The state of followmy.tv, past, present and future.
First of all, thank you for all the users that still use followmy.tv up to today! I love how active the users are in our community. Followmy.tv would never existed without our awesome users. And a special thanks to all of the users that donated, without you guys/girls followmy.tv would not be possible to maintain. And I'm grateful for having built a website that is used by 10s of thousands users worldwide daily.
Second, and the most important thing, we as the staff of followmy.tv have to say 3 important words to our users "We are sorry". We are sorry for being inactive this long, we are sorry for features that were promised but never came, we are sorry for not answering support tickets in time.
Now that those are out of the way, lets explain what is going on with followmy.tv, what the future holds and what the reality is.
Followmy.tv was founded 3 years ago as a side project by Jasper and me, we had big dreams, dreams like "We will have 1 million users", "I hope we can work for followmy.tv full time", "I hope followmy.tv becomes profitable enough for us to hire additional staff". None of these dreams came true so far, but I still dream of at least making one of those dreams reality.
Currently the state of followmy.tv is that we are in a hibernation state, the website is working stable, we are still growing daily with an average of 30 signups / day with over 30% active users. We have awesome crew members that moderate and add content daily. But all of this is overshadowed by the fact that our core developers are not developing any new features or are very slow in answering support tickets. Ofcourse this is unacceptable and I hope we can change this in the future.
Of course we do not do this by choice but the sad fact is, we just don't have enough free time to assign to followmy.tv to handle all of the feature requests and/or support tickets. We both have full time day jobs, we both have relationships, we both have a lot of other responsibilities that are more important that followmy.tv. Followmy.tv started as a side project and is still a side project.
The last update to followmy.tv was almost 2 years ago, but we have been doing a lot of development since then. Currently followmy.tv runs on an older version of the CakePHP framework, the moment CakePHP 2.x came out we started re building followmy.tv from the ground up resulting in a much more stable and faster website. This development project has been going on for over a year now and we are close but not close enough to release it to production. This is the reason why there are no features being released to the live website because we would have to build them twice, for the old site and the new site.
One of the biggest requests is the API and the mobile application. I have been working on the API for over a year now and it is complete for about 75%. But due to lacking free time to work on it, it has been delayed immensely. We were also working on a complete new redesign of the website which we scrapped for now because that was going to take too much time to complete now. All in all, the new version of followmy.tv is very close to be finished but not yet. Its the last push and testing phase that is taking a lot of time, and currently we both have almost zero time to commit to followmy.tv.
Financially followmy.tv is costing us a considerate amount monthly to keep it in the air, the combination of ads and donations is just not bringing enough cash in to cover all the costs, let alone hiring software developers to develop for us.
How does the future of followmy.tv look like?
This is unclear, one thing I'm completely 100% sure off though, followmy.tv will keep existing as long as I'm existing. Its my biggest software passion and will always be my biggest passion. Some things have to change though, our crew has to be more active. I personally vouch that once I'm settled in in my new home (I'm in the middle of moving to a different country) I will make more free time to work on followmy.tv.
We will also start looking for extra developers / designer within our community that share our passion and want to help out and want the opportunity to make followmy.tv better.
If you are a software developer with a lot of experience in CakePHP (or PHP in general) or if you are an awesome UI designer, please drop us an email on info@followmy.tv.
I hope you (the awesome user) accept my apology, and I hope you will keep using our website and have the patience. We really appreciate every one of you that use our website daily, weekly or just once.
Cheers, Jelle
Comments
Please don't apologize! This site functions well (in my experience) and it is honestly one of the best websites I've been apart of. I use it constantly and even have it on my bookmarks tab up at the top of my screen. Thank you for helping me keep my tv watching organized! I'm looking forward to seeing what kinds of updates you guys make, but if they don't come for another two years, I won't complain. This site is fantastic as it is and I thank you for bringing it to us. :)
No worries, we love what you've done for us & I for one have had no complaints about the site since I started using it.
I agree completely with other responses. The site may not have seen jumps forward in recent years but it is a fantastic tools and does exactly what I need it to!
Thanks for the heads-up! I have to repeat what others have said, I've grown so used to using the site that I don't even appreciate it anymore, yet it's one of my favorite places on the internet, one of the few I have no gripes with.
The site may have not changed much since April 2011, when I joined, but I honestly can't think of anything that would significantly improve it.
Kudos and thank you for running this place because I rarely experience any hiccups and I haven't noticed a single downtime. I look forward to future improvements (the API is great news) and I wish you all the best, guys!
Followmy.tv is one of the best "tv-watching" sites! I really would be lost in my series if I didn't start using this the site. If I could help with software developing, I would, but... I just wish you, guys, good luck with this site 'cause if it shuts down, it would be a BIG loss for all tv-shows lovers. Keep up the good work and... Good luck (2).
You guys are doing great, I use this site daily and it's the best of its kind. 1 million users, I could definitely see that happening, followmy.tv just hasn't gotten viral yet.
I would like to donate, but I don't do creditcards. If iDeal would be one of the options in the future, I will donate immediately! This site is too good to be completely free if you ask me.
Good luck with the rest of the development, I'm really looking forward to the app myself, but the API might be useful to me as well in a few years.
EDIT: I just realised I've been using this site for 2 years now... Wow! And I never felt the need for change, it's great the way it is. (although now that I know you guys are developing again, I wouldn't mind a few new features ;p Like a spoiler button! Instead of having to input the code yourself, because new users often don't realise that that is a possibility)
I wish I could help somehow but I have no clue about computer stuff, but I hope everything works out fine. Just keep it up!!
(PS no new design needed, loving this one the best)
no apologies, your site is really good!
followmy.tv stands!
no need for apology! thanks for this amazing site, i've been running it since beta and its better then all the rest out there!
Got me worried that it was going to close... XD
phewww
I just love this site and I'll stand by you whatever will happen. Just keep going !
Hey no apology's needed friend,for something free we cannot demand a thing imo.
Only thing i know is that without followmy.tv i would be lost with everything i watch...
There is no good alternative to this site!
Oh god I was so scared you guys would close down the place. I love the website the way it is and I hope it can stay up :D Followmytv is the only way I can keep track of all my shows and makes looking a million shows in one time way more easy.
So keep up the good work :D
Seconding @nico23 here: Open source this thing!
I'll start learning PHP immediately! See you in a couple of months! Jokes aside, thanks for this and thanks for years of organized tv-watching already :)
I could not keep track of all shows without this site. Thank you so much for keeping it up. I use it every day.
We love U!
Thanks for all your work, I use the site everyday, and I couldn't miss it, and you guys do what you can so don't worry
I must agree on the comments below! NEVER EVER SCARE US LIKE THAT! The response towards us as community has come late, but I suppose better late than never. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for all the work, guys! Sure there are some things that I would like to see, but the site runs like a charm right now and as long as that is the case don't sweat it and just do what you can do. We all know that some things in life can be more important than this site. Keep it up!