My Colts draws “constructive” criticism

My blog traffic has dipped a lot lately. Not sure if folks have lost interest in the subject, or if my writing has slipped, or if summer weather has caused readers to exchange laptops for mountain bikes, but I seem to have hit a wall in terms of readership growth.

But at least the readers I do have left are not likeing what they’re seeing at mycolts

I noticed a link into my blog today from on of our beta testers. While he supports what we’re doing in general, he is not highly complimentary of the site:

It is great to see a technology-aware NFL organization jazzed enough to inspire their stoic head coach into self-publication. NOTE: Having seen the inside of the pre-Beta site, I think the imminent release of MyColts.net for public consumption is premature. At the moment, it seems to be a social site OF Colts fans, not a site FOR social Colts fans. Big difference. Still, this concept has a bright future, and Pay Coyle (et al) should be congratulated.

I cannot deny that we’re struggling to design this thing so that users can make it WHATEVER they want from get get go. We’re trying to walk a line between maintaining control and giving it away. I have had a few sleepless nights wondering if people will simply hate our site, and stay away in droves.

On the other hand, that handy term “iterative” keeps coming to mind. At some point, you just launch th sucker. You wait to hear (or see) what people do with it, and you begin making improvements based on that input. I’d rather be perfect from the beginning, but it’s simply not realistic.

So it’s good to get criticized, especially while we’re in beta, but even though I know what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I’m not looking forward to hearing the criticism we’ll likely get when we go live. You spend a year of your life working on something, you want people to love it. But not everyone will.