What launched Dribbble into a high orbit was a combination of three things.
1. It was really well executed. It didn't just look good, it has zero friction in use. The UX was flawless. You'd think "I wonder if I can do this", click where it would logically belong and, lo and behold, that thing was there and it worked exactly as you'd expect. It was, to use pg's qualifier, delightful.
2. It was seeded with top-tier designers from the start whom Dan was able to recruit because he was well-known in respective circles. If I were to try and reproduce this, it won't work no matter who good the site was, simply because I am nobody with no street rep.
3. Invitation-only system that was completely closed to the public in the beginning. All you'd see are "leaked" screenshots on sites like PatternTap from the member of the cool boys club, and they looked spectacular. So when they allowed public in, still with no way to post, the whole thing just took off - it already had the community that was massively appealing and it was flattering to become a part of it. Invites were golden, the hype was over the top.
Regrettably, after it was sold to Tiny/Meta the quality of the site took a nose dive. They keep pushing out questionable "improvements" that clearly aim to improve their engagement stats rather than to be actually useful to the members. They reworked Pro accounts, bloating them with very niche and largely useless features and using that to raise the prices. What used to be an annual $20 no-brainer tip to Dan and Rich for their great job become an obnoxious $60/year subscription. They were getting an earful with every such improvement, so they now disable comments on every new announcement. I really wish Dan was back an the helm. He and Rich showed very unusual levels of restraint and common sense, and they did in fact listen to the people rather their analytics numbers.
> it won't work no matter who good the site was, simply because I am nobody with no street rep.
Sadly this is the case so many times when I read these types of articles with hopes of real insights. There's some mention like "so I was talking to my friend who founded Huge Startup and he was like 'yea, great idea!'. So I built my prototype and sent it off to other person from Hot Unicorn and it just grew organically because of my hard work and smarts!"
What launched Dribbble into a high orbit was a combination of three things.
1. It was really well executed. It didn't just look good, it has zero friction in use. The UX was flawless. You'd think "I wonder if I can do this", click where it would logically belong and, lo and behold, that thing was there and it worked exactly as you'd expect. It was, to use pg's qualifier, delightful.
2. It was seeded with top-tier designers from the start whom Dan was able to recruit because he was well-known in respective circles. If I were to try and reproduce this, it won't work no matter who good the site was, simply because I am nobody with no street rep.
3. Invitation-only system that was completely closed to the public in the beginning. All you'd see are "leaked" screenshots on sites like PatternTap from the member of the cool boys club, and they looked spectacular. So when they allowed public in, still with no way to post, the whole thing just took off - it already had the community that was massively appealing and it was flattering to become a part of it. Invites were golden, the hype was over the top.
Regrettably, after it was sold to Tiny/Meta the quality of the site took a nose dive. They keep pushing out questionable "improvements" that clearly aim to improve their engagement stats rather than to be actually useful to the members. They reworked Pro accounts, bloating them with very niche and largely useless features and using that to raise the prices. What used to be an annual $20 no-brainer tip to Dan and Rich for their great job become an obnoxious $60/year subscription. They were getting an earful with every such improvement, so they now disable comments on every new announcement. I really wish Dan was back an the helm. He and Rich showed very unusual levels of restraint and common sense, and they did in fact listen to the people rather their analytics numbers.
* A Dribbble member since 2010.