Dear FoundRead readers, after nearly 12 months, the time has come to take a hard look at the progress of this blog. The results have been mixed, and as such, it’s time to make some changes.
First the good news: The concept (and the premise) on which we started the effort was spot on, reflected in the dozens of contributors that became part of the FoundRead roster. In Hollywood lingo, this blog has been a critical hit, with more than 5,000 RSS subscribers, many of them startup founders or aspiring founders. That is very cool.
Popular aggregator and news discovery sites have linked to us occasionally, but there is one site that has embraced us completely: Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com.) To them we say thanks.
And of course many of these achievements can be directly attributed to FoundRead editor Carleen Hawn, who has done an awesome job of building a community, finding interesting writers and drawing the very best stories out of a wide range of startup founders.
Sadly, FoundRead hasn’t really generated the kind of traffic we had hoped for, so it’s time for a change. Here are the details:
- FoundRead will stop being a standalone blog and will become a category on GigaOM. Each article in this category will carry FR branding, including the logo.
- Readers of FoundRead will be forwarded seamlessly to the new category page.
- FoundRead RSS subscribers will continue to get articles from the FoundRead category: no more, no less. [If you want to subscribe to FR feed, click here
- Carleen Hawn will remain the editor of the FoundRead channel, so you can still contact her with story ideas, etc.
What I hope to achieve with this change is to keep the concept of FR alive but expose the great content to the larger community of readers who visit GigaOM. I want everyone to know that this has been a painful decision, but given the current economy, a necessary one. I hope you will continue to support us in this new, somewhat more modest format.
I see a lot of NTV stories hit the main Giga Om feed – but never even one Found|Read story. This lack of promotion may have had something to do with the floundering of the blog. Just sayin’.
Sad setback. There has been so many invaluable posts. I really enjoy the blog and hope you will continue to support it.
Fred and Daniel,
I am still a believer in the concept and will continue to support it as long as possible and try and grow it over next few months. As I said, not giving up on it.
Fred, actually that is not true, because we promoted everything equally. That said, I am not going to give up on this. 🙂
Would there still be a separate RSS feed for posts related to FOUND/READ ?
Yes it is a separate feed and if you have subscribed to it previously, it will only show FR posts.
For new subscribers, http://feeds.feedburner.com/foundread is the feed address.
I think Found|Read might have succeeded better as a community than as a blog. I remember the first incarnation was much more compelling than the blog since people could pose questions to the community and get insight from other entrepreneurs. When that original community was migrated over to the blog I found myself wanting to contribute less and seeing “yet another list of start up top 10s”.
At the end of the day there is only so much advice that is generalizable to the entire startup community. After that, the best advice is specific advice.
Hey Om,
I have to agree, the first incarnation before moving out to wordpress was much better, you guys did some awesome changes, but something has been lost in the transition (something that lost me as well).
That was the community part, there was some kind of feeling there was people asking for Q, even people tried to game articles and so on….
I find blogs less engaging now days, there so many of them, I cannot track everything so I just register to the rss feeds or twitter feeds (which has 1300 followers already), but I think you would want to achieve that most of these followers and rss readers would come to the site itself and interact with the writers and other readers.
Saying that, foundread is an amazing place with great articles, thumb up for carleen hawn for creating this value for us.
Thanks
I was a fan of the blog. As a latecomer, I missed out on the community but the Found|Read blog is the one place I know where I could consistently find posts that relate to me as an aspiring founder.
Most other entrepeneurship blogs mix the useful content in with Silicon-Valley news and analysis. Interesting as some of that may be, it doesn’t help me bootstrap my business. The Found|Read blog posts were always relevant and useful and I do hope they continue at their new home.
@ Sean and @ Adam
Perhaps you guys are right and we tried to replicate some of those features but that didn’t work. I hope you will continue to come back and read the FR posts and we will try and be very respectful of your time.
Adam,
You have been a big supporter, so my big thanks to you and hope your entrepreneurial dreams come true.
I think it is a good move but I am sorry FoundRead did not make it as a separate entity. Since time is limited, I am glad I will get the chance to read FoundRead style posts here!
http://electronrun.com/
HUGE BUMMER!! Look how long it took BNET to get going. NOW look at em! It takes time to get something like this to those who would appreciate it. You havent lost me as a reader though, or a founder… 😉
Hey Om,
You haven’t lost me as a reader nor as a supporter.
Hope there will be some kind of plan to make Gigaom or F|R more as a community.
Thanks,
Thanks for recognizing Carleen Hawn’s major contribution to this enterprise. She’s got the touch of a genius.
Good move Om,
This will be a great move for FoundRead, I’m glad that you’ve thought this through and are still going to keep it going.
Best Wishes,
William Tildesley
WTF is found/dead, and what is it doing in my gigaom feed?
I think a shift over to GigaOm central may be a good thing for F|R – the straight up talk from founders on this site is incredible and the traffic on GigaOm will give the stories higher distribution and may/will inspire many more entreps to write up compelling stories for the community.
I really have to say kudos to Carleen for building such a great rapport with her contributers (myself included). I could tell the blog was highly read because when she would post my articles, I saw a significant increase in traffic. Way to go Carleen!! I’m glad you will still have a say in helping voice the stories, challenges, and wins for us entrepreneurs.
Use this time to perfect and work on your vision. The life of an entrepreneur is always one step forward, a couple steps back, standing still for a while, a few steps sideways, a leap forward, etc.
F|R is always a good read, insightful and unique. Good stuff for those of us trying to get traction.
Carleen Hawn’s professionalism and expertise as an editor has been evident from the initiation of FoundRead.Congratulations Carleen on a challenging editorial job very well done.
Glad to see that you have faith in the concept. As a column on GigaOm, maybe the increased visibility will lead to a re-launch as a separate blog. Perhaps a new name? Thanks — Mary
Om – keeping the FR branding and logo is a mistake, too much clutter and noise, it will be confusing to most people. Keep things simple. Let your content do the talking…
Good luck.
Sounds like the right call, Om. It’s always tough making these types of decisions. By same token, you obviously know your audience, where they engage and where they don’t so your readers ultimately support that.
Perhaps by relegating this from full blog to recurring thread topic, you might actually sharpen your focus on themes that engage.
Cheers,
Mark
I missed following a lot of the posts but I know that FR is a quality read and I will be reading as much as I can with the intention of spreading word about it, too.
Who knows, maybe I can become a founder too.
Best.
alain