If you don’t me, I’m the creator of a social media app and website powered by the incredible Discourse platform. I abandoned the startup when I was downright completely hopeless - both on finding success on my app as well as my life/mental health. I deleted my website, my server, and my apps off iOS and Android. I removed most mentions of me and the app on the web, too. All the excruciatingly hard work I poured in for ~12 hours a day felt wasted and forgotten. I felt like a complete failure.
I was an avid Discourse user and enthusiast, trying to engage as much as I could and finding ways we can implement features and QoL changes to improve this already polished platform. It’s been over a year since I’ve been gone and the other day I got an email from a former user of my app asking me what had happened to it all. It was a very eye-opening moment and I was in a flurry of nostalgia. I think it may have helped resurrect my passion for this again.
I believe I downloaded a backup of the app in which I will use as a basis for the next site I may make. I just hope it isn’t too late.
Thank you for reading, I honestly don’t know where this fits on this forum but man it felt great coming off my chest. Be safe!
Glad to hear that things are improving and thanks for having the courage to share. It’s a crazy world out there at the moment and we gotta look after each other!
Oh @nexo I noticed your disappearance and so sorry you’ve been through some troubles! (I tried to message you after fixing a TLP bug you had raised. :). )
“Failure” is an opportunity to learn. Discourse sites take years to mature and there is no guarantee of success.
I wish you the best with your next project or the resurrection of your existing one which I’m sure will benefit from your experience! Keep persevering, pushing past obstacles and experimenting!
If you didn’t learn anything from 12 hours/day, then maybe it was wasted. I have a feeling that you did learn a lot from those hours you invested. It wasn’t a waste, it just didn’t turn out the way you hoped it would. So go a slightly different route. One will lead to the finish line.
I was a big fan of Quemuse when it was still around. It served as the motivation for me to conceptualize my own social network based on Discourse.
Other than this community, I haven’t been able to find any other way to contact you. A while back, you deleted your entire social media presence (excluding LinkedIn, but I was hesitant to contact you through there). I’m extremely interested in sharing my ideas with you, but I don’t know your email address. Do you have one that I could respond to?
Hey there! I’m super happy to hear that Quemuse served as an inspiration for your endeavors. You can always reach out to me by email shakhmalian@gmail.com.
I’m happy to share any feedback, ideas, or concerns regarding your project, because being one of the only “social media” designed Discourse instances at the time and it’s hardships; it’s like being an underdog. I was definitely not alone in my efforts as I had support from Meta and savant engineer @sau226
Furthermore, Discourse Meta’s incredibly helpful and ingenious contributors are probably gonna be your best intellectual medium to support you on your journey.
Those very insightful posts were unfortunately after Quemuse’s tenure. I would just create a topic on something that would help me with the vision of my site and usually that sparked some light bulbs.
Oh, yes. I’m aware of that. I just thought you might take an interest to them.
One thing I did want to ask: Would you be interested in collaborating with us? The scale of the project will definitely require more than one individual.
