2023 Annual Update
Published on December 22, 2023 by Jeff Camera
2023 went by fast! Despite our limited time and resources, I'm proud of what we were able to accomplish this year and excited for the position it puts us in for 2024.
What did you accomplish during 2023? How did you use money?
Thor and I each managed to ship a major update to Readup in the past year:
What did you accomplish during 2023? How did you use money?
Thor and I each managed to ship a major update to Readup in the past year:
- Thor completed his 2023 goal of bringing Readup back to the web. This was a crucial step in making Readup more accessible to new users and streamlining our development process. He reimagined and rearchitected the Readup browser extensions and made massive improvements to the reader experience as a result.
- Inspired by Thor's sweeping changes, I took steps to make it possible to explore the Readup platform and read articles on the Readup app and browser extensions without having to create an account first. This was another important change to remove unnecessary friction for new users.
We used our Open Collective funds exclusively to pay for Readup's hosting costs. Your contributions are what keep Readup online!
What challenges did you face during 2023? What did your Collective learn? How did you change or grow?
Our major challenge for 2023 was that we did not grow despite the changes we made in the platform. In fact, our reading activity has been almost completely flat from the second half of 2022 through the end of 2023 at about 100 monthly active users and 60 hours of reading time per month.
What we learned is that just making improvements to the product will not make us grow. We need to make a concerted effort to reach out and acquire new users.
What are your plans for 2024? Anything exciting coming up?
We've got exciting plans to re-launch Readup in early 2024. Now that Thor and I have laid the technical groundwork, we're ready to start promoting our community and mission with a clarity and focus that we've never had before.
That means not only engaging with communities across the wider web to promote deep reading and civil discourse, but to recommit ourselves and encourage our existing community to continue to set an example by doing the difficult work of scouring the web for the best articles and taking the initiative to start important conversations.
Time spent reading is always time well spent, but it's a whole lot more fun when we do it together. Thank you for being a part of Readup and have a wonderful new year!