a quiet it can grow from, or one that fails to capture people's attention?) and where is the money to keep the lights on going to come from?

[aris_tgd]

I also have an invite this round--I haven't registered yet but it seems likely I'll be aris_tgd over there as well.

[alias_sqbr]

See you over there :)

[alias_sqbr]

I'm glad it was helpful! I asked about the money in the "ask the staff" post, but no reply as yet.

[sanguinity]

grrlpup heard from somewhere that we're the last free round of beta invites; that hereafter the invite rounds will be associated with funding somehow? If that's true (and I might have it garbled), it explains where money will come from, but it leaves me wondering where users will come from.

Of course, the odds are high that I've got it garbled... :-/

[alias_sqbr]

I have heard multiple theories, it seems like garbled is the only sort of information we have :/

[wolfpurplemoon]

I got an invite during a previous round and ended up deleting my account after I got more in to Writscrib - which has all the community features and some sort of plan for financing it all, but I'm not sure how much longevity any of these newer sites have really!

[alias_sqbr]

I'm looking at Writscrib and I can't remember why I didn't join it already myself. I think I shall!

But yes, only time will tell which if any of these sites will last long term.

[havocthecat]

I have also joined Writscrib!

I namesquat in all the fandom places because there's a rabid rightwinger who also uses havocthecat, I am not even kidding, and I don't want them starting to move into my fandom spaces too.

[alias_sqbr]

OH NO. Luckily the only other sqbr I've encountered seemed benign, and seemed to never post in English.

[torachan]

I just have a vague impression of them seeming wanky when getting it going but I'm too lazy to dememe to see exactly what the issue was. (It's possible it was just meme wanking about how twee the name is, but I feel like there was more to it than that.)

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah I vaguely recall that too. I guess we'll see!

[havocthecat]

I got an invite code and thought I had plenty of time to make an account, because I haven't been online much. Life has been busy. But. Uh. I'm not paying for an account when I'm not sure I'll use it a lot.

[alias_sqbr]

For what it's worth I think you don't have to pay if you have an invite code.

[havocthecat]

For a bit, I thought account creation had been turned off even with an invite code. Then I tried it and discovered I could create an account.

Now, of course, I'm in that phase of "...and how do I find people again?" Which ends up being me posting to other places and figuring it out, I guess.

I hope they figure out a way to make it work, but I'm a little dubious thus far.

[alias_sqbr]

Same :/