
Reeling It In: A Social Network for Anglers Won 7M Users (2018) - kamphey
https://www.forbes.com/sites/heatherfarmbrough/2018/12/17/reeling-in-how-a-social-network-for-sports-fishing-won-7m-users/#657270193b89
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Tronno
I wish they had gone more in-depth on what strategies they used to grow the
social network in the early days. I have a feeling that's relevant to a lot of
folks on this site.

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llamataboot
Yes, the chicken and the egg problem seems huge - both for user acquisition
and retention. I have at least 30 ideas that would be great "if a lot of
people were using it" :D

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tapland
Fishbrain is great. Used it a few years ago and being able to see where people
fish and what they catch with what lure saves me a lot of time since I seldom
get out to the water.

Also friendly comments on catches =)

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lawnchair_larry
This seems like a bad thing from a conservation standpoint. 10 years ago,
there was natural rare limiting due to the high time investment and
knowledge/skill floor required to locate and catch fish. You’d have to trade
tips with others you ran into around the area, and half of the time it was
probably misdirection. Now, everything is just swarmed directly and overfished
quickly.

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danmaz74
It's great to see that it's still possible to create specialised social
networks outside of Facebook...

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lawnchair_larry
The older fishermen I know (small sample) _really_ hate this. They say their
usual spots that they and other locals in their community have worked out
after decades are now blown out, overcrowded and overfished.

The new generation seems to have this thing where they don’t feel that it’s
necessary to put in the work to earn things like this, and shout them down for
“gatekeeping”.

I see the older view of it, but I’m not sure how legitimate that is.

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osrec
I assume the older generation would not hesitate to pass on their spot
information to their kids or grandkids for free. In a sense, they ARE
gatekeeping a resource they probably don't even own. I personally don't think
this is fair.

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anitil
I gate keep a few spots. I've spent hundreds of hours exploring different
spots, and worked out the timing of certain species to within a couple of days
at a specific section of reef at a certain time of day.

Given that, I have two (slightly contradictory) thoughts: 1) Most people
fishing a spot don't understand enough to make it work, so just knowing the
spot is basically irrelevant 2) I have worked hard 'my' spots and simply don't
feel the need to share.

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osrec
You not sharing is your prerogative, and that's cool. However, if someone else
was to turn up and use that spot; perhaps even "discover" it for themselves, I
don't think you should feel any ill will towards them, right? I mean, it's a
public space, and as long as they're being respectful, I don't see a problem
with many people enjoying it. Sometimes good things get crowded, but that's
the nature of public stuff - I don't think it's fair to claim public areas as
your personal area just because you found it first.

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jpswade
Interesting because the common thinking is that "The Facebook of X" is
Facebook.

Is Facebook finally losing its stronghold? Possibly.

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GoRudy
A lot of facebook for x communities have existed for years before facebook
did. Think back to the original vbulletin type forums, many of which still
exist in some capacity today.

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jbarberu
I hang at least weekly on bimmerfest to find help with whatever is troubling
my 16 year old car. I think there is huge value in having these highly
specific forums where all the people who know their stuff hang out. It
implicitly also means you don't get a bunch of <!bmw> owners yelling at us to
go f*ck ourselves, which you might on reddit or facebook...

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Scoundreller
At least with facebook, we can count on them never deleting the photos for
step-by-step DIY jobs, unlike multiple image hosts of the past.

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jezclaremurugan
Misleading title - this doesn't go into the "how" part at all.

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b3orn
I've seen this often, maybe there is a need for a new law, "Any article with a
headline claiming how something was done is not about how but that it was
done". Compare with Betteridge's law of headlines, "Any headline that ends in
a question mark can be answered by the word no".

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dang
We wrote software to strip a lot of leading Hows out of titles. It doesn't
work perfectly, unfortunately, but on balance I think it improves title
quality.

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lotophage
> The aim is to make Fishbrain the most popular angling app not just globally,
> but in every country as well.

What?

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darkwizard42
I think this implies that while there may be a general global community, they
want to help it take off and form more local communities.

Imagine, Reddit vs. /r/cityNameHere (a little too generic maybe)

