http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3933327

It’s only relatively recently that you (Francis) and mySociety have become focussed on commercial projects.

Most of your points boil down to “we didn’t run it like a commercial company” – we gave up, we weren’t focussed on money or on users’s self-interest, we didn’t develop a clear marketing message, we didn’t hire specialist copywriters (and you miss the important point that GroupOn also has to pay tons of people to negotiate its business deals).

So no, PledgeBank didn’t become a *commercial* success, but it would have been pretty amazing if it had given that no-one at mySociety was trying to turn it into one.

You should split your “did we fail” question into two parts:

(1) Has anyone done better than PledgeBank at developing a non-profit, socially focussed version of the pledge model?

(2) Was mySociety wrong not to spot the commercial potential of the idea, and drop its non-profit ethos in order to pursue PledgeBank ruthlessly as a startup?

My view is that in terms of (1) PledgeBank largely succeeded, in terms of (2), sure, it failed.

But to achieve (2) would have required an enormous culture change within the organisation at the time, several years before startups became the hip thing to do.

You say you didn’t hide the conditionality, as if perhaps you should; Martin’s comment implies that on the contrary you should have made it even more obvious. If one were going to go that way, I still like my suggested improved wording – ‘I will X, but I can’t do it unless …’ (facetiously I also suggested a drop-down with alternatives ‘but I can’t be bothered / afford it unless …’)

I think there are other things. It doesn’t look as if you ever hired a professional site designer. A good design besides making it more inviting could make it much clearer what the value of the site is and how to use it well. Even now, one of the ‘successes’ on the front page right now has only one comment, from one of the signers: ‘I am confused by the process……..but the intention is clear.’

I now work for an organisation which is vaguely similar, but where there is a startling number of people whose main function is to keep in touch with users (and groups of potential users), raising the profile with them of (whatever the project is), getting feedback, improving the documentation, getting coverage in various places, etc. I’d never thought about this before but the importance of it seems obvious now, and I’m not sure if MySoc had (or has) such people. And yes, in this case, that job might have included writing or drafting some pledges. It’s a mistake to worry that this makes the site unscaleable. However big the site grows, the number of pledges that are visible to the casual visitor / worth writing press releases about / etc does not grow in proportion but is fixed in scale.

Having said all that, it’s a lot better than it was last time I looked (a few years ago), at least in one way – all the pledges on the front page are more or less sensible ones that make reasonably good use of the site. A far cry from the days of things like ‘I will cherish my children and be nice to them, but only if 10 others will do the same’, which once clogged the place up. I don’t know if this is due to a better system for picking out pledges that are shown or if people are using it better, but either way it’s a big improvement.

And the Barnet thing is great news – I’m particularly pleased since it’s my native borough and my infant and junior schools are both on the front page at the moment :-) It’s also a clearer and better design than the main site, so perhaps that will do some good.