We Are Turning off Listings

Hey folks, we wanted to let you know that we will be turning off Listings and Credits on DEV. We will be making this change today, and everyone with existing credits will be able to use their credits via Promoted Billboards and/or receive a refund for purchased credits.

We're making this change to focus more on features that are pivotal for our members, such as the home feed experience and essential building blocks for the open-source Forem project. Unfortunately, we've never been able to invest adequately in Listings to make it a core feature.

Although the idea of a marketplace remains relevant within the community, we're incorporating it into a broader strategy that focuses on the most impactful elements.

To replace many of the functionalities offered by Listings, we've been investing in Billboards. These are flexible display areas we use as admins to target specific messages to particular members, and we now allow members to do the same via a similar system to Listings and Credits. You can access these features through our Pro Tools service.

Pro Tools enables you to create Billboards to promote within the community or to display alongside your organization's content. Like Listings, Billboards can be targeted based on tags, geographies, and other criteria. To use Pro Tools, you must be an admin of a DEV Organization, which is free to create on DEV.

Additionally, we're offering advanced insights, metrics, and APIs to help you understand your organization's content performance on DEV. This feature is available immediately and will continue to improve. We're also exploring how to extend Pro Tools to individual user accounts in the future.

What Happens to My Credits?

If you sign up for Pro Tools and link your account, we'll automatically detect any credits you've earned or purchased on DEV. You can use these credits to promote Billboards through Pro Tools' Credit Purchase flow. You can also use unlimited Billboards alongside your organization's content without using credits, benefiting from the same A/B testing features available in Pro Tools.

We will also be reimbursing and re-funding all current live Listings and reaching out directly to folks who might miss this message. The process takes a few steps, and we will begin today and sew everything up within the next few days.

A Continued Focus on Privacy and User Experience

We emphasize privacy and a positive user experience in our development of Billboards. All billboard serving occurs within DEV, and if other Forems adopt this feature, it will remain a closed loop there as well. You have the option to disable promoted Billboards and restrict their appearance next to your content in your settings. We view these as generally adding value and are committed to maintaining this quality.

You can browse how Billboards work within the Forem codebase.

If you would not be a user of Pro Tools yourself, we encourage you to forward the tool along to someone you work with who might want to promote an event, job listing, or developer-facing product or service.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to ask in the comments or via yo@dev.to. Those who've found value in Listings might be disappointed, but we're confident that this shift represents a more significant, long-term investment in our platform's features.

Happy coding!