About the current state of Cara—
Hi all, I’d like to address some users' concerns about Cara’s stability, algorithms and reach, and why we don’t actively promote Cara and recruit new users.
I have touched on most of these before through other posts, but I’ll like to go over the main points and put them in one place since they often come up as recurring questions:
— Cara’s longevity/stability
> "A few weeks ago, after learning how much Jingna was struggling with her personal life, I thought, If something happens and this website shuts down for some reason, my online presence will die because I don't have any other social media."
You are right that I am not a multi-billion, or even multi-million corporation like other social media companies. I am an individual. But I have had my photography business for 20 years, and taken it to a place where people did not expect of me. I think I can safely say that I am good at committing myself to things I care about and doing a good job.
People have said we won’t be able to launch a platform like Cara before we launched, but we did. Then they said I’d quit in a few months, but it’s been 3 years. And then people said that only a few hundred people would use Cara, but we grew to over a million. I believe the results of my work and capabilities speak for themselves, and will continue to do so.
In terms of health, I knew that posting about it could have an averse effect on confidence in the platform. But I accumulated these health issues because I was working on Cara. I wanted to be transparent and share my thoughts on developing Cara and its progress—that includes not only the good, but also the toll it takes.
So while I understand the apprehension, I want to say that as an artist, I used to think I would remain on DeviantArt forever, until Facebook, and then I moved to Instagram. Other companies may change, but my track record speaks for itself.
— User traffic compared to Bluesky
> "I don't sell commissions to artists, which is Cara's user base and what I see getting the most sales here so I understand."
> "I can't yet say if Bluesky is good for me in terms of conversions because I just started, but the 450 followers I got on Bluesky in just a few weeks have clicked on my Patreon page more than the 4,500 followers I got on Cara"
Bluesky has close to 40 million users, according to Google. Cara has 1 million.
I know the comparison here is 450 followers to 4,500, but follower number isn't indicative of the full picture. Think about TikTok, and how you can have 50 followers but have posts that reach millions of views.
The size of a platform's user base and how posts are pushed to people who don’t follow you when there is an algorithmic feed makes a huge difference. To make a fair comparison, you have to consider those factors too.
What happens when you post to Cara right now is that we show your work to your 4500 followers in a regular, chronological feed. And when you post to Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, or other social platforms, instead of just your followers, it can potentially reach 40 million users on Bluesky, 1.5 billion active users on TikTok, and 3 billion active users on Instagram. And all of those people make up the potential audience who might click on your links.
Reach and engagement will always vary significantly between platforms depending on the system used to show posts to users, what stage it’s at, and the size of the user base.
Expecting to see a user base of 1 million to equate to 40 million in activity, in any form, is imo a stretch and somewhat unfair comparison.
TLDR: You cannot calculate the engagement rate on Cara the same way as you do other social platforms, when the mechanism of delivery, discovery, and size of the platforms are completely different.
— Algorithms & Reach
> "I don't feel like it's really welcoming to everyone. If someone only likes photography, but only sees anime when they join, it's kind of a bummer, and they'll just leave. If someone is really into traditional art and doesn't care about digital art, they might get tired after scrolling through a few minutes of content they don't like.
> "Even though Cara doesn't use an algorithm, I wish there were features similar to subreddits or Bluesky feeds, so users could navigate the website or app without needing to use the For You, Home, or Discover pages."
What you’re looking for is a recommendation algorithm which I have talked about before, but TLDR is yes, I agree there is a need for it, for the reasons you have stated.
People often complain about social media algorithms, with good reason. Many are valid criticisms about how platforms deploy them today and the habits they lead us into.
But what people sometimes fail to consider is that for many others browsing a platform, they often just want a feed that automatically shows them content they relate to. Or at minimum, a way to fine-tune their preferences and receive posts on their home feed that’s aligned with their interested topics.
Like your example of wanting to see photography versus not wanting to see anime, we had a new user who once signed up and immediately cancelled their coffee subscription, because of this exact scenario.
Viewers want to be able to easily find content they care about and to see less of things they don’t. Not having an algorithmically recommended feed is the biggest reason why people dropped off from Cara after we went viral. In a chronological timeline, if you only follow 2 people who post once a week, you’re going to have nothing new to see and no reason to return to Cara after one day.
So designing and building such a feed is necessary, but doing it carefully requires great engineers, designers, and full time staff that we don’t currently employ or have the money for. Which brings me to your next point:
— Fundraising & Finances
> "The problem is not getting capital for servers or even not getting more users."
Bluesky raised $15 million from a crypto VC when they grew, so they can afford to employ people full time. We don’t have that.
When we went viral last year, we looked at a range of options for raising funds and I laid out my considerations for each one in a post about Cara’s financial situation. But the moment I mentioned VCs, even with safeguards in place to legally protect ourselves and Cara’s vision, we faced intense backlash. Some new volunteers who joined during the traffic surge threatened to launch campaigns against us, some others harassed people I knew to get at me personally to do what they wanted.
These were vocal, active, and involved members of the artist community. It got so bad that one of our long-time staff became so afraid of saying or doing anything that they suffered a breakdown. I want to protect our team and make sure this doesn’t happen again.
The backlash affected me too. Up till very recently, I felt like I had to walk on eggshells any time I wanted to say anything. I’d compulsively write, rewrite, and rewrite again dozens and dozens of times. Each piece would take multiple days and I’d be unable to do anything else, and sometimes I still couldn’t let myself post in the end. This post took 12 hours.
You might think this seems excessive, but over the last 3 years, every single time we have gone viral on other platforms promoting Cara—something I was confident about and succeeded at—there would be art accounts who would take the opportunity not to only diss us (which they were entitled to), but also spread misinformation and make up false *criminal* allegations about me that dealt real damage, not only to Cara, but also my professional reputation that I’ve worked two decades to build as an artist. For that, I was less prepared for.
Because of what happened, it became difficult for us to add new volunteers. So the work on Cara has significantly reduced this past year compared to our first two as we reevaluated our vetting process.
Right now, we have 1 engineer who updates the mobile app regularly, for which I am extremely grateful. And when we have emergencies, our previous team members still come together to help out.
But working on an algorithmic feed and delivery system—that’s an entire different beast, and requires a significant amount of full time work to be done.
Recently, I’ve finally come to recognize that the best course of action to help make the team and I feel safe would be to seek legal and professional assistance instead of attempting to deal with it ourselves. It’s common sense in retrospect, but to hire lawyers, we'd need money. And for a long time I just didn’t feel like it was a place I should be spending our funds and time on, when so many other things were important and needed our attention.
Of course, no matter the reasons, I was the one who ultimately did not raise when we had the leverage to do so. With everything else that went on, I wanted to be extra deliberate about vetting for people who aligned with our vision.
I didn’t think it was a bad thing to wait for the hype to wane—because if someone was still interested in us after the buzz was over, then they would be more likely to be someone who genuinely believed in what we’re building. (If you notice a pattern in how I make decisions when it comes to hype, you’re not imagining it. I’ve done this the counterintuitive way my entire career, and it has always worked very well in putting together the best teams and collaborators.)
There are many options for us now and I’d like to focus on looking forward. I have some thoughts and plans around our financial matters, and will put out a post when I’m ready.
I know this is a lot, but I wanted to provide some context to the situation and hope that will make it easier to understand why we’re at where we are.
— Recruiting new users
> "I know you say Cara needs to be ready before it's released to the public, but it's already amazing! Every social media platform has hiccups and bugs, and nobody cares."
> "In my opinion, the problem is retaining new users."
You say you think Cara is ready as is to be promoted to a broad audience, but as you yourself have observed, Cara without an algorithmic feed impacts how people can scroll and discover creators on Cara.
When they can’t find the content they want because they’re expecting Cara to operate the same way every other platform does, the result is they leave.
Without a recommendation system, promoting Cara to a broad audience is a net negative. It will get people signing up only to find themselves disappointed, and they’ll go on telling others that it doesn’t work for them.
Once people have experienced a product once, it will take a long time before they’d be willing to try it again. So as much as it sucks to feel that our user base is small, rushing to grow for the sake of growth at a time when we’re not ready will only do more harm than good. What we’re doing is a deliberate choice.
As for a recommendation system, it’s not trivial work. ML engineers have historically been paid extremely well because timeline feeds take work to do, and it’s been one of the most important pieces of technology on a social media platform for so long, for a good reason. There are literally research papers written about TikTok’s algorithm.
To do any of these, we need not just full time engineers and designers, but people who are *great* at it. We also need to set aside funds for moderators, lawyers, and operations team.
The community we had last year had a vocal few who strongly opposed us raising funds to operate Cara like a business. They came as a result of our sudden growth. And while I prioritized those concerns, I recognize that after time passed, the overall outcome has been a net negative on Cara’s development.
In that time I’ve settled our unexpected bills, and have worked doggedly on moderation tools on the backend. That has been our priority and is something I believe is critical to have before we can think about more growth.
You may not give much thought to it as an everyday user, but there are so many things with big impacts we need to have ready before we can grow to 10 or 50 or 100 million users. Without a good foundation on moderation tools, there will be bottlenecks if we had explosive growth again. We barely survived by the skin of our teeth last year.
So not everything comes down to simply getting more people signed up. In fact, I’d say the funnest and easiest part of everything is getting new users. What’s hard is the groundwork for all of the foundations we need that comes before the signups, those take time and preparation.
For anyone old enough to remember when CGHUB was the #1 website for the entertainment industry—I was in charge of inviting users in its early days. So trust me when I say getting people to join is the least part of our concerns. It’s really the most enjoyable part for me. But only when we are ready.
(To be clear, feel free to invite your friends to Cara! We love being recommended and having steady, organic growth. It’s the explosive traffic that comes with massive promotion that could impact platform culture that I’m concerned about.)
A final word on the 'slowness' and 'quiet' you may experience right now: aside from the algorithm, to me, this is an important part of the current process, even though it’s counterintuitive.
I want to build a strong foundation and culture with the user base that’s here on Cara when we don’t yet have a recommendation system.
This is so that people are firmly in the understanding that Cara is about interacting with the community and finding a healthier frame of mind when thinking about socials. This way, when we do introduce recommendation systems, we will have existing users who can walk new people through the culture of the platform and help others understand.
I’ve explained this reasoning in our first year, our second year, and I am again now. I think the users who were there for those moments before can attest that it works, and I want us to very carefully preserve what we’ve worked so hard to build.
— Conclusion
I am one person doing 20 people’s jobs, unpaid. I set aside all of my savings in case Cara needs it, to the extent I didn’t have the financial comfort of fixing my own health.
I have to catch up on all the work I had to deprioritize due to focusing on Cara last year. I have to finish up a photobook that was due when I started Cara, for which I have a legal obligation to deliver. I am the lead plaintiff in 2 class action lawsuits against AI companies, which require me to routinely spend lengthy time reviewing legal documents.
People are used to things happening quickly and rapidly. I can understand getting used to the rate that other venture-funded companies can operate, I’m just saying that I am one person, and I cannot be 5000 people all at once, I’m not a machine.
Everything that was said about Cara here is understandable, and how you feel is absolutely valid. I hope by sharing things from my perspective, I’ve answered some of those questions and provided more context as to the reasons why we do certain things a certain way.
I believe I have been above and beyond in being transparent, and me sharing my health issue is exactly why you can now say that you have lost confidence in Cara—which coincidentally, is the exact reason why companies often do not want to communicate things to the public.
I want to remain as transparent as I can. But there are a million things I may not share in public, whether it’s for security, legal, safety, or other reasons. But at least for why we may not be building a feature or doing something, trust that it’s usually a conscious decision made due to money, manpower, or the harassment we experienced before—and that we are doing all we can in the best way possible in the current moment, with thought for the longevity of the platform.
— TLDR:
I am confident about my decisions and directions for Cara. They are what brought us to where we are today. When people said we won’t have more than a few thousand users, we now have well over a million. I’m confident about the plans for the next million users, and millions after that. Right now, we just don’t operate at the same speed as everyone else.
I know that not actively promoting Cara on other platforms or recruiting users can feel like we’re missing something, but I assure you that it’s part intentional, part for good reasons. It’s so that we can build culture on Cara and not let it be overwhelmed by outsized traffic, and also because we need time and have to work within the limits of our manpower and funding in the moment.
It’s completely understandable if this point of view doesn’t work for everybody, ultimately, everyone should do what’s best for their business and themselves. I want to do the same for Cara, too, and will continue developing it according to the vision I believe is important, at a pace that’s sustainable and makes sense for us long term.
While we’re on the topic, for those who’d like to support us in saving up to hire a team, you can subscribe or buy us a coffee on Cara! - https://cara.app/coffee ☺️
And on the off chance a super wealthy reader is reading this, and would love to support Cara like it’s a lifestyle business and think that doing things counterintuitively is fun, please reach out!
Chee Aun 🤔
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