Hey Patreon
This is an open letter from a disappointed creator.
I’ve been asking for a simple translation of your website since 3 years now. When I first asked I got the answer “it is on our agenda”, now, after 3 years of waiting I see, that this was just a farce. Why is it not possible to simply translate your website to other languages, to make it easier for creators to grow their audience, and even more important, their supporters to fund their idols?
You are the world leading platform of this type of crowdfunding! With all those creators on your platform it should be enough money to REALLY IMPROVE the website and your tools, instead we got a half baked live-sharing function like Patreon Lense. Wow! Really?!
It’s so buggy, laggy and with the 15 seconds a bad joke for all those, who ever used instagram and other sharing tools. Why the f*** is it so impossible for a company your size, and with all the money you get from the audience of us, YOUR CREATORS, every month, to pay coders for developing a good(!!) app for this? I really don’t get it. Why is it so impossible to build a simple instagram clone?
You can’t rotate the text? You only have ridiculous 15 seconds? 15 seconds? Is there no money for bigger servers, or is the app too bad for handling bigger data? Video is not starting automatically a next video when end is reached? The app is crushing every second time when adding text to a photo? You can’t implement anything else than text?
Really, Patreon Lens feels like an alpha test, and not a bonus tool, which really improves the tools.
Maybe you will tell us now, that this is just a bonus feature. Yes, sure. But let’s face it: Influencer and the most of your creators still use instagram stories, because patreon-lens is just too bad for really make a use out of it. And because we just talk about it: The implemention on the website is simply ugly. Really, I have a bigger view on my cellphone! Why the hell is it not showing the videos and photos in fullscreen? Well, maybe just another bonus feature…
Why is it so impossible for a company as big as yours, to translate a website into other languages? It shouldn’t be! Because you are earning money with it, and I guess you lost a lot of people to tippee and other platforms, because they already have different languages available.
But maybe you may say, that this is not your focus. Yes, well, but: What is?
The website? Really? With GetVocl now (after 4 years) the second try (after the chargable crowdcast) of outsourcing live-stream launched. Why there has not been any try to build an own live streaming system? Or at least to implement a big player third party tool like twitch on your website?
Not speaking of the overall clarity, or the 2004 design of the website…
Instead of developing new patreon-plans for earning even more money with your biggest creators, save the money on this and invest it in more urgent stuff, like the not very clear and even not very modern website, streaming tools, translations or the not very useful patreon lens.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like the idea of Patreon, and I really want to support the first ones, who had this great idea. I really appreciate this option for me and my crowd, but at this moment, I don’t see any efforts from your site to really improve your platform. The money for that should be right at your hands!
I hope that you all wake up, before the competetion outranges you. I can only speak for myself, but if there would be another site who would give me the feature to interact more with my audience, and who would provide their services also in other languages, I would be gone by tomorrow.
Long story short:
Please focus on important things, like the interaction of the creators with their audiences, and PLEASE re-invest the money you gain in your website and the tools.