The One-Woman Dev Team Diaries #185
Going viral on TikTok (and other social media platforms) again, dealing with performance issues, and delivering my final conference talk (for now). 👀
Going Viral on TikTok Again
I was in Chicago last week for RubyConf, about to head out to a special dinner with friends. I did a quick check of the app and things seemed a little slow. I toggled over to our analytics dashboard and saw that our traffic was about double what it normally is. Not so strange around this time of the year, but I took note.
Partway through dinner, I checked my phone to find Rob had sent the team this chart:
We’d had an uptick in signups the last few days but now we were approaching 25k new signups in a single day, ten times more than the usual! 😳
Turns out this TikTok post, a stitch on another popular video from a couple days prior, was poppin’ off:
And, across a range of social media platforms, some other posts were blowing up too. By the end of the week, we’d surpassed 3 million registered users and 13.5k Plus subscribers! 🥳
Oh, and I just thought to check: We’re currently Number 6 (ahead of Goodreads!) on the US App Store Books iPhone chart:
StoryGraph Is Run By A Black Woman
A key part of the message of these popular posts is: “StoryGraph is run by a black woman, so you should use it.”
Of course I'm grateful for all and any support, and I love inspiring and rallying people, especially those who look like me, but I do struggle with the idea of people feeling like they have to use StoryGraph just because I'm black.
I decided to deal with it the way I did when we exploded a week after George Floyd's murder and there was an outpouring of support for black creators: Don’t worry about why they came initially. What's important is that they stay because the product is excellent and provides value for them! Focus on that! ✨
Performance Woes
The app struggled under the new load. At first we thought we’d found the main issue — network bandwidth on our servers — but that wasn't the case.
Now we're concerned that the app isn't going to be where we need it to be performance-wise for the January 1st rush. I've rearranged my priorities this week, with fast queries and speedy page loads shooting to the top.
It's not all bad though! We had several dozen Goodreads imports running simultaneously, and earlier this year, before our database migration, we would have had to turn them off for the app to be usable. So, not all of our work so far has been in vain - we're making progress! 💪🏾
Closing Keynote
I was in Chicago to deliver the closing keynote for the conference.
(The StoryGraph is built in Ruby on top of a framework called Ruby on Rails.)
I gave the final instalment of my "Dee Bug" Ruby Mystery Story trilogy of talks. To make it extra special, I included a surprise cameo from Ruby's creator, Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto.
Not only was this a fitting end to the series and the conference, it was a fitting end to my speaking journey.
Now, I'm not saying I'm never doing a conference talk again (Never say never! Plus, I'm going to give this talk again at Brighton Ruby next year because I'll be there anyway and Andy asked nicely...). But I'm certainly taking an indefinite break from producing new talks and speaking at conferences.
I put a huge amount of work into my talks and I don't think the benefits outweigh the costs any longer, especially with regards to time taken away from StoryGraph work or time for myself, my friends, and my family!
I'll be keeping an eye out for remote or in-person interviews, panels, fireside chats...the sort of thing where the prep I have to do is minimal.
Since Last Time and For Next Time…
I really thought I'd be able to get more work done in Chicago. Alas! 😔
Work on the Paused feature has been unintentionally paused, as is the case with a bunch of other features. I didn't even get started on implementing the redesigns. 😅
I did do a bunch of automation work on our Giveaways platform though, in advance of our official launch later this year/early next year. Beyond finishing up a couple of things on that today before a new set go live tomorrow, the focus for the next two weeks will be:
Performance
Implementing the new designs
Improving the UX of the mobile apps
Five weeks to go!! 😬
What I'm reading
I've had Anthony Horowitz’s Magpie Murders sitting on my Kobo for a couple years now. I was on the plane home, having just finished a book (Luster for The Stacks Pod Book Club if you wanna know), and decided to start it on a whim. It's so fun!! I needed that. Can't wait to see how it all unfolds. (Please don’t message me about it until I’m done!)
Have a great week,
Nadia