A Letter from Julia Baritz

To the Pillowfort Community, 

Transparency from myself and my Staff is part of the foundation that makes Pillowfort so great. The news I am about to share is not easy. But it is important for you, our community, to know what is going on.

Pillowfort has always relied on the generosity of our users. We are proud to be user funded. Over the years we have been able to operate using the funds from our 2018 Kickstarter campaign, which raised over $60,000, in addition to ongoing payments and donations from you.  I am extremely grateful for the support we continue to receive. 

However, despite cost-cutting efforts, we have struggled to break even in revenue since 2021. The funds from the 2018 Kickstarter have been depleted to cover operating costs and to ensure our Staff receives the compensation they deserve.  I will never ask my Staff to work without being compensated.  

We are now at a point where Pillowfort is in danger of exhausting all current finances in the next six months if we continue the current funding/spending trajectory. This is not hyperbole. This is the unfortunate reality of what the platform is facing. If we do not change course now I will have to end contracts with our entire team soon and, eventually, Pillowfort would no longer be able to operate. 

For the past two years I have not compensated myself for my work on Pillowfort. My commitment to Pillowfort is not for personal gain. I was fortunate enough in my privilege to have adequate savings to cover my own personal expenses for a while. I sacrificed what would have been my own compensation in order to ensure my third-party contractors (Staff) could be paid. 

I take full responsibility for the current state of Pillowfort. It has been challenging being a first-time business owner in such turbulent times. Looking back now there are ways I would have managed things differently with the knowledge I have now.  If we can recover from this, I will continue applying what I have learned these last several years to make sure we do not reach this point again. 

I knew Pillowfort was going to be a difficult enterprise due to the very things that I believe make us great: we don’t have shareholders or venture-capital investments (which often leads to shifts away from a company’s primary mission as they are directed to achieve revenue and profit growth to benefit investors); we don’t compromise your privacy by selling user data to third parties; and we don’t host third-party ads that would disrupt your experience. We also pay much higher payment processing fees because we host adult content. Compared to other social media sites that have millions of dollars in corporate investments backing them, things are much harder for us. 

In spite of every hurdle we face,  I truly believe  Pillowfort deserves to exist. I believe in Pillowfort’s mission and I am determined for this platform to succeed. I am not going to abandon this platform until every possible option is exhausted. That is why I have decided it will be necessary to initiate another, more ambitious fundraiser. Our goal will be to raise $25,000 by December 31, 2023. 

This amount is based on the following: We are at risk of the IRS reclassifying Pillowfort as a hobby instead of a business because Pillowfort has not been profitable for several years. If we are reclassified as a hobby this would prohibit us from deducting expenses which will make our financial situation more dire.  The $25,000 amount will make up for our existing year-to-date losses as well as cover our projected expenses (Staff Compensation & Operating costs) for the remainder of the year. 

Raising this amount will also buy our staff the time needed to complete the following projects geared toward increased long-term revenue: 

Once these features are in place, Pillowfort will be in a better position to bring in reliable revenue than we have been recently and will hopefully be on the road to continued self-sustainability.

If you appreciate that Pillowfort is beholden to its users instead of shareholders– if you believe in Pillowfort’s core principles of user privacy control and freedom of expression and creativity–  then I ask you to consider supporting this fundraising effort.

We will post more information soon regarding rewards for reaching our goal (yes, we will be offering a profile badge to donors, and more!), so stay tuned for details. This time around we are also planning to have rewards geared toward users who help spread the word about us too. We understand that not everyone can support us financially right now.

If you can’t donate to the fundraiser there are still many ways to help us. Here are some examples: 

I am forever grateful for your past and continued support. Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this message. Let’s work together to make Pillowfort a robust site for years to come.

Best Wishes, 

Julia Baritz Founder & Lead Architect

I realize this post, despite it's dire nature, does not provide any links to donate? So here you go guys, donate here on their official page.

The algorithm unfortunately limits the reach of our posts for sharing offsite links. Thank you for including it in your reblog! :)

Announcements & Updates

Hello everyone! So much has happened over the last week and we want to keep you all updated with what’s going to be happening over the next few weeks.

Invites - We’re sending out the rest of our invitations today for payments that were submitted between Dec 4 at 3:45 PM PST and Dec 5th at midnight PST. If you sent a payment during that time period or earlier but don’t receive your invitation by later today, then a) check your spam folder! Yahoo and Hotmail in particular seem to like to filter our automated emails as spam, and then b) email us at [email protected] if you still haven’t gotten your invite. If you sent a payment after Dec 5th at midnight PST then we are aiming to send out your invite later this week.

Pillowfort Now Has Over 25,000 Users! To put this in perspective, at the beginning of this year we had only 4,000. The positive thing about the recent influx of new users is that the registration payments have given us more funding for developers and other expenses, which will result in a more robust infrastructure for the site in the near future. The unfortunate result in the meantime is slower load times as the site deals with the unprecedented amount of traffic. We realize that many users are coming to the site as an alternative to Tumblr, and we certainly hope that we can meet those expectations soon! Right now, Pillowfort is still a small team, and we hadn’t expected to have such a huge influx of potential users arrive on our doorstep all at once, so it will take us a little time to catch up. But rest assured we are working as hard as we can.

PR Assistant - Pillowfort is looking for a part-time public relations assistant to help us manage our communications with all our new and upcoming users! This person will primarily be responsible for helping us respond to inquiries through our social media accounts and email, and drafting our outreach materials. Pay will be around $15/hr and it is best if you live in the Austin, TX area. Please contact us at [email protected] if you’re interested.

Pillowfort be like

Literally what happened

heads up before you spend $$ on pillowfort, especially note the paypal thing. the io domain concern does not seem carefully enforced but is in the TOS so 🤷

These are valid concerns but like. Have we tried not making a call out post to promote hate against a brand new company made by fandom for fandom? This is the same shit that has been pulled on AO3 this year. Contact them and ask them to clarify their content moderation. Ask them about their concerns about Paypal – they’ve already mentioned on their Twitter that they’re changing domains because of the adult content ban on .io domains. They’ve been nothing but open and honest about everything since they were first announced and far more patient than is reasonable with the amount of questions they receive. And the site was down because it was fixing security issues in order to make the site safer for users. They’ve been absolutely transparent about this issue, which is unheard of these days.

Pillowfort will only survive if we support it. We need our own space that isn’t going to get sold out. Do you think Twitter is gonna allow NSFW content forever? Instagram doesn’t give a shit about fandom. And while Dreamwidth would be great, it would be a total culture shock to a lot of people – they have a 500mb cap for images, a tag limit, and communities decentralize fandom unlike Tumblr’s ability to just look at all of the posts under a single tag.

I’ve been looking into Pillowfort a lot. Obviously, there have been lots of tumblr-adjacent projects that haven’t worked out in the past, so it’s reasonable to be cautious. However;

Pillowfort has existed in beta for months now, with a fairly small user base. They created, funded, and closed their kickstarter over 3 months ago- you can check, it’s dated. They earned $57k, reasonable to get started, but not enough to create a fully operational social media site in 3 months. And unless they’re psychic, their site was clearly NOT created to take advantage of users fleeing tumblr, but rather out of genuine desire to create a platform that addressed the concerns of tumblr users.

With the money they earned, they have been working on the site, and the site being down was SCHEDULED (posted about before and while it was happening, keeping registered users updated on why it was taking so long and when it would be up again) maintenance to, you know, work on the site like they promised they were going to. It is literally in beta.

Again, unless they’re psychic, they had no idea tumblr was going to drop this bombshell while they were doing their maintenance (and again it’s in beta, ie the time when the site is SUPPOSED to be under maintenance!!)

They address the .io domain on their twitter (plan to change) and their FAQ addresses their business plan and how they plan to implement it. Plans to on board moderators are discussed on their FAQ.

So yeah, I get being cautious, but you should actually DO the research on this instead of knee-jerk reaction deciding it’s a scam. I’m not saying it IS going to turn out like everyone is hoping, but I have scoured all the info on their kickstarter, social media, and website; i have checked out the demo version of the site; I like what I see and so far everything checks out. So yeah I’m willing to bet a whole $5 on this site.

Okay reblogging this for misinformation

Also, like, give them time and be patient. They're currently getting a bunch of new users because they try and give as many people registration keys as ask for it (and yes, for a fee currently, but they're planning on opening access later once they have the server space to support a larger userbase). They were *not* ready for this kind of influx and it's obvious - they are fans like we are, they had as little warning that tumblr would pull the rug out from under us as we did. So yes, the site keeps crashing a bit and they're having trouble sending out all the registration keys that were bought because it was *that much of an influx*. And they actually have to *pay* their people for the labour, and I feel like that's entirely fair and considering, $5 is surprisingly low fee for access, as much as it may irk some. If you can't pay the fee yourself, there's several people out there buying additional keys and handing them out to followers/doing raffles.

Dear people planning to move to pillowfort:

As someone not involved in the development of pillowfort but am a web developer, I think you should lower your expectations, but not for the reason you think.

Pillowfort is a baby. A newborn. A smol bab. If you were here during the early days of Tumblr, think of that. 

Pillowfort simply cannot be the immediate solution to your woes. It needs to be nurtured and cared for to become a mature and happy adult. 

If you want Pillowfort to work, they’ll need feedback, advice, bug reports, etc. This is a chance to make Pillowfort the Ao3 of Fanfiction.net. It’s not gonna happen overnight, you need to give it time and love and it’ll get there. 

If you don’t want to pay money to get into the beta, that’s ok. It will be open to the public soon enough and you won’t have to pay a dime. Their financial model moving forward sounds good (a subscription fee for super extra features), but even an Ao3 model would work swell for them probably. 

We’re living in an interesting time on the internet. Governments across the world are cracking down on content and yet community run websites are starting to thrive more and more. 

Tumblr once upon a time was what Pillowfort is today, but this time, let’s make sure Pillowfort can stay independent from mega corporations. 

yes this

most of the criticism i’ve seen of pf so far ultimately come back to this

is it an alright platform with a good community? yes. does it have a lot of potential? yes. does it have a lot of problems still being worked out? yes.  are the staff open and responsive? absolutely. do i recommend it? yes, if you’re willing to live in a house while it’s being built.

but it’s not a ready-made replacement for tumblr.  set your expectations accordingly.

“why are pillowfort/ao3 asking for money?? Tumblr and LJ are free!!!”

y'all really don’t get how this works, huh?

Look y'all. Bottom line is large websites/web apps are fucking expensive

It’s not like a personal or small business site where you pay $25/mo for a shared hosting package and knock yourself out

You need multiple, dedicated, high-performance servers to handle a service like Tumblr or AO3, or Facebook, or what have you, to keep up with the insane amount of bandwidth and unfathomable amount of data.

Shit cost thousands of dollars a month. And those costs only go up the more users you have. Into the tens of thousands of dollars a month. Someone has to foot the bill for it. And that doesn’t include the salaries of the developers who pour hours of their time into making things function the way they need to.

“but Tumblr used to not have ads!!” you say! “They just got greedy!”

No, they didn’t “just get greedy”. This is how free services work. They aren’t magically able to sustain themselves. At any point. Ever.

Investors see proof of concept during the infancy of a project, and they pour their money– hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars– to 1) help fund the project into maturity. (Maturity = stable performance and a large, growing userbase) and 2) have a seat at the table when big decisions are made

Until that point, you won’t see ads, or be nagged to donate, or forced to pay a fee to access your content. That’s no accident.

Investors eat the cost of running and developing the service, because they know that once that userbase has been established, they can– you guessed it– SELL YOUR DATA TO ADVERTISERS.

They can’t do that until after they have users for advertisers to sell their shit to!

That’s how the investors make their money back, that’s how the service becomes profitable instead of being a giant cash pit.

So for the love of God, can we PLEASE stop slandering sites like AO3, Wikipedia, and now Pillowfort for having the audacity to ask for donations, or for having tiered/paid membership options for additional, non-essential features??

If you’re not paying, you’re the product

If you’re not paying, you’re the product

It’s day 4 of our Kickstarter! If you are looking for a social media platform that lets you:

then you might like Pillowfort.io. Check out our campaign for much more information about the site, our business plan, and how you can get into the private beta!

COUGH

Tumblr is apparently doing some crazy nonsense again, so it seems like a good time to remind everyone that Pillowfort.io is a new social media platform that aims to give users control of their content and how it’s seen and shared, as well as provide better communication tools to promote conversation and creativity. If this sounds good to you, you can donate $5 to our PayPal and you will receive a registration link the Friday after your donation. And if you decide the site isn’t for you, you can request a refund for up to three weeks after you sign up. (All money we receive through this process is going towards paying our hosting expenses and compensating our programmers.)

Reblogging this in light of the recent news, since we’ve been getting a lot of questions from people looking to join. If you’ve sent us a payment since the 16th of November you will receive your invitation email shortly after the site returns, which will likely be tomorrow! If you want to purchase more than one registration link ($5 per link, so $15 for example would get you 3 registration links) you can give them to anyone you want– the ones you purchase are not tied to your account in any way.

Now, Pillowfort will not always require a payment to sign up; we are doing this because we are still in the process of implementing our subscription plan, which will be our source of long-term revenue, and these payments through PayPal give us funding to make sure we can pay all our server expenses, employee compensation, etc. while we are still working on implementing our business plan. Once we exit beta you will be able to join the site and use all of its essential features for free, with the option to pay for some extra goodies similar to what LiveJournal and DreamWidth offer in their subscription plans.

oh dear

Yes, we have seen the news! We are planning to have the site back up either tomorrow or Wednesday; we just have a couple last security measures we want to put in place today, but we will be working on it as quickly as possible and we will have a clearer ETA by tonight.

We will also try to come up with a way to lower the barrier to entry for new users, though we don’t want to drop the entry fee entirely because a) we feel that would be unfair to our users who have paid for their registration keys and b) we don’t think our servers could handle a massive influx of new users right now, so we’re going to try to allow as many new users as we can without capsizing the boat. We appreciate your patience and will have more details soon!

I just posted about my planned road trips in the next few months on pillowfort and discovered a new perk to the site: the URLs aren’t linked to the usernames. Which means if you decide that you want to change your name, you don’t have to worry about how all of your links are now broken. How much time have I spent trying to track down fic that had been posted to tumblr, but the author has changed names at least 4 times?? This is a godsend!

Sign up for wave 4!

If you are interested in Pillowfort.io but couldn’t get in on our last beta wave, you can sign up here! We don’t have an estimate currently on when we will admit more registrations but we aim for it to be no more than 3-4 months from now.

If you’re seeing this post and haven’t heard about Pillowfort before, we have a FAQ you can check out here!

hey everyone check out pillowfort i just started using it and it works