If it persists, this issue can terminate the relatively new publishing platform in no time.

I published my first Medium story about Simily on January 16th.

The tone was energetic and hopeful.

It started with “I want this kid to grow up and become something amazing.”

I meant it.

About a week later, after getting the chance to use the platform and observe its activity better, I posted the second story:

I listed several core issues linked to the platform. It did well on Medium — I became a Top Writer for the “Simily” tag— and, as you can tell from the comments, many others agreed with my analysis and conclusions.

The optimism was gone… but some hope remained.

Now, for the third story, I’ll address what I think has the potential to send Simily to the virtual trash can of the internet. Quite soon as well.

The Problem

• Simily crashes all the freaking time!

• Ever since they approached 2000 members, the website keeps crashing randomly, making it almost impossible to use properly.
• I created a group on the platform, and although I could see new members joining and that they were posting in the group’s discussion area, I could not read their stories, nor reply to them for the longest time. No, I did not refresh like crazy, I have other things going on in my life that I need to focus on rather than wait for Simily’s servers to work. It just so happened that whenever I had time to check Simily, the platform would crash when I wanted to read the stories.
• Did Simily grow lately? Yes, about 800 new members since my last story in January.
• Are these technical issues normal? Yes and no. “Yes”, for new or small websites that see an unexpected growth in traffic, and boom, their shared server crashes. “No”, if you portray your business as a platform that wants to deal with complex user behavior and relies on that user activity to make money and pay its collaborators. This should be what you wished and prepared for, not something that happens to you overnight and you just then attempt to figure out a solution.
• Is it fixable? Of course, but no one in the Simily core team — whoever they are, transparency is not their main trait — seems to prioritize this issue.
• Don’t get me wrong, I understand what it’s like to want to achieve a certain goal and have technology screw everything up for you. I remember this one time when me and my collaborators were organizing a workshop and because of a server failure, we weren’t able to message participants core details about the event. It was embarrassing, it compromised the event, and we were fuming. Not much that we could do about it at that moment either. But we fixed it soon and that situation never happened to us again. Also, when it happened, we were posting a lot about the matter on our social media channels, to let people know what was happening and that we were handling the problem.
• No one seems to give a damn at Simily. Ever since the website crashed big time back in January, everything seems breezy on Simily’s social media accounts. No mention of the ongoing tech issues… I don’t like managers with “meh” attitudes.

It’s a no-brainer. If writers won’t be able to post comfortably, and readers won’t be able to browse the content in a relaxed and reliable manner, no one’s going to pay for the memberships. No memberships, no payments, no platform. We’ve analyzed this before.

I’m keeping my account over there for now. Maybe miracles do happen. I still think a publishing platform that is focused on fiction is needed in the online environment. But I am not posting any new stories there until they fix the core features, that’s for sure.

“Wait and see” mode activated.

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