I’m just so thoroughly dismayed by this post and its follow ups. Thoroughly.
8 days ago a developer @sam8 posts with “excitement” about a new feature. And then a whole bunch of questions come in, including questions to understand how and when to use it, and its only until 6 days later that another person from the company comes in and addresses but one of the many questions and then suggests that another idea go to the infamous idea board.
There are so many problems with this I dont even know where to begin.
The dev has not responded to anything. Clearly their was excited was limited. “Hey cool. Whats this for?”. Chirp chirp. “Hey nice, can I use it for this scenario?”. Chirp chirp. If I had worked on something for a bit of time and then released it into the community and I was legitimately excited about it the first thing I would be doing is selling the shit out it.
But nope. Its just dumped into the forum like garbage.
I also dont know who asked for this feature. Im not saying its not good nor that no one was asking for it - im just saying that Ive never seen a post asking for it. Its not been a common point of pain.
What I have seen are a insanely large set of old threads that get bumped every month but have seen no response. One such example is email verification. How do I do email verification without sendgrid. I can cobble my own solution together but as far as I cant tell the only official way to do this is with the bubble user type is with sendgrid. I even ask in this post - can it confirm emails. Chirp chirp. and theres a lot more.
There are countless questions / product issues that just remain unresolved. Feature requests lost because no one from the company engaged.
Which leads me to this next thing…
Your idea board.
Its like the icing on this inedible cake.
There is a treasure trove of feature requests, pain, suffering and anguish in these forums. A goldmine of data. Yet the team asks people to make suggestions on the idea board because that is where they choose to be fed from.
If i managed the team of product managers at bubble and single one said “go to the idea board” I would fire them. Ok i wouldnt fire them but there would be some very strong coaching going on. I can pay a high school student to manage an idea board at $7 dollars an hour. I would absolutely absolutely expect every product manager to be mining through the data in the forum to get insights into what the real problems and opportunities actually are. There are tools you can build to help with this. I’d certainly be looking at ways to distill the data. The fact that you are “actively” watching the idea board when there are many super old and still relevant issues that you are not resolving tells me that no one is actually steering this ship. Its just adrift in the sea of “excited” developers whims.
No offense @nickc but I dont know how a PM can suggest an idea board when there is so much data available. Im not saying turn off the channel but telling someone “great suggestion” then asking them to put it in form you desire otherwise it it wont be absorbed is just simply and utterly ridiculous.
I dont get how you guys appear to be so absolutely disconnected. I keep saying this. Bubble is amazing but the lack of customer focus is stunning. It’s almost like some macabre work of art.
The people who engaged on this thread were interested enough about the topic and certainly engaged enough with bubble to have deserved an answer. At least a “we heard your questions - we’ll document more, get back to you etc.” But nothing like that. Just a one off “cool” and “to the idea board you should go”.
@emmanuel this is a culture of your creation. I’ve seen these old threads where you were clearly very responsive. And you can see the immediate effect on the attachment and loyalty that it seemed to evoke. But it seems you’ve been silent for a long time.
I dont know why i write these comments. I dont know why i care. You dont seem to.
Edit:
I should add - a large part of how you position bubble is for the non technical folks. “You dont need a tech co-founder” is one of your value props right? So a lot of your communication should really be focused on speaking to these non technical folks. What is it. Why is it useful. But how is some business person trying to get their idea of the ground by themselves going to be able to digest the value of this feature? Who exactly was this message aimed at?
stick with bubble and power on and message them via emails directly or switch platforms OR even more exciting, go learn react native like a pro!