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Ben Halpern
γ»1 min read
I'm going to pin this post to the top of my profile so there's a place for anyone to publicly ask me a question, and I'll do my best to reply when I can.
I'm happy to offer advice primarily on the intersection of software, entrepreneurship and career.
Happy coding!
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Discussion (27)
How did you grow enough of a following to launch a social network? Any advice for someone who wants to do the same?
Yes, can you please give us advice about how to grow an audience as a dev?
I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't stop working on the project for 10 years, even if traction took forever. Then I methodically worked on content creation and observing what stuck and could lead to further opportunities. It was years of growing on Twitter before even typing
rails newfor what became DEV.Giving myself the room to do a lot of observing while methodically building helped ensure some amount of success. But it's also an area that combines several different skillsets of mine.
FWIW it's going to be way easier for folks to build from scratch on Forem (the extraction from DEV we're working hard on).... We'll soon launch a Forem app which will act as a discovery mechanism for independent Forem social networks hosted in a distributed way, but discoverable through one app.... It's going to be really really cool.
You must have had exceptional belief in DEV community then
Thanks for answering!
I had belief in my own interest in seeing an improvement in online communities. My sense was that I wouldn't get bored of trying to help because I really cared. So with that in mind I also promised myself I wouldn't give up.
In prior ventures I'd either gotten bored or given up primarily because I either didn't truly care about the mission deep down, or got involved with people I didn't like or respect as founders and people. I made sure with this venture to solve for some of those fundamentals early on and let the success come with patience.
Do you now make enough money to support yourself with DEV?
DEV (Forem) was once a ramen story (not paying ourselves, running out of money etc)...
But now the company is pretty well funded and building a very sustainable business model around hosting Forems.
Special Announcement From the DEV Founders
Ben Halpern γ» Nov 7 '19 γ» 4 min read
Awesome π
Congratulations. I will do my best to read that other article.
Hi Ben, is there any way to get analytics on a post made to dev.to? The number of views figures are nice to see but would love to be able to track where the visitors came from.
Thanks for the great work on this site.
Hey Ben! Thank you for this AMA.
Is there an ETA for the first stable/public release of Forem?
We've been hesitant to give a date on some of this because there's been a lot of discovery needed on both stability of the hosting options while at the same time ironing out all the edge cases where historically with DEV we've been able to dip into a coding environment and for this to run effectively it shouldn't need that. With that being said, things are getting a little clearer:
The first stamped down supported self-hosted option. I don't know exactly when the release will be, but we're pretty close here... Expect an ETA soon. I don't want to make any promises but we're finally seeing the finish line.
For our hosted version, Forem Cloud, while it's stable for us, the thing we need to work out is orchestration so we can effectively automate the management of n number of Forems. This will come in the second half of this year.
Thanks for your patience! Our end goals are incredibly ambitious and Forem is going to change the Internet!
Thank you, Ben! Looking forward to the release.
Have you started many projects that could become companies to you ? Which proportion of your ideas did you actually start writing code for ?
If so, what was your reciepe to know if a project is worth it ?
And how would you know when persistence on a project becomes obstination, and that it is time to abandon it ?
How's the fam?
I haven't been able to see most of my family in over a year (Canadian), but generally doing pretty well. I'm very grateful for the Canadian government assistance through the pandemic for the folks in my family who have needed it.
No questions at the moment, but just wanted to say thank you for the great platform!
Thanks for bringing us dev.to!
How do you like your coffee? Pour-over, french press, keurig? Milk or sugar? Light, medium or dark roast?
I think I prefer medium roast, but as I don't have a strong preference, I like to mix things up. My favorite coffee treat is a good artisan latte on a cool fall day (like, I don't know what exactly I mean by "artisan", but I used to live in Brooklyn, which is full of great takes on coffee) but too many lattes are not great on the ole waistline, so I usually take my coffee black.
My wife and I got this Jura machine as a wedding gift and it is really amazing. Probably not something we'd have ordinarily budgeted for.
Hi Ben!
Is it possible to use the dev.to API to pull account-specific information (page views, reactions, etc) without dealing with CORS?
Do you think companies would ever choose a Forem instance over their own blog attached to their wordpress site?
What's the roadmap for moderation? There's some things I'd like to see!
We will have a more well-described general roadmap soon. If you want to see something implemented please advocate for it on an issue on GitHub or start a discussion on forem.dev
What advice do you have for an American moving to Canada?
You are also among the dev.to developer
Yup