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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