mrmr launched at one university before it launched at two. That was not a growth strategy, it was the only thing that worked.
The same software, three different products
An anonymous feed changes character entirely with size, and nothing in the code changes with it:
- ~100 people. It is a group chat.
- ~1,000 people. It is a newspaper.
- 10,000 strangers. It is a sewer.
Only the boundary moved.
Scope does the work a filter cannot
Restricting the feed to a single campus handles moderation in a way no classifier has managed for me. Everyone posting is someone you could plausibly stand next to in a queue tomorrow, and that fact alone removes most of what makes anonymity grim.
Anonymity is fine. Anonymity plus no shared future is the problem.
It also makes the cold start finite. You do not need a million users, you need about two hundred at one school, and you can get those by standing in a canteen.
What it costs
Every new campus is a fresh cold start with no leverage from the last one. The network effects do not compound across schools, which is the whole point and also the bill.
I have not solved that. So far it has been worth paying.