wis.dm blog

Has the wis.dm community the will and strength to survive?

2008-11-08T14:49:00.008-05:00

Hey everyone- we’ve had a blast over the past two years dreaming up and building wis.dm and we’re continuing our mission- no fear there. We have built one of the most innovative social platforms online and we are applying the technology into a variety of use cases and we are in conversations with many of the major media companies.

As far as the wis.dm site is concerned, it’s been successful in so may different ways - but it hasn’t (so far, at least) grown to sufficient scale that we can consider supporting its cost by advertising, simple or exotic.

Just to be clear, we think about the various departments of the business of Soflow Inc., (owner of wis.dm) independently, the wis.dm site is one of these and I want it to begin to stand on its own two feet. In essence, I want the wis.dm community to become self-sustaining and I think that's healthy!!

We’ve started this process by asking you for a donation toward the cost of running the wis.dm site. The good news here is that the costs are not that great... perhaps in the region of $18,000 per annum or $1,500 per month. I’m happy to hear your thoughts about how we (collectively) can raise that money- would you prefer a subscription site for example? If so, what do you think is a fair price?

Please note, that this is not about finding an investor- we’re not looking to raise cash for our business- this is about building a sustainable community. It’s really a question of the evolution of wis.dm and determining whether or not the wis.dm community has the will and strength to survive! As I say- I think that's healthy.

A broadcast from Team wis.dm

2008-10-09T17:43:00.001-04:00

It's been a while since Team wis.dm last reached out on our blog, and it's high time we gave an update! In the past few months, wis.dm has been rolling along nicely and continuing to grow (albeit slowly). The level of participation of the core community continues to amaze us and for many we recognize that wis.dm has become a way of life.

We are proud of the product we have built and the community of core users- but unfortunately wis.dm’s not quite big enough to survive on an independent basis. There are many ways wis.dm can make money – but it requires a certain critical mass that, as yet, we have failed to reach.

Given sufficient time, we are confident we can get there- but in the meantime wis.dm (the business) needs to derive revenue to make a contribution to the costs of building and maintaining the site and we are thinking about and planning a range of initiatives which we’ll be telling you more about in coming weeks and months.

In fact, the first of these kicks in today with the introduction of of a new experimental wis.dm scene. "Broadcast You", a Television scene. Why Television? Well, some of the people most impressed with the discussions on wis.dm are big media companies. Traditionally, big media works one-way-only: broadcast. They pump great content into the void, and we all talk about it around the water cooler, over dinner, and on discussion sites like wis.dm. These companies are very interested in seeing how communities like wis.dm can close that loop, provide feedback, and improve the quality of entertainment, news, journalism, and opinion. (All the stuff we love talking about on wis.dm!)

As wis.dm focuses on driving revenue, we want your help. We want to prove to these big media companies that their model should include great commentary and question-powered discussions. We want to show them that news is more fun when it's being talked about. We're in close contact with a number of these organizations, and far from being evil corporate giants, they're actually quite intent on watching how social sites can play a role in their world. So show them! Start filling up the new Television scene with all sorts of content about current events, news, entertainment, media, and life. Stand Up + Air Your Views. Broadcast YOU.

My wis.dm - Have It Your Way

2008-06-24T18:00:00.004-04:00

Today we've introduced a whole new "my wis.dm". In many ways, this is the realization of what we intended my wis.dm to be all along: a place for you to have a dashboard, a console view, customized with pointers to all the content you care about. To borrow a classic fast-food slogan, now you can finally "Have it your way."

What does this mean in practice? Well, you'll see two areas of the my wis.dm feeds view, an "inbox", which will include personally-relevant info like questions from your friends, and replies to your comments. You'll also see a "subscriptions" area, where you can control all sorts of other info you might want to keep tabs on. In both of these areas, you can see just "new" stuff, that you haven't clicked on or answered. Or you can see "all" items. To keep you and our databases sane, this will give you a 7-day backlog of items from your feed.

So how do you use it? Here are some examples...

Want to see a flood of every question being posted, anywhere on wis.dm? (we know this has been a popular request from a minority set of true wis.dm power users) Just subscribe to every Scene, and you'll see all new Bits consolidated in your my wis.dm subscriptions tab. Or be more discerning, and stick to the scenes you care about most.
Have a favorite Bit type? Subscribe just to Polls, or just to "Would You Rather" questions, if you like!
Want to keep tabs on a favorite topic? Maybe you are an expert in photography, and want to be sure you get ahold of all the content on wis.dm with topic "photography". Just subscribe to that topic, and it'll be delivered right into your feed.

Simple, eh? There's a lot going on to make all this happen, but we think it'll be a far superior way to consume great wis.dm content, and to keep tabs on all your discussions happening around the growing wis.dm world.

As always, your thoughts are most welcome, email feedback@wis.dm. Most of the changes you see today have come from trying hard to accommodate all the varied requests we get from you!

Keep wis.dming, and enjoy!

Usability is a tough nut

2008-06-10T15:04:00.003-04:00

Team wis.dm is always listening to feedback from our members. And the feedback comes in at all different levels. Veteran users, new registrants, site visitors; internet power-users, and people using their first web-connected computers!

Providing the best usability for all these groups is a real challenge, and it's ongoing. In efforts to strike the right balance, you probably saw some changes on wis.dm today.

Start a Discussion - We've consolidated the location for posting your own content. You can now ask questions using the "start a discussion" button permanently under your login information. Easy, always available, and clear for all the new users who want to know how to get involved!

Comment System - a big overhaul to the comment system also went live today. By implementing true threaded comment behavior, we've cut down on the noise factor from people quoting each-other's comments, and allowed you to better keep track of discussion within a post.

Formatted Content - finally, in the comment system as well as around wis.dm in general, you'll see a new way to format rich content (bold, italics, links, etc.) We've picked an industry standard for forums, BBCode, as our formatting language. For some users who have been using HTML to format, this will be a change. We went this direction for two reasons. 1) Basic formatting just works better. A number of hacks necessary to cleanly format non-HTML content were removed, so users just looking to leave their simple thoughts will have more reliable results. 2) We want to protect our site and you all from malicious content that can be put in the page to reformat it, spam, or spread viruses. The best way to do this (and the way that almost every other forum/comments system out there works) is to keep control over the types of formatting allowed. We hope that it meets almost everyone's needs for self-expression, and that it helps keep an atmosphere of sanity to the great wis.dm discussion threads!

Usability is a tough nut to crack. So as always, send your thoughts to feedback@wis.dm. What's better, what's worse, how would you solve these problems best for all the diverse members of the community?

Keep wis.dming!

Feeding the wis.dm addiction

2008-05-21T16:21:00.004-04:00

Two things will come as no surprise to those of you who love answering the huge breadth of Bits on wis.dm, and who've been around for a while.

1. wis.dm members have been clamoring since the beginning for a way to respond to wis.dm Bits when they're on the go, at the airport, in a cab, or dare I say it...sitting in class.

2. Team wis.dm goes to great lengths to listen and deliver on the crowd's desires.

With those two items in mind, today we introduced a simple mobile application. Check it out on your mobile device at

http://wis.dm/m

Let us know your feedback. If it's a hit, we're ready to take it to the next level! For now, happy wis.dm'ing on the go!

A Wis.dm Worth Waiting For

2008-05-01T10:12:00.003-04:00

Good things come to those who wait, or at least to loyal wis.dm'ers.

The new wis.dm will be here any day now! As a nod to those who have been carefully following our wis.dm future questions and comments, waiting in anxious expectation of "what's next", here is a sneak peek.

Stay tuned . . . the next time you visit wis.dm, it could be a whole new world where you can explore even more!

Get in on the Actions

2008-04-18T12:39:00.002-04:00

Sometimes, what we do conveys more than what we say. Like the time when my dad gave my mom a vacuum cleaner for Valentine’s Day, and she broke into tears. Or when he (later) presented her with two airline tickets to Italy, and she danced around the room, elated.

Well, what would a scene be, without props and stage direction? The new wis.dm Scenes will include fun props that let you set the stage to explore people and friendships further one-to-one.

When you’re spending time in a scene you will be able to select an action to show how you’re feeling. You can drink a beer at the bar, protest at a forum, or eavesdrop at a café. These actions will be visible to the rest of the community, and there are some you can even provide to other members, like buying a drink.

Intrigued by someone in particular? You will be able to take action by sending a gift or asking for a personal chat. After all, actions speak louder than words.

This week’s winner of a fLip digital camcorder in the Win a Wii with wis.dm contest is Michale. The grand prize winner of a Nintendo Wii is Corey_D. Congratulations to you both!

Member Call Audio, & Keep the Invites Coming!

2008-04-12T14:42:00.005-04:00

Thanks again to all of you who participated in the 2nd wis.dm member conference call. We took note of your comments and feature suggestions. One of the suggested features, the filtering of "Questions for Me", is expected to appear within weeks.

For those who missed the call, the audio file is here for your listening pleasure. If you missed this call, not to worry, we hope to have another soon.

Grog is this week's winner of a fLip Digital Camcorder. We are in the final stretch of the Win a Wii with wis.dm contest, and it is not too late to dive in and invite new members. You could win a camcorder, or even a Nintendo Wii!

Wis.dm a Webby Awards Official Honoree!

2008-04-08T17:02:00.003-04:00

The Webby Awards are oft-described as the online Oscars. Well, we are too proud, as wis.dm was recently designated as an Official Honoree in the Social Networking category.

Just 15% of a whopping 8,000 entries merit this recognition, and a mere five achieve nominee status per category. This year’s social networking category nominees includes such big fish as Facebook and Bebo.

We feel confident this is a sign of great things to come. As the Webbys say, “This honor signifies an outstanding caliber of work.” So let’s work together to make wis.dm one of those top five nominees in 2009. Oh, and if we did have an emotional acceptance speech to give, we would offer special thanks to Modus Associates!

Playthings

2008-04-08T11:25:00.002-04:00

The rapid-fire interaction among wis.dm'ers on a compelling question can lead to a meaningful conversation and lasting friendships, or add fuel to a longstanding feud. It's often entertaining and almost always a compelling learning experience.

We've learned from you in unexpected ways. You've taught us how ingenious you can be at taking the simple tool that a yes/no question is, and using it in a unique way to boldy go beyond a binary response. We can't help but look forward with anticipation to what you will do when we throw a few more toys in the play space.

As the scenes and settings at wis.dm expand, so will the tools at your disposal. You will have new ways to kick-start a conversation or connect one-on-one. The fun will be in what is offered where, so choose thoughtfully based on your mood and motivation. With change comes some new (fun) challenges . . .

P.S. Last week's winner of a fLip digital camcorder is Corey_D. Why not get in the game and Win a Wii?

Introducing Scenes

2008-04-04T15:06:00.003-04:00

Change is just over the horizon! Here are a few more details to whet your appetite for the upcoming adventure.

Later this month wis.dm will expand to feature many new and different “Scenes”, offering you room to move and connect with others depending, perhaps, on your particular mood or motivation.

wis.dm Scenes will have their own distinct flavor, which, we hope will set the stage for the type of conversations that might take place in each one. Scenes will be based on real world metaphors, including: bars, cafés, clubs (ID required*!$!*), galleries, forums and markets and we'll launch with at least two distinctly different Scenes from each category. But it won’t stop there, in the weeks to come everyone will have the opportunity to build and own their own Scenes... but more on that to follow.

If you would like to play a role and help us to architect Scenes, friend wisdm_future now, we will use this avatar to seek wis.dm's opinion on some of the important defining details.

Want to chat more about wis.dm's future? Join us for a conference call Thursday April 10 at 4:00 pm EDT.

Phone number: 712-432-3900
Passcode: 8544406#

A Change of Scenery

2008-03-28T12:59:00.001-04:00

When wis.dm is really hopping, it can feel like a popular party, with everyone crowded in the kitchen, yelling to be heard over the din. Maybe you never even make it past the front door, you are so busy debating the finer points of presidential primaries with a friend of yours on the front step. Who knows what is going on inside? You are too busy to even find out.

These kinds of conversation are what make wis.dm great, but lately we have been thinking the cacophony of the crowd might not be all that welcoming to newcomers. Besides, there is plenty of space inside, and we think you’d like your own comfortable corner so you can continue that conversation with friends.

So that is exactly what we are working on—expanding wis.dm to give you more room to play. In the coming weeks you will be able to explore a bigger wis.dm world, with more places with decidedly different feels and moods. So whether you have a hankering for political debate or pillow talk, there will be a place for you.

and this week's winner is . . .

2008-03-27T16:03:00.001-04:00

_Courtney_ is our first weekly winner of a fLip digital camcorder.

For those who were keeping a careful watch on the contest page today, you may have seen a change of name for the declared winner. Oops, we made a mistake, but we worked quickly to fix it. Human, frustratingly so, we are.

It is a tight race for the pole position as we roll into the second week. Who knows if those currently in the top spots will prevail?

Remember, each week’s race to win a fLip digital camcorder is based on accepted invites that have at least 5 yes/no responses to a question during that specific weekly contest time period. You can win a fLip digital camcorder only once, giving others a chance to share in the winnings.

The race to win the grand prize Nintendo Wii game system is based on cumulative accepted invites that have at least 5 yes/no responses to a question over the entire four week contest time period, so keep the invites coming! You just might find yourself crossing the line in first place.

Talk to me

2008-03-25T14:33:00.003-04:00

Recently we had our first wis.dm member conference call. Those of you who participated had some interesting things to say! It was great to hear you talk about the friends you’ve made on wis.dm, and the unique nature of relationships that have been forged over questions both profound and pedestrian.

You told us about the features you would like to see and the changes you would make. It was good feedback, and reassuring to hear things mentioned that were on our list, too. We hear you, and are working on making wis.dm everything you want and more.

If you did not get a chance to join us, don't fret. Here is a link to the transcript for your listening pleasure. You can read some post-call member comments at this question posed by Kelly or this question asked by Simone de Beauvoir.

BTW, we expect to have another call in the next few weeks, so stay tuned, and thanks!

Meet team wis.dm : new arrival

2008-03-22T19:40:00.003-04:00

While many of you know me, the wis.dm CTO, I'd like you to meet Dexter, my 16-hour old first son. I expect to have him working in the wis.dm code base by this fall. ;-)

Addressing Community Challenges

2008-03-21T14:53:00.005-04:00

Team wis.dm prides itself on listening carefully to our valuable users. We take into account the awesome feedback you all send us, as well as watching closely the activity and sentiments on the site. For quite some time, we've been hearing some sour notes with respect to how people earn points and status within our world, and wanted to provide some perspective.

We offer thumbs-up and thumbs-down on our questions. Not a new concept, and it fits nicely with the binary simplicity we all love about wis.dm. In an ideal world, this feature is used to surface valuable content for the community. We leave this entirely in your hands. We trust you. We also believe that those users who create the best content in the system should get recognized for it, so in that sense, it's perfectly natural to reward users as their questions are given a thumbs-up, and also to cascade negative feedback to users who are spamming, creating inappropriate content, or generally being bad citizens of wis.dm.

We have employed this tactic for quite some time, because we believed ultimately that the sense of our users would prevail, and we would all benefit from such a system. Unfortunately, the egos of some users and the complaints of others have spoiled this experiment. The points "game" took over from the "value" for too many users, and as often happens with these things, a popularity contest emerged.

As of today, the behavior of the site has been changed. Marking a question up or down will only effect its weight in the world, but not have any bearing on the user who spent time to create that question. We're not proud of this change. We also aren't naive, and understand that all communities face challenges like this. We hoped the crowd would work this one out on its own, but have come to the conclusion that they will not. Disappointing, but we'll move forward.

To those folks who've been abusing this feature to either help out your friends or "punish" other members for whatever reason, hopefully this will refocus you on more productive pursuits within wis.dm. To those who have spent lots of time complaining on the site and to Team wis.dm directly, we hope this satisfies your issues so we can return to our regularly-scheduled wis.dming. And to those who don't care at all, we hope this brings back a wis.dm that is less dominated by discussion of wis.dm itself, and brings to the surface more of the great life discussions we enjoy here.

As always, please send us your thoughts, feedback@wis.dm. We continue to listen and our job is to help create a place for everyone here at wis.dm.

Friends Tell Friends About wis.dm (and win)

2008-03-20T10:52:00.008-04:00

Busy, busy busy. While we have been busy with the wis.dm expansion project, it occurred to us that you might want something to keep you busy, too.

So we cooked up the Win a Wii with wis.dm contest, so you could compete to be the top dog at bringing new blood to wis.dm.

For each new confirmed member that you invite that asks a question and gets at least five “yes/no” answers, you receive one “wii” point. Earn the most wii points in any week of the contest and you will be the proud owner of a fLip digital camcorder (uhm, perfect for posing those spur of the moment video questions). Earn the most wii points over four weeks, and you’ve earned your ticket to gaming addiction with the Wii grand prize.

The link to enter is here: http://wis.dm/corp/contest, as is all the fine print about inviting real people with real email addresses. More people means more unique points of view at wis.dm, which means more wis.dm all around. So now you have added incentive for telling others why wis.dm is so entertaining (addictive) for you.

Meet team wis.dm: Jen

2008-03-18T17:03:00.004-04:00

Hi Everyone!

I'm Jen, wis.dm's newest team member. You'll start to see me around the site asking and answering questions with the rest of you. I am looking forward to helping wis.dm introduce new products and tools to help enhance your experience of the site! Keep a lookout for fun new features in the near future!

Aside from the graphic design and web development I'll be contributing here at wis.dm, I also spend my time performing my original music in the local Boston music scene and doing small tours around New England. If you start to see lots of questions about indie music, they're likely from me ;)

Lately, I have been in a real Leather Tuscadero phase, hence my avatar. I don't know why, I think maybe it's because I recently got a bad haircut and she helps me feel like I can still rock out even with a partial mullet! (slaps thigh twice and shoots... only true Happy Days fans will get that)

I hope you'll add me as a friend (my dream is to one day have more friends than Will). I look forward to exploring life's questions with you all...

"Oh, the Places You'll Go . . ."

2008-03-14T14:59:00.005-04:00

. . . as Dr Seuss said. And we have some grand places cooked up in our heads. And the things that you'll do, you'll think they are cool, but we need your feedback and feelings about these new tools.

With all apologies to Theodor Seuss Geisel, wis.dm will be offering new ways to explore people, places and things in the next six months. This is your community. We need help building it. Pick up the phone and pitch in.

Join us for a call (a real live chat in the Gazebo!) Tuesday March 18th at 1:00 PM EDT. Email future@wis.dm to confirm your participation and receive the phone number and passcode.

So what's on your mind? Where would you go and what would you do, if you ran the zoo? The call will be limited to the first twenty wis.dmers. In the meantime, be on the lookout for something new next week.

Building Blocks

2008-03-06T10:19:00.001-05:00

Things have been a hectic sort of quiet on wis.dm in 2008. A few new features have rolled out, a number of small enhancements. But mostly, we've let the community thrive. You all have been cranking out just about every Yes/No question you can think of to spark discussion, find others to chat with, and learn a bit about yourselves in the process.

In recent days, Team wis.dm has made some under-the-hood updates that will act as building blocks for amazing upcoming changes. In the coming few months, you'll be seeing a lot more changing around wis.dm, and we're pretty sure you're going to love it. In the meantime, keep using wis.dm, keep pushing the boundaries of the questions you ask, the games you play, and the people you meet. We'll be back in touch soon with some bits of wis.dm on where we're headed!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-04T11:03:00.000-05:00

Team wis.dm hopes everyone had a great holiday season. In between sips of egg-nog and rousing choruses of "Auld Lang Syne", our team has been busy with a few improvements to wis.dm. In no particular order...

You'll see a new block on the main question pages that calls out some of the best questions we're finding on wis.dm, as well as helpful tips on using the site. If you already know these tips, just click "don't show me this again", and we won't! But for new wis.dm members, this should help get them oriented to the site. All you veterans know the ropes, but wis.dm can be an intimidating place for first-timers!

Hidden behind the scenes, you'll find the new wis.dm Idea Lab. Check it out, give us feedback! There's a link at the very top of the page. We'll let you all explore...

Finally, we've begun to make some important improvements to searching on wis.dm. You'll find that our search functionality works more like a real search engine now. You can search for multiple words, use combination searches with AND/OR, and you should get back more relevant results near the top. Searching is important on wis.dm now that we're approaching half-a-million questions. So watch for even more functionality to come in that area.

We hope you enjoy these changes. As always, I'm sure you'll let us know. And have a happy healthy 2008, on and off of wis.dm!

Thanksgiving on wis.dm is all about people

2007-11-26T15:59:00.000-05:00

While many people were relaxing with family over the last few days enjoying some turkey, we locked ourselves in the office working on some new features for the people page. Here's the quick overview...

The People page has taken on slicker, more functional look. In addition to a cleaner way of displaying people, we’ve provided some new views to see who’s doing what on wis.dm. Check out the “fans” tab to see who’s marked you as a friend and the “matches” tab to see which wis.dm’ers you’re most compatible with.

Ever wonder whether someone’s online to read a comment you just posted? Well, wonder no longer. - an “online” indicator now appears below a user’s avatar when they’re on the site.

We’ve also modified the way you identify yourself on wis.dm. The “username” field is the primary way you’re identified on the site and will be displayed with your avatar (for existing users, your username is defaulted to a combination of the old “first” and “last” name fields). If you’d like to share your real name, just fill out the “profile name” field. Profile name will be displayed with your location when someone views your profile page.

Enjoy the fruits of our Thanksgiving weekend!

Give the Gift of wis.dm

2007-11-20T10:38:00.000-05:00

The holidays are fast approaching. The spirit of giving is in the air. To that end, we've made it easier than ever to give the gift of wis.dm!

You'll see today a new "my invites" tab in the my-wis.dm section of the site. There you'll be able to keep track of all the people you've invited into wis.dm. (As a bonus, you'll get to see the people they've invited as well...it's Thanksgiving, have you connected with your wis.dm grandchildren yet?) You can still share wis.dm in all the ways you could before, but in addition, we've given each member a dedicated link they can post all over the internet. If you stick it anywhere fun, send us a screenshot or photo, we'd love to see it!

Yeah, yeah...I hear what you're mumbling, "geez, you can't fool me, this laser-like focus on inviting others is self-serving to the greedy internet overlords". Well, only in part. wis.dm thrives with more members, and the more people we have using the site, the faster we can bring you great improvements and a better experience! Plus, you'll get credit on the site, more wis.dm points, and more links to find your friends and their questions easily.

So give your friends something to be thankful for this holiday season. Spread the joy, spread the curiosity, spread the wis.dm.

Friends, Friends, Friends...

2007-11-07T10:12:00.000-05:00

Another new day here at wis.dm has ushered in some brand new changes to the site.

You may have noticed that the "my friends' questions" page has now been replaced by a "questions for me" page. Let's take a quick look at what this means and what exactly has changed.

Over the past few months many of you have let us know that you would rather not have your inbox filled up with messages from other users when they "share" a question with you. Well, we agree with you and starting today your inbox will now be reserved for messages sent from other users and not page after page of shared question messages.

The "questions for me" page now serves a two-fold purpose. Just like the old page, you will still see questions asked by all your friends here. In addition, you will now also see questions that other users have shared with you. When another wis.dmer shares a question with you it will appear on the "questions for me" page with an extra line showing you which wis.dm user shared the question with you.

As a result of the new "questions for me" features, the question sharing section also looks slightly different. When sharing a question via email, you can now also include a personal message to the recipient. When sharing a question with your friends on wis.dm, they will no longer receive a message in their inbox; instead they will see the question show up on their "questions for me" page.

Hopefully this will help all of you manage your inboxes a little easier and allow you to find all the great content on wis.dm that your friends are participating in more easily.

Enjoy the new changes and keep on wis.dming.

The Devil's in the Details

2007-10-17T17:18:00.000-04:00

In the last few weeks, wis.dm has really begun to hum along nicely. You all are creating an inquisitive, welcoming, and rather addicting community!

So what has Team wis.dm been up to recently? Well, aside from trying to drag ourselves away from answering and commenting on all your great questions, we've been listening to your feedback, and trying to polish and streamline the wis.dm experience. The devil is in the details on these things, and we're working hard to make things less devilish.

Just today, a small but important feature was added to wis.dm. Are you ever in a great question browsing session, deep into recent questions, or browsing questions from an intriguing user, and then you click through to a question, comment on it, and then feel lost because there's no good way to get back to the list of questions?? Well, US TOO. So starting today, you'll see a small link under the big questions tab on question pages, "return to the question list". Trust me, start using it, you'll love it. You can now jump in on discussion and check the crowd's answers without even breaking stride.

You might also have noticed recently that our emails have a new look. Still the simple wis.dm feel, but a little more polished, less ugly links, and you know they're from the site when they come from alerts@wis.dm. As part of this change, be sure to check out your account preferences. You can now opt to receive email notifications of personal messages, of activity on your questions, or both. We believe you should control your wis.dm consumption, and this is a first step towards giving you more control.

Finally, the team is working very hard to keep wis.dm running smoothly as we grow. We are flogging the hamsters that power the site as hard as we can to keep wis.dm peppy and reliable. You all have logged over 7 Million answers in wis.dm to well over 300,000 questions, and we challenge you to keep going. Anyone want to guess when we'll hit 10 Million answers?

Thanks for reading, keep wis.dming and spread the word to your most curious of friends!

WhereTF did those two weeks go?

2007-10-03T20:11:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, it's been a couple of weeks or so since the last post here and I'm feeling guilty about it. We've been working hard on what we're calling "outbound communications", which wraps up a bundle of things including improvements to our email notifications (letting you know when you get messages, comments on questions, etc.), wis.dm updates and a new newsletter. It's all looking good and we're hoping to get a "release" out later this week. Hopefully you'll see the first wis.dm newsletter in your inbox first thing next week. Otherwise, it's been a busy couple of weeks with business basics - speaking to our (extremely nice) investors and such like.

I have really missed not spending so much time on the site and at one point almost asked: "It's been a couple of weeks since my last question, did you miss me?" You know the sort, right?

We've also been busy planning major improvements to the wis.dm profile area and the points system. I'm really looking forward to this section of work as is the rest of the team. More on this to follow.

Hope everyone's enjoying the site and watch out for more, right here, in a couple of days.

Glamorous? No. Essential? Yes.

2007-09-21T12:24:00.000-04:00

After a fairly hefty release like last Thursday's, we've been focused this week on a bundle of invisible upgrades to the techie software libraries that help power wis.dm. These kinds of changes aren't glamorous, but they are necessary to keep the wis.dm code monkeys happy, and to keep bringing you the best web experience possible. Talking about keeping people happy... we've also found some time to implement a new "block" feature in response to your feedback and we have made some amendments to make the management of mail easier. Our review of Slider etc., continues and oh, we didn't quite get round to fixing the html widget design, Err! Keep your fingers crossed for next week!! Have a great weekend wis.dm!

Thanks for your feedback

2007-09-18T21:34:00.000-04:00

Change can certainly be a bit unsettling, and I wanted to thank all of you who shared your comments and suggestions about wis.dm's new design and latest features. We're certainly "listening" and have read hundreds of questions/messages/comments/emails/etc. since the change. From our review to date it's pretty apparent that a large majority is in favor of the new layout/design and thinks "slider" is a fab feature. Our last release was not a win-win however, or at least, not yet! For example, it was clear from your comments that you: (i) would like to be able to adjust a question's slider position from the list page; (ii) think the list page is overly cramped; and (iii) were a little disconcerted with the word "prudent" in the ask a question tab. We're thinking about this stuff, it's too early to discuss potential outcomes, but we will keep you informed as our thinking progresses. As a result of the release we also broke the message/status bar - apologies for that. It's fixed now I'm pleased to say. We'll update you on progress in a few days (hopefully not weeks), until then, keep enjoying the new features, and feel free to send us any new ideas you may have so we can bask in your wis.dm!

No acid, but plenty of stuff in the pipe!

2007-09-13T21:44:00.001-04:00

Yesterday evening, just as we were making final plans for the wis.dm release, which happened early this morning, we asked wis.dm’ers if they’d like to guess at the new functionality we were about to roll out. The question Hey wis.dm: are you ready? received 160 comments with some accurate predictions. For all of those who participated there’s a wis.dm T in it for you - check out the comment stream for more details. For those who guessed correctly, we’ll throw in a little something extra!!

Regarding the responses we received which didn’t quite match to today’s release, 9 themes emerged. I’d categorize them as: ‘live’, ‘comments’, ‘Maybe’, ‘media’, ‘my wis,dm’, ‘subscriptions / communications’, ‘points and rewards’, ‘search’ and ‘general usability’. A great group of topics and much aligned with all of the categories we have outlined in our “backlog” or schedule of work - perhaps with the exception of Maybe, which we're kinda not into. We will address each of these categories in the fullness of time and in the next few weeks we will be ticking off "subscriptions / communications" and putting significant effort into 'Points and rewards'. At least, that's how it looks for now! At the same time, we will always be attempting to improve functionality and general usability. We call this ongoing project “suckage”.

Thanks again to everyone who commented. We'll analyse post release feedback tomorrow and over the weekend and update you early next week.

Oh, one last thing... sorry Jefe.... couldn't quite deliver on the "acid".

From pub to podium, what's your mood?

2007-09-13T08:58:00.000-04:00

wis.dm’s a little over 4 months old and we’ve certainly had a blast building a site that starts to push at the edge of online interaction and collaboration. Thanks to everyone for participating, wis.dm just facilitates... the power is in the hands of wis.dm members, and the more there are, the more powerful it becomes. I feel we're making great progress now, enabling wis.dm’ers to work together, an efficient “crowd” or “smart mob” as Howard Rheingold might say, collaborating on and solving some of life’s mysteries. I was in New York earlier this week and someone asked me - “What’s at the core of wis.dm?” and “Where’s its center of gravity?” Having given these questions some thought, I’d say it’s quickly morphing into a form of “life compass”, a place to explore, discover and find one’s “true north”. A place to get answers to some of the tougher challenges we face as human beings, and this is where IMHO a “crowd” as opposed to “an individual expert” can be a most effective medium.

So, to this latest release. First I’d like to explain the nature of the cycles we work in. We’re a small team and though we’re pretty agile, developing software takes time and the developments you’re seeing today are at least 6 weeks in planning and execution. I’m making this point because as we’re constantly receiving feedback, we’re considering it and building it into our schedule. More on what’s next soon! Our primary goal, this trip, was based on much feedback from users wanting to get straight to serious debate - an important component of the wis.dm proposition. But wis.dm has been built to enable a balance of interaction, from the fun and light-hearted -to- deep and thought provoking. We want wis.dm to maintain its lively feel and we want to make sure that better questions across the fun to serious spectrum gain the prominence they deserve. It was on this basis that “slider” was born. Slider enables wis.dm’ers to quickly navigate between questions based on their propensity for lighter or heavier content or their particular mood at any given time. Our innovation: to enable the “crowd” as a whole to dictate what goes where and quickly return questions to match a particular mood. Named as places, the continuum runs from “Pub” to “Podium”. We’ve built the slider into the question asking process enabling users to seed their question; and into the question detail page so that others can nudge it toward a new location if they feel the question is misplaced.

From a functional perspective the next major component of this release is the overall simplification of rate, report and keep track of a question. Rating has been around on wis.dm for some time but this process has now been made significantly easier with the introduction of “thumbs up / wise” and “thumbs down / un-wise”. We’ve also simplified the process of reporting “inappropriate content” with the introduction of “the face”. Check it out and watch it blush! Users have been asking for the longest time for a better way to keep track of questions and we’ve introduced private bookmarks in this release. Essentially, favoriting a question has now been replaced with marking a question as "wise" on the one hand, to promote the best questions to the surface and "bookmarking" - to better keep track. For users who used favorites, we’ve marked everything in your favorites list with a bookmark.

We have also spent a lot of time in the past weeks thinking about the design and usability of the site and have introduced three clear elements into the design, questions, people and my wis.dm. Clicking on the “ask a question” button drops down a new question asking interface - designed to streamline the process and add slider functionality. We’ve also introduced an “invite a friend” drop down which we hope users will adopt en masse! wis.dm’s power grows exponentially with the number of users - so start inviting now! My wis.dm has also been re-vitalized - but this section of the site will be the subject on our next major effort. Oh and the last item to get a special mention, the wis.dm status bar, no longer a major draw on resources and back to working perfectly informing you about your wis.dm activity.

Finally, thx to Will, Mike, Trevor, Kristen, Traci, Nicole, Bill and Daniel for burning the midnight oil and getting this latest iteration out. It’s a great platform for us to move forward and next in our sights is a major revamp of the points system and wis.dm profile. Alongside these activities we’ll be continually improving the everyday features and I’ll post on this in more detail later today.

Thanks for participating and enjoy!

More...!

2007-08-21T13:38:00.000-04:00

We know that each and every one of the 130 characters you're given to mold your wis.dm question is important to you. So why should you waste them on such clutter as "details" or "see link!"? Now, wis.dm will automatically sense, as if by magic, the presense of content in your question's detail field and show it accordingly. It'll also allow said info to be viewed from outside the question in a handy drop-down display. Fantastic, huh?

Did we goof? Call it out: feedback@wis.dm

Quizzes: frosty ten-packs of wis.dm just in time for the summer home stretch.

2007-08-01T15:59:00.000-04:00

We here at wis.dm are proud to announce the latest addition to our inquisitive arsenal: the quiz. As of today, some of the site’s most interesting, creative and seasonable questions will be highlighted by their inclusion of any number of topical ten-question sets. You’ll be able to easily see how your answers match up with the populus, and you’ll be able to send it out to wis.dmers and non-wis.dmers alike to discover where they stand and how they compare to your opinions. It’s a great way to introduce people to the site. And as more great questions get asked, we’ll add new quizzes to make sure we stay fresh.

And hey, this is just the beginning. If you guys like these, we just might add the ability to create your own quizzes in the future.

As always, feedback is welcome! feedback@wis.dm

People, Made Wiser

2007-07-20T14:38:00.000-04:00

Today marks the introduction of a new and improved “people” page. In addition to seeing the good old leaderboard, you’ll now be able to track point gains over the course of the day. We’ve also overhauled our “compatibility” system, so hopefully now you’ll see match percentages more dynamic and accurate. Think you might have friends on wis.dm? Use our new people search, which will allow you to focus your search by location and/or gender. All and all, we’ve given the people page more entertainment ammo.

And of course, please feed us your feedback! feedback@wis.dm

Finding great content...

2007-07-13T14:36:00.000-04:00

With all the activity on wis.dm these days, we know it's sometimes a little difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff and get to the questions that really resonate with you and your topics of interest.
With that in mind we've introduced a new topic bar for browsing by popular subjects, and of course you can always type in your own. And once you start to delve you can now see the most popular questions on those topics, as well as the most recent... or you can take a peek at related ones.
So what are you waiting for? Get out there and find those gems.

You may also notice a few more subtle changes, such as the ability to send a question to both your wis.dm friends and your friends who aren't yet members on the same page as where you're asking the question. Go ahead, get your friends to answer - their responses may surprise you!

Any and all feedback is welcome at feedback@wis.dm

Keep the wis.dm rolling with favorite questions!

2007-07-02T15:52:00.000-04:00

We’ve been listening to your feature requests, and are proud to announce the introduction of WIS.DM FAVORITES! Now you can mark your favorite questions as “favorites,” display them in your profile, and keep a close eye on the discussions you want to follow. It’s ridiculously simple; just click the little star on the question and watch it light up and jump into your “favorites” page on my wis.dm. Click said star again to reverse the process. Before you know it, your productivity will rocket through the roof. Your wis.dm productivity, that is. Favorites replaces the “wise” flag, but don’t worry, you can still give people kudos by favoriting their questions, and you won’t lose points from previous wise’s.

As always, feedback is more than welcome. Tell us what's on your mind at feedback@wis.dm!

Chutes and Ladders

2007-06-29T09:33:00.000-04:00

Some of our most eagle-eyed members noticed a bit of motion on the points leaderboard the other day. Some users moved up a bunch of places and some moved down.

So, what's going on? We've been working on making the playing field fairer. Specifically, we removed points from users who were abusing the system, and we restored points to users who were being abused. For anyone who cares, we are doing our best to make the points as fair as possible. But no matter how many safeguards we put in place, there is always room for people to work counter to the spirit of wis.dm.

So, it is really up to all of you to help. If you see someone abusing the system, let them know that it isn't okay. And by all means, continue using using the flagging to highlight questions that are inappropriate, spam, etc. Just be fair. And if you need us, you can always reach the wis.dm team at feedback@wis.dm.

Have you asked a wis.dm question on Facebook yet?

2007-06-21T18:15:00.000-04:00

Today, we just released a major update to the wis.dm app on Facebook. The biggest change is that you can now ask your friends questions - all from within Facebook. And your matches - who has answered most like you - is now limited to your Facebook friends.

It is now really fun to ask and answer wis.dm questions from Facebook. All in all, the experience now is much better. Give it a try!

What's the right number of topics?

2007-06-18T22:55:00.000-04:00

wis.dmers seem to fall into one of a three camps when it comes to question topics. The first group is busy asking questions with no topics at all. That's okay, but not ideal. Why? Well, topics are a great way to make sure that other people with similar interests will see your question. No topics, and your question will have a lower chance of getting noticed. The second group on wis.dm is doing a great job of adding topics to questions. Not much to say here except keep up the good work of adding relevant, concise topics to your questions. The third group of wisdmers has been a bit verbose on the topic choices. No, 50 topics is not helpful. Too many topics on a question is worse than no topics. And topics that have nothing to do with the question waste everyone's time. Some people might even call it spam.

Today, we've limited the number of topics you can add to a question to 10. This is designed to prevent people from adding large numbers of irrelevant topics. We will be rolling out other changes in the upcoming weeks to make topics even more useful. In the meantime, don't forget to flag off-topic questions you come across. Flagging is your chance to influence the ways you want to see wis.dm used.

wis.dm brings questions and answers to Facebook

2007-06-11T10:42:00.000-04:00

Yes, it's true, some of the best parts of wis.dm are now available in Facebook. Today, we launched the new wis.dm app for Facebook. It combines what's great about wis.dm - excellent questions and answers, with the reason Facebook is so useful - connecting with all your friends. Bringing the two together lets you do amazing things like see who on Facebook you are most compatible with - all based on who is answering like you. If you are an avid wis.dm question asker, now your Facebook friends can answer your wis.dm questions without leaving Facebook - the questions are right on your Facebook profile.

This is our first pass at integrating wis.dm with Facebook. Tell us what you think, what you'd like to see next and if you are running into any problems. We see tremendous potential in combining Facebook and wis.dm. We hope you do too!

Get the wis.dm app for Facebook here: http://apps.facebook.com/_wisdm_/

Flag It

2007-06-06T04:25:00.001-04:00

Thanks to a great effort by the wis.dm team, we managed to accelerate a few of our community moderation tools and launch them earlier this evening. This initiative was brought forward by a couple of weeks in response to some great feedback from the wis.dm community. So, from this evening, you can flag any question as “Wise”, “Unwise”, “Inappropriate”, “Spam”, or “Not yes/no”. Flagging a question as “Wise” promotes the question to the popular pages and as a result gets the question more exposure. Flagging something as “Unwise” has the opposite effect. The object is simply to get some of the amazing questions you are asking to rise to the surface. As far as the other flags are concerned, they’re kind of self-explanatory.

Lots more to come.....

Quality / Points

2007-06-02T21:01:00.000-04:00

The vision for wis.dm has always revolved around enabling a "quality" experience - an experience that users can generally benefit from in one way or another. Wis.dm is about raising a debate, inspiring a discussion and utilizing the "crowd" to get answers on subjects that matter. As the site grows - we will continue to innovate and evolve - building tools to enable wis.dm members to benefit in multiple ways from the collective wisdom of a smart, thoughtful group of people.

There has been much discussion about the points system in recent days and about the impact of points on the quality of content. The premise behind points is quite simple: to enable "quality" to bubble up to the surface. It's early days for us and as wis.dm grows in popularity and we attract more and more users we will be constantly learning and making adjustments to all elements of our functionality - there is no doubt that this will apply to the points system. Points must reinforce our mission to "quality" - so watch out for some changes in coming days!

Are you compatible?

2007-05-30T16:42:00.000-04:00

It's been amazing to see all the great questions flow onto wis.dm and watching the number of answers go over 500,000 during these past two weeks. That's a big number for a site that is just getting going. It's now time to start putting all those answers to good use. Today, we are introducing a way for you to see how compatible you are with other wis.dmers. Based on all the questions you've answered, wis.dm will now tell you who's answers are most similar to yours. And as you keep answering questions, you'll see the compatibility matches update based on all your new answers. Take a look at the new matches feature in the people tab.

We've been hearing from many people on wis.dm that they want more interaction with their friends and want to answer their friends questions. So we've moved friends to front and center on the homepage. Now, with one click, you'll have access to all your friends' latest questions. wis.dm really is more fun once you have friends on the site. And if you don't have any friends on wis.dm yet, invite them in today.

See a question that you think shouldn't be on wis.dm? Now you can mark it as inappropriate. wis.dm members are the best judge of appropriate content for the wis.dm site. If you see a question that you think doesn't belong, then use the "mark as inappropriate" action on the question detail page.

We are excited by these changes, but we are a little biased. Let us know what you think!

Look out for wis.dm alerts

2007-05-15T14:03:00.000-04:00

New feature alert! We just pushed out the first wis.dm alerts this afternoon. Now, when someone comments on one of your questions, wis.dm will send you an email alert with a direct link to the comment. You'll also get an email when anyone writes you a new personal message on the site. We heard from a lot of members that they wanted a better way to stay on top of activity on their questions. These new alerts should help. And, if you don't want to get the alerts emails, they are easy to turn off from the My Account page.

We want to hear if you find these alerts useful. Are they too frequent? Want more alerts? Please share your thoughts with us.

Friends Network & Improving Search

2007-05-14T16:37:00.002-04:00

We've just released some tweaks that we think you'll like on wis.dm. First off, as you invite your friends to the site, whether it's by clicking the "invite friends" button or sending a great question, they'll be added as a friend in your wis.dm network. That means every time you ask a question your friends will be notified in the status bar and vice versa plus you can show other members just how popular you are!

We've received a lot of feedback about how the order of results in search showing oldest first is most annoying so this has now been changed to show most recent first and applies to search and topics.

Finally when you're viewing the details of a question the default page shows all answers and comments, much nicer when you're trying to establish who said what.

That's all for now and as ever keep sending your feedback, we love to hear from you.

Thanks

Invite your Friends to wis.dm

2007-05-09T21:52:00.003-04:00

We've been live for a week now and the response so far has been fantastic so a big thank you to you, our users.

Our focus now is on getting more people to join wis.dm. That means more questions, comments and interesting people for you to interact with and compete for points! We'd really like you to help us to grow the wis.dm community and to assist you we've just just added the "Invite Friends" button enabling you to ask a friend to join wis.dm. You can't miss the big button at the top of every page, just click it, add your friends email addresses, write them a brief note and before you know it they'll be on wis.dm. There is also the "share with your friends" link to use when you ask or are viewing a question. So if you write or read an interesting question and you'd love to get your friends point of view why not send it to them by email or share it with them on Facebook.

We look forward to you working with us to grow wis.dm and as ever if you have any feedback write to us: feedback@wis.dm.

We're having fun with wis.dm and we hope you are too.

Weekend Update

2007-05-06T23:05:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy three days since the public launch of wis.dm and we're thrilled with the response. Here's a quick update on what's happened.

- Growth: Over 2,500 questions have been asked and the wis.dm community has responded with more than 40,000 answers and comments. We're seeing new faces in the crowd every day so thanks for helping us get the word out.

- Ask a Friend: This has been a popular feature and we've made a few updates to it based on member feedback (the most requested change was to clear out the email addresses after you click send). Let us know if there are other things we can do to make it easier to share questions.

- Question Links: We've heard about a few issues with the way a link is added to a question, so we're changing how it works. If you paste a URL instead of typing it yourself, the default text (http://) will now be overwritten.

- Points: If you haven't seen the leaderboard, take a look. This is where you can checkout the top members and see who's most active. There have been some delays between updates to user points and we've worked hard to speedup the process. You should be seeing a noticeable improvement tonight.

That's it for now - keep an eye on this blog for more news soon.

Welcome to wis.dm

2007-05-03T12:22:00.000-04:00

We've been in development for a little over 9 months now and today we're excited to launch wis.dm, a valuable extension to your online social experience. The vision behind wis.dm is simply to enable you to ask, share, grow and learn as a part of a rich and vibrant community. The premise is a simple question which you can ask to test the balance of opinion on something in particular or to prompt wide interaction amongst the community, all curious and excited by challenging questions and interesting discourse. As we begin the roll-out and the membership grows we are finding the community's Questions both informative and entertaining, and Answers - well, perhaps just a little surprising. We're enjoying it, we hope you will too.