Hi all,
I want to clarify a couple of things.
We are a small team, which is not an excuse, just fact.
We are trying to cover, and I'm sure I'll forget something,
1. Phone
2. Twitter
3. Facebook
4. Email
5. Reddit
6. (A lot of) forums
7. Skype
8. Webchat
It's quite a few channels, and I'm sure that we can improve. We are not a help desk team, we are developers and business people. I personally would be ashamed of fronting our fledgling company with inexperienced help desk people charged with making reassuring but meaningless responses!
You are trying to do too much with too little. Cover one communication channel, and one channel only. Drop the Skype, Webchat, Facebook, Phone, (Lot of Forums) and get one simple place you can stay in touch. Run your own simple discussion forum or just use Reddit. Period. I understand you are very talented and have a great track record, and I'm as excited about swarm as anyone, but you are freaking me the heck out concerning your abilities to pull this off by focusing on a 8+ channels of communication with 3 dudes that can't get back in touch using a single one of them. It's screaming style over substance (Like that 24/7 chat room that is empty). PLEASE cut out all of this and just stick to either your own forum, or better yet JUST stick to reddit (So you don't have to actually run the forum yourself). Nothing else. Screw the twitter, facebook, Skype, etc.. until you actually have a product and not just our money. In the meantime, keep in touch non-stop, but one channel of communication, and skip the chatrooms. Honestly. If your developers have time at this point in the project to chat to anyone who drops into the skype lounge, then please let me have my Bitcoin back. Because those are not the developers I thought I was funding.
EDIT: I don't mean to be harsh. Sorry if I sound that way. Maybe instead of Reddit, just use this thread here. Keep it simple. Answer everyones questions in one go. :-)
EDIT2: Maybe just pick a time of day questions will be answered as well IE: 10am each day, all the questions from the previous day will be address. It's a simple way to wait until everything has been asked, and that way people know when to expect and answer, and you get a chance to carefully think through each answer so it's comprehensive, well composed and clear. Also it will cut down on needing to answer the same "Whats the golden ticket?" question that gets asked over and over. And People can be refered to earlier answers if they are being repetitive. You can then just compile each daily answer into an FAQ that gts uploaded to the site. So you don't have to answer old questions more then once, you just say, "See FAQ". Simple.