Honestly a lot of the defenses of Cohost's decisions are from people comparing Cohost to Twitter or Tumblr. "They're just three (and/or four) people!" is in contrast to these major corporations.
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In a way Cohost feels like a site that sees ITSELF as being peers amongst Twitter or Tumblr or whatever, and being the underdog. When their peers are...the other underdogs in the social media world, many of which are far more under than they are, working with far worse budgets and way less full time staff.
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Like to my understanding, Dreamwidth has one full time employee. I forget about Pillowfort's employee breakdown, I know that the CEO (Julia) does not pay herself a salary, I believe there is a part or full time community moderator? And some number of contractors? But regardless I'm pretty sure that the number of full time paid employees on Pillowfort is less than 4.
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This isn't even saying that these are better sites than Cohost, I haven't even tried Dreamwidth and I don't love how Pillowfort works...but they are Cohost's peers and they do some of the things that Cohost's fans claim Cohost couldn't possibly do because they're Just Three And Or Four People
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"CoHost can't do that!"
CoHost was given 300,000$ which is probably a LOT more than dreamwidth or pillowfort and they did NOTHING with it. So they had the money to do ANYTHING.I wonder if the make up of the employees matters because I think cohost is 3 dude and a woman (who gets to do the community/clean up jobs) and it SHOWS!
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@Maverynthia Cohost has gotten more like over a million in loans over its lifetime, I have done napkin math on this (and this was before their current six month funding round
Cohost's Financials - A Retrospective
A look back through the financial updates of Cohost.org
lori's blog (d-shoot.net)
As for the staff, there's only one person on staff that I think is a dude (Colin)
about
a software company that hates the software industry
anti software software club (antisoftware.club)
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That explains a hell of a lot more :|. I see a "co-owner"
Also explain the weird exceptions to the rules in the TOS and why obvious NSFW content doesn't need a tag or a click through. (Despite the new rules)
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@Maverynthia they're all co-owners, they're a for profit LLC masquerading as a not for profit co-op (their company site still lists them as not for profit even though they've never had this designation and can't even register as one in the state they're registered in apparently, not all states have not-for-profits)
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That's interesting. Thanks for the info.
(I thought all states had NFPs due to churches and all that. Guess not... :dragnmlem: )
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@Maverynthia I THINK churches tend to be non profits and not not for profits (extremely confusing sentences) but I'm not 100% sure
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@Maverynthia although cohost has at different times claimed to be either one of these lol. They have talked about registering as a non profit before but it's just talk, they can't afford the overhead and don't meet the requirements anyway. They don't meet the requirements of a not for profit in most states either as far as I can tell.
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@lori @Maverynthia how is that site still online honestly
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@kestral @Maverynthia seeded its beta period with friends and family, they spread the good word and stick to it, and dominate the site culture because they were already a built in social circle with some notable names and discoverability isn't as big of a problem for them as it is for new unrelated users.
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@Maverynthia @kestral yes Twitter did too, they actually always look better off than they are financially in the summers because they have the spike of yearly renewals when the site launched (very end of June so most of these are in July) and then I think October was when Twitter drove a bunch of people off, so they had yearly renewals from that period too...and since they're yearly renewals and not monthly it makes the net income look really big. But they don't see those peoples money again for a year and the people renewing is a dwindling number.
Their spike for Tumblr exodus is November I think, we'll see if they make it that far.
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@Maverynthia @kestral (and worth noting that even with these big spikes of once a year money they STILL manage to be in the red)
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@lori @Maverynthia I loved the idea and was a plus subscriber once, but I couldn't get past the ethics/optics of a for-profit company claiming to be a non-for-profit.
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