A Confession
Many of you might have noticed that I’ve hardly blogged in this precious space of mine that I’m so proud of for the past year.
There are many factors to my negligence to this space.
I was preoccupied with a relationship that have now ended on a bad note. I deleted the post on Dayre because he saw it, came to talk to me and gave me the closure I wanted.
It’s been a month now, and I think I can say I’m ok now. I did spend a whole day being super miserable about it. And another few days feeling super angry and unjust. But I think I’m slowly finding peace with myself. Memories still haunt me but I guess with time they will retreat to the archives of my brain.
I guess I just have to have better judgement in future.
And yes, Dayre.
That’s where I have been regularly updating for the past 2 years. And I’m sure many of you have heard of how the owner of Dayre have decided to close it down after a feeble attempt at fundraising through a sticker sale.
The news has been nothing but upsetting within the Dayre community. Dayre have been a space for many to rant and share easily. It’s like a blog with Instagram and Twitter capabilities all in one. One can just update on the go as and when. And as its name suggests, Dayre is like a dairy, all posts are sorted by date. You can look back and see what happened on the day itself.
It’s unfiltered, raw and real.
Unlike a proper blog where everything is curated. Maybe mine is not as carefully curated as others. But the effort in taking proper photos, having a proper thought process, making sure information and all are accurate… All the effort behind a proper blog post is different from micro-blogging.
Just like how I never shared about my relationships issue on my blog because sometimes emotions just come at that spark of the moment. Dayre allows me to just type out my thoughts in one line. But in a blog post, I must ensure that I have certain number of words, certain number of photos, certain number of outbound links etc.
It didn’t use to be like this. A blog used to be as personal as what Dayre was. But somehow with the popularity of social media and all, a blog has evolved to be a curated platform, just like Instagram. And I think that is a problem that is created by us, the users.
When the announcement was made that Dayre was closing. Many users were scattering to find an alternative and some even created a petition to try to save Dayre. It will be good if Dayre can remain. But I’m pretty sure that even if it’s bought over, the new investors would probably make changes etc and it might not be the same Dayre we love anymore.
Let’s be honest, if the app can be monetized, why would the current owners not do so?
For an example, Dayre Plus. The price point has been lowered from 128 USD to 37 USD but only 300 over users out of 50K active users are subscribed to it.
Another example, the sticker sale. The sticker set cost about 5 USD and only 700 USD was raised. Which makes only about 140 people who supported the sale. True, it might have better response if they let us know how much they need. But to be honest, how many of you have paid for stickers even before this Dayre crisis?
As a normal Dayre user, I’ve only previously purchase 1500 coins which was 14 USD and supported the sticker sale at 5 USD. That’s 19 USD I’ve contributed to the app while using it since end 2013 though I was only more active on it in 2015.
I could probably buy more stickers etc but the Dayre team is not really working on their stickers set like Line app etc. I spent a substantial amount on Line stickers and themes. And I don’t even use it as much as Dayre. So, this is two-way to be honest. You need to let the users have a way to support the app through viable means.
Like the original creator of Dayre said, the app was created for users. We all love it and enjoyed using it. But to say the cruel truth, the demise of Dayre is because of us, the users.
We weren’t that willing to pay for the extra features for Dayre when it was well and running. And now when it’s closing, all of us suddenly wants to crowdfund to keep the app alive? I’m sorry to say, things don’t work that way. Even if someone were to buy the app, will they see enough value to even invest?
I still do hope Dayre can somehow survive because I love the community for how it is. The support and encouragement that strangers gave to each other. Those are priceless. And I’m thankful for that.
It had been awhile since I’ve written so much. But I think I need to remind myself this is my own space. I don’t have to upload photos if I don’t want to. I can write however I like. If you want to read the beauty/ travel related stuff, you can click on the categories on the sidebar and ignore personal posts as such.
And with that, I will try to update more in this space of mine moving forward. Because I neglected it way too long. It’s not the same as Dayre but this was where I originally started. And of course, I still have Twitter as my ranting space. I mean, that’s why I had 42K tweets till date. But I did tweet a lot lesser after Dayre.
Oh wells…
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