Farewell Techzim Answers

More than 7 years ago we introduced Techzim Answers, a dedicated question and answer site. The motivation for the site was that we were (we still do or much more this time) getting a lot of questions from Techzim readers and one time visitors to Techzim.

We of course did not (nor do we) always have answers to these questions. We always do our best to assist when a question comes. Techzim Answers was then one of the ways to do this in a much more scalable way. The platform crowd sources both questions and answers to those questions. There is a always a bunch of smart people within the Techzim community, smarter than Techzim and thus Techzim Answers leveraged this community to help each other.

Techzim Answers still has a following

The forum still attracts a lot of users. Most of these come through search which is not surprising given that the platform is all about providing answers to specific questions. For example in October there were 36 000 page views from 24 000 visits.

However we are shutting it down

We have come to the decision to shut down Techzim Answers because we just don’t have the capacity to keep it running right now. Yes, it’s just a website and thus it can’t cost much to keep up and alive. However, anything we do here at Controvert must be done whole heartedly and deliberately.

This has just not been the case with Techzim Answers for a long time. Today I have visited the site for the first in more than a year. Surely that says a lot. Without anyone within our business taking care of this property there is some bit of spam there and there hasn’t been any improvements or at least an attempt at an improvement of the experience. This can’t be permissible if we are to maintain a good solid brand that you folks can trust.

Even the traffic is holding steady but not growing. This is because we have not been deliberately doing anything to make this platform more useful.

It’s painful for us to shut down Techzim Answers. There is always the temptation to try and do everything, to keep all the kids in the nest so to speak. This is indeed a temptation and it must be defeated. Ultimately building one thing means not building something else and it is that kind of focus that achieves the kind of impact we want to achieve.

The community lives on though

Community is central to the Techzim purpose and existence and community will not die with Techzim Answers. We already have a vibrant community on WhatsApp. The kind of questions that were being asked on Techzim Answers are being asked and answered in our WhatsApp groups.

WhatsApp groups are even better in that real relationships have been and are still being formed by people of like mind, people passionate about tech, startups and business. We have been running these groups for almost five years now and we are confident they are a more than adequate replacement to Techzim Answers.

When is the day?

We will be taking www.answers.techzim.co.zw offline on the 31st of December 2018. I know some of you love the platform more than Techzim itself and we are thus giving you time to come to terms with the fact that your platform will be no more.

Soon we will display a message on the site itself advising of its upcoming death…

Thank you for all the support. It’s such an honour to be part of this community. See you on WhatsApp or in the comments below….