@chrismessina good morning, sunshine!

@chrismessina also with all due respect, take a look at the team behind Imzy ;) They're not MySpace, G+, or Facebook. <3

@chrismessina I'll let @kickme444 chime in regarding the other stuff, but I'll address the branding. I thought some people might make that link but we feel like our branding is more focused and less nebulous than my____. Ultimately, we came up with our positioning after extensive user research with our Beta cohort. Here's a couple thoughts on why we chose "Community as _______ as you are." - We are community oriented. That's the foundation of what we're doing and we wanted that explicitly stated in our positioning. - HOW people build community and with whom they connect is so diverse. We want to celebrate that and build our platform in a way that empowers that in the future, hence the ________. - We need both of these aforementioned statements to be true for us to succeed.

@drew yeah, I was up late drinking. Definitely feeling punchy and stressed, so, my bad if I came across as a Debbie Downer. Not trying to dump haterade, it's just what came to mind. Stepping away from the keyboard. 🤐

@heathwblack @kickme444 don't get me wrong — I really like your branding. It was just thematically familiar. The Imzy character is super cute. :)

@rrhoover @heathwblack Having worked at reddit for a long time, I see there there are a few really big differences. The biggest difference is that reddit is primarily focused on content. They are an advertising company and are focused on surfacing the best content to the most people on a daily basis, I think their words are something like, they set the international media agenda with their content or something. Reddit is AMAZING at content. We are not focused on content, we are focused on communities and really digging in to what that means. So right now, while there are similarities in how communities are organized, you will see stark differences in how people have conversations and really form connections with one another. Additionally, we are NOT an advertising company because being an advertising company forces you to make decisions that are not in line with community best interests. Instead, we recognize that communities have natural usages of commerce and we will be building those into the platform. When you combine this with our upcoming developer platform, where communities and developers can work together to build custom functionality natively into the platform, communities will really be able to innovate and build stronger, more authentic connections without having to fracture onto 3rd party sites. Come hang out, it's a fun place! Here's some more info on our business model plans - https://www.imzy.com/imzy/post/i...

@pddro Thanks so much for being a part of it! You can't have a successful community without commitment and a shared understanding from everyone, and that comes through communication and transparency, so it's been really important to us to be as involved as we can and get feedback from everyone. None of that will change as we move forward—the only difference is that anyone can sign up now without needing an invite. But we still want to be as involved with everyone as possible so we can build the platform you want!

@kikischirr @samhouston Thanks so much for being a part of everything! We can't be a successful community platform without the community, so we want all of you to be as involved as possible. :)

@nrose their 7 month private beta period really got a bunch of great folks going on the platform.

@nrose This is definitely a really difficult problem. I don't know that we've found the perfect solution, but I'll tell you a couple things we'll done, and then the philosophy that we think solves it most: 1. We had a 7-month private beta, during which time we gained or first 50,000 users. So while we're certainly not as large as social platforms that have been around for several years, we do have some people already here and some really active communities! 2. We've worked on having a full onboarding process when you create an account to make sure you find communities that are the most tailored to your interests and are more active. We also make it easy to browse and discover new communities by topic, activity, etc, so that hopefully you can find the shops that have awesome stuff for sale just your style rather than wandering the mall endlessly. 3. Most importantly, we're focused on community interactions over content consumption. You have a great time with your best friend, significant other, or whomever else all the time, even when it's just the two of you! Because you have a really great connection. When you build quality communities and focus on the way people interact, you can make friends, and you come back to talk with those friends, rather than just coming to browse a feed of content and being disappointed if it runs out quickly. Because when you connect with others and really experience community, you can't "run out" of things to read. You just keep participating and creating those discussions!

@kickme444 hey there, congrats on the launch! Go figure, but here's some feedback: I was trying to sign up with my phone number and received a verification code, but the iOS app claimed it was invalid. I tapped the "resend code" and it took several minutes for another code to arrive... Also, there's a typo during on-boarding:

@chrismessina Thanks! We'll get that typo fixed and look into the verification code ASAP.

@chrismessina we allow you to post anonymously AND anonoymously :)

@heathwblack I thought it MIGHT be a feature!! :)

@heathwblack i don't think i've ever spelled that word right in my entire life tbh.

@samhouston consistently transparent which makes working with them an absolute dream.

@sophia_arakelyan Hey, so sorry for the delayed reply! Could you tell me what email domain you were using? There are some that are blocked due to high spam/malicious actors associated with those domains, but that can sometimes unintentionally cut out other people who aren't bad at all. If it's a gmail address or something like that, then we'll keep digging further. Thanks for the report!

Hey @bentossell! I wrote a bit more about it here but am happy to answer any specific questions in here! https://medium.com/imzyhq/imzy-y...

@bentossell Most of us come from a strong community background—a lot of us have worked at Reddit, as well as Twitter and other community and chat platforms online. Based on all our experiences, both professionally and as regular online users, we wanted to build a really broad, flexible platform that actually focuses on COMMUNITY and makes it so communities can do all the things they want to in one place. We're not all the way there yet, but we feel like we've laid a really strong foundation we're proud of!

@espenteik The Imzysaurus was all the work of @jalehafshar! It makes stickers and t-shirts and things much more fun to wear and decorate everything with.

@espenteik Thanks for the kind words! The Imzysaurus is the character I'm most proud of designing.

@kaelagardner Let me know when I can buy a t-shirt! :D @jalehafshar

@espenteik @jalehafshar We were giving them away during private beta to everyone who invited at least 5 people, but now that that's ended... I'm sure we'll come up with a new reason to give away shirts soon! :D

@espenteik I feel link Pinguin might compete a bit here on cutest logo ever, but I'll humbly admit, Imzy is cute!

@ivan_fazaniuk I'm having trouble parsing your comment. Was this a question?

@ivan_fazaniuk @kickme444 have a lovely day Ivan.

@ivan_fazaniuk Classic Ivan.

@stevenlaw Thanks so much for letting us know! Were you on Android or iOS app? We will make sure this gets fixed ASAP.