Just applied for @forrst - hope i get an invite :)
Has anybody got a forrst invite available? It would be much appreciated.
Anyone have a dribbble.com invite they can send me? thx
I wonder if any of my friends love me enough for a sloppy Dribbble invite…
Forrst and Dribbble got some magics…
While everyone are digging way deep on the web trying to find anyone with some available invites, or trying to be a genius to guess the invite codes randomly on the signup pages, I am going to share some of my opinions on why Dribbble and Forrst are not direct competitors.
So, what the hell is Forrst and Dribbble?
Forrst is a place for designers and developers to share inspiring code, screenshots, and links (questions also) with their peers. (via Crunchbase)
Dribbble is show and tell for designers, developers and other creatives. Members share sneak peeks of their work as “shots” — small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on. It’s also a place to talk design, give and receive feedback and iterate toward better work. (via its own FAQ page)
Why they are both creating tons of buzz and momentum?
Some people think: well, fairly simple, they are both invite-only. Yet it is absolutely true, their registrations are both private. But more importantly, the ideas and the purposes on the sites are what make themselves special. They are both a community, an elite community for tech geeks to get help and inspirations. The targeted users are web power users, they all understand and use tools like Twitter and Facebook to talk about websites they enjoy, and that’s why they are creating that many buzz.
So are you saying Forrst is competing with Dribbble?
That is what some people think, but I completely disagree. I’ve been using Dribbble for about 3 weeks now, and got my space on Forrst for 2 days. In my opinion, they perfectly fit together in terms of their original approaches and benefits we can get out of. Forrst is for both developers and designers, while Dribbble is only for designers. Forrst enables people to share links, codes, screenshots and ask questions, while Dribbble only allows people to upload screenshots. To summarize, Forrst has a broader approach and wider content categories, while Dribbble only focuses on one thing: uploading what you are working on and get feedback from other designers.
Here are my initial experience with both of the sites:
Dribbble up first: When I got my invite on May 1st (Thanks Jesse for the invite), I already had a sense of how high quality the work on Dribbble is (I’ve been following Dribbble since they opened up the whole site to the public). I am not a decent designer, my CSS skill is pretty okay (have been learning CSS 3 lately), but my Photoshop skill sucks (maybe the worst in the whole Dribbble community). So my intention on Dribbble is simply to give others feedback from a developer’s point of view and get some inspiration then maybe increase my design skills. At the beginning, I checked out some all-star’s shots and left comments on each one, then I went to some people that I knew and connect with them on the sites as well. After the few days checking out designs, I felt like I was getting a lot of relatively interesting inspirations and have a basic idea on how a good design should look like.
Forrst next: since the awesome experience I got from Dribbble, and overheard that Forrst is a community that accepts developers as well, so I instantly applied for an invite. I got it few days later (thanks to the super-nice Kyle, worthy to follow). When I signed up, I was surprised by the amount of content on the site, from educational article links to expert-level CodeIgniter code, it drove me a lot of attention. I got engaged and decided to contribute content immediately. I answered couple of questions from people that I don’t know before and asked one myself, the replies were close to instant. It is the fastest site ever that I can get my question answered, faster than Stack Overflow or Quora.
So to sums up, the experience on both sites are completely different, one felt inspired, the other felt helpful. People should not view one is the competitor as the other one, since I notice some people who had a Forrst account also had a Dribbble account, and they actively participate on both. It doesn’t make sense they are competing with each others if users are using both products at the same time. What actually makes sense is the exact opposite, they perfectly fit into each other, Dribbble fills Forrst’s gap on inspiration while Forrst fills Dribbble’s gap on engagement and richness.
Nevertheless, they are both awesome.
