ShoutWire, once touted as a strong competitor to Digg, Reddit, and other social content sites, seems to be slowly dying because of the owners’ neglect. After a solid start, the site has had several changes in ownership and extended periods of stagnation, in which old news would dominate the front page and no word from the developers was to be heard.
Today, a long open letter from a member of the ShoutWire community has reached the top of ShoutWire front page, an interesting development that might be common for Digg but not quite so for smaller social content sites. The letter cites spammers, slow loading times and frequent bugs as ShoutWire’s biggest issues. Personally, it seems to me that for quite some time the ShoutWire owners were simply trying to automate the site as much as possible and milk it for some cash until it fizzles out. But, as it turns out, there are real, live people visiting the site, and they don’t like this one bit.
While the letter is quite critical of ShoutWire and its leadership, it proves that there’s a community out there that still cares about this site, and that alone should be a wake up call for the owners.
Hi Stan,
I’m Dockwats, one of the site administrators for ShoutWire. The letter you reference is an editorial actually written by one of our administrators, voicing concern many of the site’s users experienced over the past week of extensive down time and frustration.
The main issue with the recent concerns on the site comes from us moving content to a faster server, due to expanded content areas we have implemented (videos, image storing and sharing, personal blogs) and wanting users to have faster response times when using the site’s media and browsing.
After upgrades are complete (hopefully this week!), ShoutWire’s content will be served up much faster for all to enjoy. It’s always awesome go get feedback, even when some brow-beating needs to be done.
Thanks for the review of the site issues and this particular article, and also if you’re not a member feel free to come by and join the community and give more feedback.
@Dockwats: thanks for stopping by. I’m following most read submit vote comment style sites, and Shoutwire is one of them. I’m looking forward to seeing some improvements on the site.
Good day. I am the author of the letter that you have referenced above.
Since I posted it, the slow load times have been resolved. Bugs are also being worked out in a more timely fashion.
I’m not trying to demean the site owners or anything, but sometimes it takes a little grease to get the wheels moving.