Sunday, December 13, 2015

Good bye


In 2014, I was invited to join ReadWave. Someone had seen this blog and asked me to join them, so I made the move.
It was an English based site that Huffington said…

Their mission statement said:
What’s your story?
ReadWave is a place for sharing your three-minute stories.
We believe that 3 minutes is all it takes to tell a story that can change your life. We call these stories ReadWaves.
A ReadWave can be about anything - a confession, an experience, an inspiration a life-changing decision or even something fictional.


What interested me was a monthly challenge. Some would ask a question like “What would you say to the President?” or “What is the best moment of your life?” As a writer I enjoyed the idea of writing about a subject I wouldn’t have thought of and also see what others wrote on the same topic.
So I quit this blog for a year and moved to ReadWave. The readers seemed more global and the comments were refreshing. There was a youthful feel to it.
I was constantly explaining my lack of knowledge of the proper writing techniques to those who corrected my errors but it was a learning experience.
With around 61,000 readers I wrote about subjects as varied as love, technology, politics, religion, and personal experiences. Titles like “Giving Away My Daughter” or “Are You Happy?” or “She doesn’t know I’m here” or “Pissing With The President” to “The Older Woman”. My writing seemed to be popular in China but I don’t know Chinese.
The algorithms were well written to alert of comments on a story via email. After become an editor of a theme, alerts were emailed to new story request.
Themes like Enviornmental, Family, Travel, People Watching started to appear because ReadWave allow all the writers to create a theme. Unfortunately without administration, themes were duplicated and too highly specialized to apply to. 
Additionally editors of themes were not corresponding and it just became overwhelming. Connection to the site became unreliable and frustrating. Slowly trash was creeping in until steaming advertisements replaced actual story telling.
Then I got this email….
“Dear ReadWavers,

It's been over two years since we started this journey with you - striving to create a thriving community of readers and writers wrapped in the most beautiful experience possible. 

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, over the last 6 months the team behind ReadWave have been involved in other projects and we haven't been able to give it the love it deserves. ReadWave needs an owner who has passion and a vision for what it could become. 

With this in mind, we’ve decided to either find a new owner for Readwave or draw this chapter to an end and close the site. 

Our timeframe for deciding is before the 20th of December, so please copy and paste your ReadWave stories to a word document to ensure your work is not lost. 

If you’d like to buy ReadWave from us, email offers@readwave.com with your offer before the 11th December and we'll get back to you with next steps. We’d like to be transparent with any potential buyers so here are our metrics:

- 55,377 stories

- 18,157 registered users

- 1,316 logins in Nov.15

- 337,877 pageviews in Nov. 2015

- 186,287 uniques in Nov.15

Finally, we’d like to thank you for all your support over the years – it’s been truly wonderful to build this community with you.

Onwards and upwards!

The ReadWave Team”
So it seems ReadWave has shut down. It was an interesting experiment without a thought of revenue or administration but it was fun while it lasted.
I guess I’ll come back here and post my thoughts to ever wants to read and comment.

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