InstantSpot Staff

Greetings all!  Your InstantSpot development team has been hard at work on continuing to push InstantSpot forward adding several new features.  Much of this new code was rolled last night and we wanted you to be aware.  Additionally, at the bottom of this email you will see that we are looking for feedback on things that you would like to see.  Let us know what you want out of your Spot!

UPDATES:

Blog Comments/Subscriptions
Subscription/Unsubscription from blog comment threads.  It was brought to our attention that there was a bug with  unsubscribing from blog comment threads that was keeping some people from being able to stop receiving notifications of new comments.  Considering that we didn't have the option for not subscribing to a thread when you left a comment, this was a problem!  We fixed this problem at two levels.  First, we addressed the bug... we don't like bugs.  We want bugs gone.  Now this one is.  Secondly, you will now see a checkbox on the comment form that allows you to opt out of receiving future notifications of comments that are posted in that thread.

“How do I become a friend?”
If we had a dime for every time that question was asked, we would be posting this entry from our floating office aboard our mega-yacht somewhere in the Greek Islands rather than this cramped little office!   First a little background... Our 'My Friends' feature is a work in progress. We have lots of features in store for it, but rather than wait until all the development work was completed, we made the decision to roll it out pieces at a time as the code became stable.  Taking this approach has helped us by getting feedback from you guys and gals about what you liked and disliked, and has helped guide our development. With this release we are further down our path towards our complete ideal for Friend features, but we have more in the works that you will see soon. 

So, back to the “How do I become a friend?” question...  Until about midnight last night the only way you could request to become a friend was by accidentally running into them on the street, recognizing them from their headshot photo, and saying “Hey, can I be your friend?”. 

We thought it might be worth expanding this feature!  With the newly released code, when you are visiting a site that you would like to add you as a friend you should see a button that says “Request to be added”.   I say should because it is possible for you to default to decline all requests which takes the request button away (more on this later).    When you are on someone's Spot and you hit the request button, one of two things will happen. 

1)  If the owner has chosen to manually approve all requests, they will receive an email with your request.  Once they receive that request, they will be able to add you through a link in the email.   If you receive a request you wish to decline, just ignore it.  The non-Friend continue to stay as such. 

2)  If the owner has chosen to automatically accept friend requests, you will immediately be added.

“So I am a Friend... what now?”
For the time being, there are basically three things that happen as a Friend.  First, your headshot and link to your Spot  will appear on their 'My Friends' page.  This will give you good visibility and will allow more people to find you.  Also, as a Friend you will be able to post messages to your Friend's Shoutbox on the 'My Friends' page.  This is a pretty cool feature that has been underused so far, mostly due to the difficulty of becoming friends.  We hope that this new request feature changes that! 

Additionally, as you post new blog entries they will appear on the 'Friend Activity' page of people that have added you as a friend.  Once again, this is a great way to get more visibility!  This is also a good way for you to keep track of all that your friends are doing by just going to your own 'Friend Activity' page.

New Control Panel Features
First, you will notice the navigation looks slightly different on the right hand side of your Control Panel. A couple of things have changed.  First we have collapsed the categories so that it no longer scrolls off beyond the visible screen when you open it.  I suppose it isn't a bad thing to have too many features!  We have also moved the most used features (Blog and Page editing) to the top to make it more accessible when you log in.

In addition to moving the navigation around a bit, we created a new section 'My Friends'.  Currently there are two options in this section (with more on the way very soon!).  On the 'Manage Friends' page you can see who you have added as Friends and go straight to their Spots.  You can also remove Friends from this page by checking their Spot and hitting 'Delete'.  If only real life was this easy, huh?

On the 'Friend Page Settings' page, there are currently two actions you can take.  First, you can decide how you will deal with Friend requests.  You can choose to always decline requests, always notify you to add the new Friend manually, or always accept requests.  On this page you can also choose whether your Shoutbox on your 'My Friends' page is visible to the entire public, or whether it is visible to just your friends.  We feel that this is a good solution for those of you that have asked for the ability to have private discussions without the entire world reading them.  Let us know what you think.

“What's next?”
Nothing... we're done. 

HA!  We never quit... we never sleep... we never stop Spotting!  We have a number of things in the works.  As we alluded to above, we have more stuff in the works for Friends, including the ability to send private messages through the system to your Friends, both from the control panel and from their pages.   We are also planning on adding a way to manage subscriptions in the control panel.  Currently there is no way to see which Spots you have subscribed to, so this is an obvious point that needs to be addressed, but none of you have actually mentioned this!

Another piece we plan to address soon is the file management that allows you to upload pictures and add them to your blog/page entries and to add them to your gallery.  Currently this piece is a bit clunky and we would like to streamline it and make it easier on you.

We are also looking at allowing you to add a forum to your Spot!  We are still in the planning stages on this piece, but we plan on implementing that in the near future.

Another thing we are kicking around a bit is a good way for you to be able to offer products for sale on your Spot.  We are investigating a number of ways to add commerce functionality.  We may be surveying you soon as we have considered a number of directions for this piece, so keep an eye out for an email from the InstantSpot staff.

Tell us what you think!
We mean it.  This is your Spot.  We are building this as a home for you and all of your friends.  We want it to be everything you want it to be.  What do you want to see?   What would you like to see changed?  We are always open to new ideas, and we don't bite... hard. You can always contact us through this form.

As always, thanks for making InstantSpot your Spot!