Forrst, the Tumblr-esque blogging platform for developers, started out as a side project for Kyle Bragger that took off on its own, and through a referral system and occasional whip-cracking it’s evolved into a robust community. Founder Kyle Bragger popped into another tight-knit web community–Reddit’s Ask Me Anything forum–to say hi to his fans this afternoon after users expressed interest in picking his brain.
Forrst was “originally a Pinboard/Delicious style utility for code and design. It was stupid simple but had a following model that inadvertently sparked the community growth,” Mr. Bragger writes.
He also drops some inside info about New York’s more niche revenue-generating social media start-up. “How much cash do you generate?” one user asked. “Last month we made ~$13k. It’s been growing month over month,” Mr. Bragger said, although he says Forrst is not profitable yet. MOst of that revenue comes from paid accounts and on-site transactions, he said.
Forrst just hit 40 percent “active users” accessing the site per month, where the account is at least 30 days old and the user creates some content, he said.
Mr. Bragger also did some signposting: “Working on slimming down the UI and trimming features that suck or are underused. Working on closing some sponsorship deals that could make us profitable overnight. Also have plans to roll out company accounts (for agencies and such) and a revamp of Forrst.me (which ended up being pretty successful for us).”
