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

. . . 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

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!

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

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!