Yay. It was an interesting time. It took me a while to get used to the format and I have the upmost respect for you as you make mediating and hosting look so easy.

I'm sure the pownce team's curiousity got the better of them and I'm sure some if not most of them have listened it it.

It was a fun time even though it was dissapointing that Leah counldn't follow through. I would have accepted a "I'm scared you guys are going to rip me a new one" over" I just forgot" because atleast if she was afraid then it wasn't that she just didn't care.

"I'm sure the pownce team's curiosity got the better of them and I'm sure some if not most of them have listened it it. "

Well, if they have, I haven't heard anything about it - good or bad. :-/

It was pretty fun, while I am still kind of miffed at what happened, but we all know how I feel about that.

Here's to hoping we get some kind of response, as well as some participation for the next one. :) I'm open for that day if you'd like to have me back. Just let me know :)

PS - To all listeners, I sound like an idiot (or stoned!). Don't mind me. And next time I'll turn the mic down even more. ;)

i'm 5 minutes into the cast and shit is getting hot!!!!

I've d/led it, but haven't listened to it yet.

so would there be this much frustration if there was no paid accounts and the site was still in beta?

I had a long rant typed up while I was re-listening to the show. Then I realized that you all did a good job explaining the issues. No need for me repeat. One other thing I might ask them, what are they going to do to compensate the Pro users?

Everyone on the show is one of my daily contacts and although I am not as vocal as the other Pro users, I am in the the same state of mind.

I'm a die hard Powncer but it's gotten ridiculous. We have a few hours of decent performance then it goes back to the white pages, 500 errors.

The greatest irony is that the majority of the "Featured Powncers" are non active due to the problems.

!MikeLewis and I have made some pretty scathing posts about the issues on Pownce but it's not out of hate, it's out of frustration.

I expressed myself the only way I know how last night.
http://pownce.com/Down...

word is they will be compensated in some way...i'm pretty sure i read that as a post that came from !dburka he didn't specifically say what but he said they will try to make it right.

Honestly? I don't care if I get compensated for my Pro user status. I got a Pro account because I wanted to monetarily support a service I love in the hopes that money would be used to make it even better. I didn't get it expecting preferential treatment. I'd rather see my fee go towards fixing the site than getting something in return.

Personally, I dont even care so much about the money as I do about the story behind the scenes...
Is Pownce a company or a hobby? If its a hobby then I'm perfectly ok with donating to the club and accepting the ups and downs, etc ... but if its a business, that changes things in my mind.

Synergy

i guess that's why i'm asking about the whole beta thing. maybe they jumped the gun with the public release. if it was still in beta, which more often than not it feels like it is, the community could just chalk it up to beta pains. i know it sucks to go through all this but given the depth and breath of what they are actually trying to accomplish with a skeleton crew i think where they are is very commendable.

There is this idea put out by a few that say. Hey if you aren't paying for the service then you can't bitch about it. You just have to endure it if you want to use it.

I don't believe that is true. I'm sure most of the free users who frequent the site like myself would gladly go pro if the site functioned. I was on my way to going pro right before the white-outs started.

I'd love to support pownce and would gladly do so if they would just let us know whats coming up in the future. The idea that free users have no right to be upset is ridiculous, free users are part of the community too.

If we didn't care about pownce we would have been long gone. We are sticking through it in hopes of getting some answers and a service that functions.

Just to add: if I had the money, and if the site functioned, I would go pro. Right now, feeling how I feel about the whole communication thing, I don't know that I trust my money to go to the right place. Until they turn stuff around, I'm not paying a dime.

I have a right to be upset (as a free user - this Pro account was donated) if a site doesn't work. Period. I'm a part of the community, and I should actually be able to PARTICIPATE. If I can't participate, then there's no point. You'd have a site made up of paid users...who actually pay for a service that "just plain don't work." What's the point of that?

I hope they take this into account, and I hope they start speaking up soon.

Going away now.

PS - Here's a thought...whatever happened to that whole "pownce" user that was supposed to function as something? They sent out a message, we all had it added...was it supposed to be for status updates or something? Just curious what the hell happened to that.

I just want to add that Twitter is free, and people don't seem to have a problem ripping them a new one whenever it's down. Tolerance for something not working directly correlates to the number of people that use it, not how much it costs.

Same here with the Pro account though; I got it to support the c0mmunity, not expect preferential treatment.

i agree with you libby. i'm not saying no one should bitch because the service is free at all. what i'm trying to point out is the magnitude of what this skeleton crew is trying to accomplish. they are attempting to create a scalable site for a large user community, in the process creating open technologies that help any and all web community based services (OAuth, OEmbed), all with two, count'em two, developers on "staff". i give them a semi pass from the technical standpoint but the communication issue has to be addressed immediately. there really is no excuse. it's like showing up to a bus stop or subway and finding out 3 random days of the week the bus isn't coming...but no one is telling you anything about it. unacceptable.

twitter has a lot of venture backing (on ridiculous valuation i might add), a slew of developers, and therefore in my eyes is prime for ripping when it goes down. if pownce was in their shoes hell yes i would say rip'em to shreds. with money and a large crew of developers i'm sure these issues would resolve themselves immediately. i know the old adage of throw money and people at a problem doesn't always yield results but i honestly believe in this case it would.

it would pay for a full time community manager that could send out status notices!

I can vouch for Leah on Sunday. We were actually having a meeting and we all kind of lost track of the time. She wasn't afraid to talk about the issues, and we were all disappointed that it didn't work out.

Everyone on the Pownce team listens to PownceCast. I haven't listened to this episode yet, but I'm about to :).

Re: communication, often there is little to say. The white screens are caused by performance issues, which are usually due to heavy usage and/or API abuse. We're doing a number of things to address the problem, from re-architecting the site's back end to upgrading and adding new hardware. I realize that all of these things have been said elsewhere, and that's why you haven't heard us say much lately. We're working hard to get things back to normal and, unfortunately, every time we take ten minutes to write a response like this one we lose ten minutes of development time.

I appreciate you wanting to help and vouch for Leah Michael but you shouldn't have too. Where she was is irrelevant, she said and wanted to participate and she dropped the ball.

We are also all in agreement that turning off the API would be fine, if it meant having a functioning site.

"We're working hard to get things back to normal and, unfortunately, every time we take ten minutes to write a response like this one we lose ten minutes of development time."

I can't speak for everyone, but I'd really be perfectly fine with a rollout being 10 minutes late if it meant some actual communication from the team.

No one is demanding long essays on what the team is working on (at least, no one that I've seen). Most of us would be fine with a brief sentence or two every couple of days and an occasional (or rare) "state of the union" address.

After all, you guys find the time to go on about cupcakes and how pownce looks fine in FF3.

Also...

The teams 10 minutes of development time may be completely worthless - if all the users bail. Suddenly, those 10 minutes spent NOT developing are incredibly useful.

!mmalone: She's already been vouched for, but I think some of us were irritated that she never came forth herself. She came through (again, another example right here through you!) through other people without stepping up herself. Whether it's a legitimate reason or not (and I don't disbelieve that she really was in a meeting), she needed to step up FOR HERSELF initially (not through someone else, thanks) and say, "I'm sorry. Here's what happened." Otherwise, it provides a fickle, "I really don't want to get into this so I'll let someone else do it" facade that I don't really appreciate as a user. Just letting you know.

By the way, on the side of communication, if you didn't have so many people wearing so many different hats, it wouldn't be a problem. I realize you're under a lot of stress and don't have a million people working for you; however, if you have to spend 10 minutes answering something that someone ELSE could be doing, it might be useful. I would hope that you all would get more funding soon to make something like that possible, because right now, the current setup is not helping. A status blog has been mentioned, much along the lines of what Twitter has (they have a lot of downtime and a lot of users, and because people know what's going on, people don't generally leave). If you employed something like that, it'd placate us more as well.

There is a general consensus that _Pownce is lacking in the communication department_. Period. It's what we've all said. It's what we all want. If that's what we're saying, why isn't Pownce listening?

This has all already been said in the PownceCast, and I don't mean to come off as bitchy or anything, but there are some patches that could be put in place team-wise and communications-wise that would help us users out much more.

Go develop. No one's questioning that someone's doing something. Stop answering questions and comments and GBTW. :)

Wait a second... doesn't Pownce have a community manager, who could be spending their 10 minutes communicating with the community, so the devs don't have to?

Right... I'll just go eat my cupcakes and shut up now.

!phantom42: Remember, she's only part-time, so...she might not be there right now. Just saying.

(Don't flame me! I'm just as irritated as you, and I also have complaints about the community manager as well. Work with it while you can. What little you get will have to do for now.)

!femme_dork, It's all good. We're on the same side here.

!mmalone, dude don't waste your time on us. If you are the only person at Pownce that's keeping the site together, by all means do your job.

Do us a favor though and contact the person who,for some odd reason gets paid to be the community manager, and let her know that there's a huge problem developing with the users and if it's not going to get addressed there will be much bigger problems than losing 10 minutes of your precious time.

I'm sorry dude, I don't know you but that was high douchebaggery! Go code and leave us peons alone...

We try to communicate when appropriate, but here's the thing... Before a problem is solved we usually don't know exactly what the issue is. And after it's solved there's little point in discussing the solution, unless it's particularly interesting. That said, Ariel does communicate with the community on a regular basis both via email and on Get Satisfaction.

Also, the cupcake thing is getting tired guys... it's really not fair to Ariel or the rest of us. She organized that in her spare time. Leah and I went because we're friends with Ariel. It was on a Sunday afternoon. We often work weekends and other weird hours... I was up until 2am last night working on Pownce. Do you seriously expect us to never take some time off to have some fun? Pownce is definitely more than a job for us, but we do have lives, and that's not unreasonable.

Ugh, the load on the database server is currently 3.85! I better get back to work :/.

I've not listened yet, but here's my 2 cents on the issues.

The white screens of death are a pain, but I've been seeing fewer of them lately. The service is still slow, which is also annoying, but I'm choosing to be patient. We know what the problems are and we know that they are working on it.

The growing trend in cross-posting via ping, thwirl, etc. is almost as annoying, though that is a user issue.

It sounds like people are frustrated most by the communication about it. I think they don't communicate as often because there isn't usually something new to say, but perhaps they could do a weekly blog update, even if it is just "The Pownce team is continuing to work on the XYZ problem and has no other news to report this week."

Would that satisfy people? Should it be more often? Less?

With a small staff and a large site, I think they really are doing their best. As sharp as they are, they are still constrained by the laws of physics and can't work any faster.

Here at Case we have over 1/2 million Web pages and our Interactive team includes only 4 people. We are constantly overwhelmed. People always want me to update this or that "it will only take a minute." But there are only so many minutes. And then the phone rings, and the emails must be answered and so forth.

So perhaps I seem overly empathic about the whole thing, but I get the sense they're in the same kind of spot I'm in. Working constantly but never being able to fully catch up. Thusly, I'm inclined to give them a break.

!mmalone You don't effing get it! We hear more communication about cupcakes than we do about issues that are causing this site to FAIL. We don't hear a thing and are solely asking for someone to post in the blog once in a while about improvements, what's coming down the road, etc.

I appreciate what you do because I went to school for it and I couldn't do it. You have to have amazing skills to do what you do, and to do it right it takes hours and hours. No one is upset with you. Do your thing, man. You have my respect!

We just want some kind of transparancy. There is none. You have effectively comminicated more about the site to use in 2 posts than any of us have ever gotten to this point.

So congrats, you deserve a raise. Let's be friends. Maybe one day we can share a Twinkie or something. For now all I can offer are these 5 stars and the potential to give you guys another 20 bucks next year!

!MikeLewis: Well said.

!cool, I'm in a similar situation. Our dev team includes myself and my boss - to build, maintain and support a system sending out over a million emails a week.

We've constantly got customers and CSR's nagging us. We decided the best way to handle it was for one of us to act as a general contact point (all the CSRs come to me first) and then once a week, we have a 30 minute conference call between us and them so we can update them on what's going on. We're months behind schedule right now. (It doesn't help that we just lost a dev).

It works phenomenally well.

Sometimes all we have to report is "we've been tracking down these bugs.. nothing new to roll out, sorry". Not what anyone wants to say or hear, but at least everyone is kept in the loop and the CSR's (and their customers) can go back knowing that their issues are being addressed.

Ok - I feel as I need to be the voice of reason here.

1. !cool has hit the nail on the head. For a tiny group, they're doing as much as they can. I know the feeling that you can work 24/7 and STILL not be caught up. It's an uphill, thankless battle.

2. The fact that !mmalone took time out to not only read but respond to this thread means that yes, they do care about their users. But when they do respond (and communicate), they get lambasted because they're not working.

I'm of the opinion that if this is going to turn into worse flamebait than it is already, I'm just going to delete the damn thing.

Try to be constructive, Powncers - that's all I'm asking.

I hope my response(s) wasn't (/weren't) read as a flame. I seriously wasn't meaning to do that. I think Heidi had a good point, and I'll leave it at that.

Did I forget to mention how much I love Pownce and everyone at the Pownce team?

I consider part of the best community that has ever been formed on the interwebs!

all I know is that I want to work "re-architecting the site's back end" into conversation as innuendo very soon ... :sigh: just wish my friends would appericate that humor

!cool makes a very good point. A weekly blog/email/post would be all it takes for me. I also want to reiterate the idea of pownce "owing" the perception. When there is no communication, its easy for things to snowball ... the negative view almost becomes the reality simply b/c its not refuted. ... on the other hand, organizations that meet criticisms head on, and even preempt them tend to fare much better in the public eye b/c there's little to be said.

for example, if Pownce came out and said "hey folks, this week is going to be rough, we all have our heads down in code and its likely we will see some white pages as a result. The good news is that we will continue to work tirelessly to bring you the experience that attracted you in the first place ...maybe even some new features"

What could someone say to spin that negativity? Not much IMHO ... and imagine how bold it would be to be very public about that kind of message? Encourage it to hit digg or twitter, or whatever the kids on the interwebs are using...

Sorry, I get passionate about this kind of stuff :D

As for the cupcakes - everyone could stand to back down a bit on them. As has been said, no one expects the devs to have no personal life ... and as users I understand how our concerns may lose collateral because of the emotional reaction to the metaphor.

I think I see part of the problem right here.

1. I'm sure the pownce team feels as though when they do take time to reply they get bitched at think , why do you bother.

but what they need to understand is that it's the way they communicate that may be the problem. There is a way to reply to users that won't get them up in arms. Saying things like taking ten minutes to reply takes time out they could be developing is harsh and you should KNOW that users are not going to respond well to that.

Pownce needs to effectly communicate with the users on a respectable and humble manner.

Is it me or am I detecting a very negative tone from the things we hear from pownce.

So far the only one I think that has communicated effectivly is Daniel !dburka

"owing" = "owning" ... note to self, proof, THEN click post

heheh yeah Nick, it's probably a little hasty to ask for an edit button at this point. lol.

I'm in 100% agreement with Libby and Mike.

The problem here is that when we DO get a rare communication from the team, they're always tainted with this tone of "this isn't worth my time."

It's ok, !spacebass, I was comminicating like a mofo...you can tell when I'm not using Firefox with it's handydandy spell check!

shit, i go on a run, play some basketball and look what i miss :P

Whoa. Well I don't think there is much left to say. Glad to see we're all still kicking.