Forum vs' LinkedIn

Given that the question has been asked a couple of times on Twitter and I know feedback was requested, I figured I'd write up my own thoughts on this here as trying to tweet feedback is a bit of a limiting exercise and hardly expansive.

First thought is that Kashflow is a commercial product with two types of customer... The resellers (ie: Accountants, etc..) and end-users (ie: small businesses, etc...)

Resellers, whilst there may be a certain amount of cross communication, are competitors so many of the sorts of information I might expect to see in a community forum are unlikely to take place here (or anywhere else frankly) simply because often that information is going to be the sort that provides something of an edge or indicates how well business is going (or isn't). As a result I can't really see Resellers using or benefiting from it... That is purely a laymans perspective though so chip in if you feel differently.


End-users are a different kettle of fish but in this instance I'd say the fact that support are incredibly dilligent, quick and able to answer queries means that any kind of community forum doesn't really get off the ground. Often a forum gets used as a self-help spot for when support is offline (out of hours, or whatever) but as near as I can tell, that's almost never with Kashflow so there's little if any need.

Thinking about it, it's possible that support could use the forums to provide something of a FAQ or just post up blog like about common problems but I suspect that would dilute the message that support@kashflow is the primary contact point, and that wouldn't be a positive thing.

Even the "love in" aspect of Kashflow, where customer wax lyrical about how great it is, etc... isn't really very prevalent now as there's the whole registration, confirm, log-in, then post hoo-ha to go through and frankly twitter, facebook, etc.. are perfectly suited for that and considerably less hassle.


About the only place I see forums really being the best point of contact is with regard to development, and by that I mean everything from new features provided by the Kashflow code monkeys, to API improvements and of course third party integrations or updates.

The only problem with the third party aspect is one I've seen elsewhere with commercial projects. Invariably there's no opensource style community collaboration, but instead much more commercial development, where the likely posters won't post because they've worked their butts off to create a product that pays the bills. It's counter intuitive to suggest they'll post or engage with other developers if they're likely to give away the farm (ie: hard won intel) unless they feel particularly confident that it's of little value.


Overall, I'd love to say the forum has it's place... It does for me as I'm happy enough sharing the odd code nugget or seeing where others have gotten stuck with opensource projects. I have my doubts that it's really got much of a future though.


As for LinkedIn... Why bother? It's become a subscription based add-on style social game and more useful for those more prone to patting themselves on the back than those actually getting on with their business and making it work. With all the registration, logging on, etc... required I'd be just as inclined to give it the same chances as the forum to be honest.

Perhaps it's time to look further afield or allow the existing status quo...



Anyone else got any thoughts?

I'd love to see some idea of what's being looked at for future developments and some way of voting for suggestions, so users could have a bit of input and know what's in the pipeline. I'm sure it would make the forum a bit more active. Free month for best suggestion? Most persistent request?

A bit of coverage on the API's might be good - I only recently found Permalink. And now just working my way through the Online Payment process.

Would a Handy Hints section or sticky be of use? There has been a few nuggets of info hidden in some of the posts that might be handy for people.

With all the KF users there must be a wealth of knowledge out there........

Sorry my earlier post was at a bit of a tangent to the main point.

I've never used LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc but do visit another business forum, but mainly lurk.

I've started to keep an eye on the KF blog as there's some interesting comments from users on there.

I'm guessing it must be a major job to keep all the 'outlets' up to date? I did wonder does it dilute it by having lots of places with the info?

When I first looked at account packages I spent a lot of time looking at all the forums (if this is v4 of the forum it was possibly v1) and it was one of the deciding factors in choosing KF.

I like a good forum.

I will keep visiting and try to post more here than 'there' Hopefully D W P will never venture this way!

These social networking sites is somehow beneficial in getting to users to our site.

In what way beneficial?

For a forum like this, I would have thought the only way for it to be useful is with interaction between it's users and creators. A year later and I've still not used Linked In or Facebook etc.

There does seem to be less and less action going on in this bit of the forum though which is a shame.

Hi Katie, thanks for your response, though this is on the hidden Suggestions board so not many people are going to be able to join in. (Any chance it can be made live again?)

Hopefully that would encourage a few more conversations and ideas