TideKit Failure – Blaming the Community?

3 points

11 years ago

Here is the automated e-mail I got from TideKit announcing the discontinue of their development. For those of you who don't know what it was, it was an attempt to create an all-in-one app development platform, almost along the lines of an Ionic and NodeWebkit (or Atom) in one. They actually took pre-orders (tickets to beta), and the time stating they were very close to letting Beta customers in.

Months and months went by and there was no movement, so after some complaints they began writing update blogs, again talking about how soon they were going to be opening up for beta testers.

And now, they send an e-mail saying they couldn't do it. The worst part is they seem to be blaming the community for wanting it too fast... Even though they continued to set expectations that were never met. This is a great example of how NOT to handle these complicated projects, and if they fail, another example of how NOT to handle the failure. The end of the e-mail is an attempt to take some blame but for me, a few paragraphs of deflection dampened that attempt. Am I taking the tone of this e-mail wrong?

---------- http://pastebin.com/a0S3B6w0

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