Today's Lesson: Configuring Your Feed / Home Page

Hi all, there's a lot of new functionality on the site, and I want to start giving some pointers as to how stuff works.

Today I'd like to cover the Home Page / News Feed view for logged in members.





There are three tabs and two buttons on this page.

The tabs are: Me, My Feed, and Everyone.

The "Me" tab displays your most recent activity on the site.

The "My Feed" is your custom, personalized view of recent activity on the site - more on this to follow. At its simplest level, this view is a combination of the activity of the people that you are following, and the topics that you are interested in.

The "Everyone" feed is the full firehose of ALL recent site activity. You can think of this view like the old Recent Reviews page, but supplemented with other activity like new lists, new items, quizzes taken, and even ratings posted.

So how do you control these feeds?

There are two ways (and these are the two buttons).

The downward arrow is a Temporary Filter on whatever view you are looking at. It's an easy way to isolate certain story types - just lists, just ratings, just reviews, just quizzes, etc. When you click away from the home page, your Temporary Filter settings will be forgotten, and your view will go back to your Permanent Settings.




So how do you control your permanent settings?

It's the Gear Icon. This is where the magic happens, and where you can personalize your permanent feed views to your tastes.



Let's walk through the Gear Icon settings one by one.

Keyword

The first tab on your settings is a Keyword Tool, that lets you subscribe to keywords that you're interested in. For example, if I type in "Mexico," "San Francisco," and "NBA," the site will do its best to include every review from RateItAll related to those keywords in your "My Feed" view.

Using the keyword tool, you can also indicate stuff that you DON'T want to see in your "My Feed" view. For example, if you were sick of reviews about Dingos, you could add the word "Dingo" to your block list, and the site will do its best to filter out reviews related to dingos from your "My Feed" view.




Community

The second tab in your settings is the "Community" tab. On this tab you can specify whose activity shows up in your "My Feed" view. Do you want to see only activity from your friends (people you follow)? Or do you want to push it out a few degrees to show activity from friends of friends, or even, friends of friends of friends. The "friends of friends of friends" setting will give you the broadest view of site activity.

We've also built in a helpful, albeit devious tool for filtering out reviews from particular reviewers here, even if they are your "friends" on the site. For example, if I got sick and tired of activity from "Lawrence," I could add filter out their activity. This feature is perfect for when you feel the pressure to follow someone, but don't actually like reading their stuff.

Like the Keywords tab, the Community tab only affects your "My Feed" view.




Saved Topics

The third tab in your Gear Icon settings is the "Saved Topics" tab. As you browse the site, you may have noticed "Fave" buttons on various pages - items, lists, categories, etc. Clicking Fave on any content page of the side will subscribe you to all the activity from that page.

For example, one of my favorite lists on the site is Mexican Beer. Clicking the "fave icon" on this page will subscribe me to new reviews posted to this list. It's a great way to track the reviews coming in to lists that you made, or to track reviews of a specific item like your blog, or yourself! (if you are on the reviewers list)

Like the Keywords and Community tabs, the Saved Topics tab only affects your "My Feed" view.




Story Types

The final tab is the "Story Types" tab. This is the setting that determines what types of things are included in your Feed views. Do you want to see only reviews like the old recent comments page? You can make that happen. Do you want to see Reviews, Comments, Quizzes, but not Ratings without reviews? Likewise, this is easy to do.

Unlike the other tabs, this setting affects all three tabs (me, my feed, everyone) on your home page.

This is a permanent setting, and the system will remember your choices as long as you are logged in, and until you decide to change them again.





I hope this helps. There are powerful tools in here, and I believe that folks now have the tools to create exactly the experience that they want on RIA.

Thanks for all of the feedback - it's been very helpful, and we're acting on a number of the suggestions already - please keep it coming (feedback@rateitall.com).

Meet The RateItAll Team!

Here is live footage from RateItAll's Global HQ Compound on launch day. Some of what you see may shock you, some may excite you, and some will most certainly confuse you. Enjoy.

V3

As most of you already know, V3 is live. We "soft launched" quietly yesterday with the goal of doing some bug fixing before our public launch today.

We will be doing a number of posts in the coming days about some cool, expert only type features that are on the new site. We'll also be doing our best to explain how basic things work with V3, as well as working hard to eliminate any outstanding bugs - thanks to all who have sent feedback to us (feedback@rateitall.com) regarding bugs, missing features, and the like.

Here are my three favorite new features on the new site:

1) The news feed. The code name for this feature internally was "the river," and I think that's pretty descriptive. This is the home page for logged in folks. You can poke your head into this page and watch all the activity from your friends flow on by. In one sense, the Recent Reviews page on the old site has become the primary metaphor for V3. We have category level rivers for things like Sports, and Subject level rivers for things like Baseball. For the advanced users, you can customize your news feed settings by clicking on the Gear icon on your home page. You can follow keywords for things you're interested in (e.g. beer, art, music, movies, etc.), and you can set your network settings to include friends, friends of friends, or even friends of friends of friends. You can even do things like hide all activity from "My Feed" of particular users (ever have somebody that you need to be their "friend," but don't actually like reading their reviews?) And finally, you can hide keywords like "politics" or "religion" if the droning starts to get your down. I find this feature extremely powerful. I see it as the power to build the exact RateItAll experience that you want.

2) Compatibility Quizzes. These are a fun, quick way to rate a bunch of things and compare yourself to others around RIA. We have hundreds of these quizzes, across many different categories. We will be working on tightening up the quiz results display (so we don't show folks who have only rated one item within a quiz), as well as making the results more precise. We will also be adding paging to the bottom of the quiz pages, and adding in quiz specific search to help with the discovery of new quizzes. This is a fun feature that's only going to get better.

3) "Write a Review" Feature. The internal code name for this feature is "global add." It literally lets you write a review of anything. There's a wizard that walks you through the process of adding new items to the site, and we try to always provide a catch-all topic for your item if you can't find the exact right place to put it. For me, this changes site experience dramatically. I can now rate any damn thing that I please, whether or not a list exists for it. A dish at a restaurant. A taqueria in Mexico City. My friend's blog. You can add anything and everything, and the item will immediately be available for rating and sharing (though it will need to be approved to show up in site search and the list). Try this feature out if you haven't already - it's powerful.

(Forgive me a quick sentimental moment, but I'm really proud of the RateItAll team. These guys really went all out on this - for the last few weeks, the office was full seven days a week, and often until midnight. We're all a bit exhausted (my wife said to me this morning, but feeling pretty good about where things are at.)

That's all for now. As I said, there will be lots more to follow on how this thing works.

Bugs?

It's bug fixing day. If you see any bugs, please send them to feedback@rateitall.com - this blasts out to the whole team.

Data Migration has Begun

Guys, we've begun our data migration in preparation for v3 launch on Tuesday. As of now, we have no eta on when we will be back up.

The next step is to put v3 up behind a password so we can do some final testing before going live with the new site. I may call some of you in to help us test, with live data.

Downtime and Launch Schedule

Guys, we will be taking the site down on Sunday evening in final preparation for Tuesday's launch of V3. There's a lot of data that needs to be migrated and a lot of testing still to be done.

I will share more info when I have it.

New Blog Design

Our little RateItAll Blog with its 850 posts has gotten a makeover, courtesy of our user experience expert, Lena.

It's been pointed out to me a few times recently that this blog looked more like a Lawrence personal blog, than a RateItAll blog.

I can't argue with that.

Hopefully we will be able to mix in a few posts from folks other then me going forward.

Some Top Rated Reviewers by Subject

Guys, we're using V3 with some fairly up to date data now, and it's fun seeing who the top rated reviewers (by helpful votes) are in different areas for the last month.

When V3 launches, we're going to have hundreds of these top rated modules - making it easy to see who are the top rated folks in any area for the day, week, and month.

I think we're going to have a lot of fun with this.

Anyone see any surprises below?

Boxing:




Beer:




Movies:




Hotties:




Military:




Elections:




San Francisco:

Want to be in rotation on RIA's home page?

Hi, we're finalizing our V3 home page and will have a number of our top member's pics in rotation.

But here's the catch:

It needs to be a headshot, and you need to be a Top 500 RIA reviewer by helpful votes.

Big group photos and photos that are not you won't work for what we have in mind.

So if you want your mug in rotation on our home page, please change your profile picture to a headshot (of you), and shoot me a note.

It probably needs to be in the next 30 minutes or so.

Wrapping Up 2008

I hope everyone is enjoying a festive Holiday season. Here at RIA Global HQ, we are still heads down on V3, but are feeling mildly festive.

As we wrap up 2008, here are a few year end lists:

Sports Stories of 2008
Events of 2008
2008 Male Athlete
2008's Dead Celebrities
Things to Ditch in 2008
Number One Songs of 2008
Movies of 2008
2008 Knucklehead Athlete of the Year (aka "the Plaxicos")

There about 80 other lists of 2008 for those who want to rate the year out in style.

Get Your Leopard Themed Widgets

We made a change with our list widgets today.

Our friends at Musestorm, who had been powering our list widgets, have decided to go in another direction.

Enter our friends from Widgetbox, who have helpfully stepped in.

Now if you click on any of the "add this list to my blog!" links all over the site, you will see a Widgetbox tool.

If you already have a RateItAll list widget on your site, we will be providing instructions as to how to update it.

One of the unexpected, and pleasant, surprises associated with this change is that we now have a leopard themed widget.



These widgets work exactly the same way - there is an option for embed code (just like a YouTube video), and there are handy dandy buttons to add to Facebook, add to MySpace, etc. Take them for a whirl!

V3: Messaging 2.0

RateItAll currently has a messaging system that allows you to send and receive messages to and from other RateItAll members.

It's pretty lousy.

It uses pop-ups.

You can't track your sent messages.

The formatting is pretty tough on the eyes.

It tells you that you have new messages even when you've already read them.

Well, V3 is going to address these issues, and will finally give us a proper messaging system. Here are a couple of screenshots.

Here's a peek at the v3 message center:

























And here's a look at a v3 message exchange:
























I'm hopeful that along with some big new things, V3 will bring incremental improvement to a lot of basic things about the site.

V3: Your Activity is Your Profile

One of the subtle differences in V3 over the existing site is in how we treat profiles. On the current site, if you click on somebody's user name you get taken to a profile page that shows links to a user's activity, and stuff like "favorite music," "favorite books," etc.

















The problem that I have with this page is that it's stagnant. Folks fill in their profiles once, and then forget about them. It makes for boring reading (with the exception of some of the embed stuff that folks have done to give their profile pages some flavor).

V3 is going to take a slightly different approach. When you click on a user's name, you will get taken directly to that user's activity stream. By using the filters, you'll be able to isolate that member's most recent activity in things like ratings, reviews, quizzes, comments, lists, etc.

























In other words, you are what your activity says you are.

Of course, everyone's old profile format will still be available with things like embedded videos, testimonials, and the like - it's easy to toggle between a member's activity stream and their profile.

25 Great Holiday Presents You Can Buy Through RIA

As many of you have noticed, we've been working really hard at expanding our coverage of things to rate on RIA. In the process of doing the research to build out our DB, we have come up with a list of gift ideas of things that are not only just flat out awesome, but handily, available for purchase via a link from RateItAll.

Without further ado, here are 25 gift ideas for cool stuff that you can buy through RateItAll:

Amazon Kindle - it's like an iPod for books!
Flip MinoHD Digital Camcorder - incredibly small, affordable, easy to push video to YouTube
Canon Powershot A590IS Digital Camera - save 40%, only about $110
Women's Slippers - I bought a pair last year for Mrs. Magellan they were a big hit.
Bodum Chambord French Press - for the coffee snob
The new JK Rowling book - Harry Potter stuff, I guess
A snowblower - I have no idea why, but people buy a lot of snowblowers through us
Dark Knight DVD - One of the top selling products in America
Ugg Tall Boots - People love these things
The Twilight Soundtrack - flying off the shelves
Munchkin Mozart - top selling toddler toy
Bare Essentials BareMinerals Foundation - top selling cosmetic
Silpat Baking Mat - No stick thingy for pans, one of this year's top selling products
Logitech QuickCam Pro - best selling web cam
A Netbook! - Super small, super cheap laptops. I have one and love it.
A Messenger Bag - another item that I sort of collect.
An Ice Cream Maker - mmmmmm.... ice cream
GPS Device - makes driving directions easy, Garmin Nuvi is top seller
Apple iPod Touch - Music, photos, wifi.... nice (if only it had a camera!)
A book by Stephanie Meyer - not my thing, but they are wildly popular
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell - dude has a cult following
Paul Krugman's Return of Depression Economics - A nice uplifting Holiday read
Night Vision Infrared Goggles - Badass
Scene it? Seinfeld - Seinfeld trivia board game for adults

I think that's 25 - hope that that was useful.

We've Gone Stats Crazy - Part Three

In the third, and likely final, installment of our "we've gone stats crazy" series, I'm going to show you a third way that V3 is stats heavier than V2.

We will be giving logged in users daily updates of accumulations of helpful / funny / agree / disagree votes.

Check it out.

























As mentioned in earlier posts, there will also be other ways to see how you rank against the day's top performers.

We've Gone Stats Crazy - Part Two

Along with the local leaderboards covered in the previous post, V3 will bring with it a significantly beefed up Hall of Fame page that will allow you to track top users in various time periods (day, week, month, year, forever) in the following categories:

Helpful Votes
Funny Votes
Disagree Votes
Agree Votes
Most Followers
Most Reviews
Most Total Contributions

We will also display exactly where the logged in user ranks in each category for each time period in relation to each of the respective leaders.

For those of us who are a bit competitive about this stuff, this should be a big step up. Here's a screenshot (it's running off incomplete data, so don't take these rankings as gospel):

























(btw, I'm tagging all v3 related posts with the clever tag "v3" for easy access)

We've Gone Stats Crazy - Part One

One of the things I'm really looking forward to in V3 is the ability to track top reviewers in hundreds of different categories.

Currently, we have one Hall of Fame, which tracks cumulative helpful votes across all categories.

What we are doing with V3 - in addition to maintaining a beefed up Hall of Fame (more on this to follow) - is tracking top reviewers (by number of helpful votes), in hundreds of different categories and sub-categories, by different time periods like day, week, month, and forever.

For example, with V3, you will be able to tell who the top rated Sports reviewer is, or on a more granular level, who the top rated boxing reviewer is (my bet is professional boxing writer Randyman). You'll also be able to see who the top rated Politics reviewer is (guesses?), or action figure reviewer, or music reviewer, or reggae reviewer, or travel reviewer, or pets reviewer - get the picture?

For example, here is a screenshot of the Beer sub-category page of V3. You'll note that this sub category page has it's own "river" of recent reviews (like the recent reviews page, but just for beer), as well as a module in the sidebar that shows who are the top rated reviewers of Beer by day, week, month, and forever.

While I don't expect this particular category to be very competitive - word has it Magellan plans on running away with this one - perhaps there will be other categories where others will shine. I mean, we're all experts in something, right?

Flagging Reviews in V3

A feature that people have been asking for forever, that we're finally going to be adding is the ability to flag reviews that violate the site rules. When V3 launches, it will be easy for RIA members to bring inappropriate reviews to our administrators' attention. Here's a pic:

See Me Interviewed

Hey guys, I was recently interviewed by Search Engine World - in this ten minute clip, I talk a lot about what we're trying to do with V3. Those of you that have played with the demo site will probably see a lot of what I talk about reflected in the new site:

Fun Article about RateItAll from Providence Journal

We stumbled across this article today from the Providence Journal - it basically takes a look at how Rhode Island stacks up against other states in the RateItAll State Rankings.