This is an interesting thread, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to say a few things about our goals for YLF as a business.
Of course, we do YLF because we love doing it and because it helps people. That is enormously rewarding in and of itself, but we also want it to be a sustainable business. Right now, it isn't that. It does make some revenue, but not a level that can support our investment in the site indefinitely. So there is no question -- our goal is to grow the number of readers and members significantly. This will allow us to continue investing, and to invest more. For example, we would love to hire a few people. Right now, between my other project and Angie's stylist business we are both completely maxed out. We *love* doing it, but the level of intensity just isn't sustainable.
Our priority is to grow in a way that maintains, and even enhances, the community that YLF has become. We have a lot of ideas, and we are actively working on some of them right now. We aren't ready to talk about them, but suffice it to say that during the next 6 months you will see some new things around here. Some of the features we are working on are specifically targeted at allowing YLF to maintain the current intimate feel even when there are many more users.
Regarding those sites in the NYT article... as many people have pointed out, they are doing something different. They offer an experience that is extremely focused and simple (post picture, give feedback), and feedback is "crowd sourced". This definitely has its own appeal, but we are passionate about offering an experience that is much deeper in terms of the feedback, advice and support you receive, and broader in terms of the extent that we can serve your style needs. Angie has developed a very special approach to style renewal and evolution and we would like the site to deliver more and more of this over time.
We're very confident that this has value, and that there is a lot of demand for it. Our challenge is to create awareness of this value (make no mistake, we are extremely envious of the coverage those sites are getting in the NYT). One thing we'd love to figure out is how to make YLF something that more people would recommend to others. This is tough, because we know part of the appeal is that for many people it represents a place to discuss fashion and style that is somewhat separated from the friends and family in their offline life.
