Thanksgiving on wis.dm is all about people

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

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...

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

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?

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.

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

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!