Official Scoutle Blog

Today, June 8th, Scoutle has been online for one month. One month ago, I didn’t know how to get started. I hoped to have 2000 active users by August 8 but had no idea how I was going to get to this amount. I figured I might just had to email bloggers, like personal spamming, but I started with some posts on blogger forums. What happened can be read in previous posts.

For now, I am very happy with the result of one month. A lot of stress, a lot of opinions, hundreds of new users and a lot of press attention. More than expected. I do however know that now is the time to hurry. Current users will probably expect a lot of things to improve and if I don’t install new features, they might even just leave Scoutle again. Even though there’s nothing to loose staying in. What I need now is a community adopting Scoutle and I need to find a way to reach people that are not up-to-date on the latest Internet trends. You don’t know about Scoutle if the news doesn’t reach you.

I hope I can find less Internet related press attention. In magazines or local papers and sports clubs for instance. I also want to contact university magazines but it takes a lot of time.

Should I focus on interviews, which is more personal, or should I go for the “Scoutle explanation” stories?

Anyway, I will now focus more on non-English natives. The small group of Japanese users are meeting each other all the time now. But as long as Scoutle has not been translated into Japanese, only those who understand English can use Scoutle. But where to get the money to translate the site in Japanese? I also think about German, French, Spanish, Portugues, Chinese…

But well, in one month a lot has been reached. Hopefully, I can write even better stories in a post next month!

OK, so I have a big list (actually several since I keep losing and finding them) with many updates that have been suggested by users, friends, experts and myself. I want to do them all but at the same time, I have no idea which to do first. What I would like is to get a lot more users but on the other hand, I would like these new users to enter a way more complete Scoutle. It can be really confusing to decide what to do. Although time doesn’t cost me, it sure is annoying I can’t just go and buy some. Lacking money is one thing in a startup but I might even start to think that time is way more needed.

I found a quote from an innovation expert that, although he is very positive about Scoutle, makes me even more nervous.

Scoutle is now on the verge of crossing the chasm! Only one larger community that discovers Scoutle will be enough to have Scoutle enter the tornado alley and conquer the world. Scoutle really is a big timesaver in networking. Not only for the most innovative people, but also for pragmatic people who don’t know much about the internet. So let’s all think hard which community would fit this role and help Scoutle to become what it can be: world-famous! (Wouter Zeeman, June 2008)

How can I get this community to find Scoutle without advertisement or spamming my current users? Any suggestion of course, is very welcome. If you can address milions of horse lovers, thousands of poets, hundreds of gamers… or any other community that would like to connect and compare, let me or (maybe more timesaving) them know!!

I guess, in the mean time, I will just pick something to update and keep on doing so
You might find it interesting to find out more about Crossing the Chasm.