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.
Good suggestions, and I will say, that from my perspective I absolutely agree with reduction of channels.
It's a balance between that, and satisfying the many who conversely seem to demand that we are available by whatever channels they prefer.
Also, there is still an outstanding need to market, promote and fundraise, which is better suited to other channels.
Finally, our devs, are sheltered. We keep them away from this. I often wish I could put my head down, headphones on and crunch away some more too. But it's a balance.
I'm resigned to the idiom that we won't please all the people all the time. But I'll try.