Google launches non profit portal, and I think we'll do something similar

Not 100% the same, of course, but working with non profits is a fantastic idea. Google is one of the companies I personally admire a lot for their philanthropic efforts, their "do no evil" philosophy, and their employee programs.

Of course, we don't have nearly the same level of resources, but we're planning on doing something for non profit organizations on FunAdvice. Why? Well, for one, it's the right thing to do - proactively getting involved in helping spread the message of companies who lack resources, are trying to improve the planet, society and the human condition just feels right.

As we get bigger, so too will our own philanthropic efforts go. I'd like to think that given a choice between various similar services, the one that will win (eg, be the biggest, generate the most revenue, etc) will be the one that does the most for the community.

Club Penguin, for example, was giving away 10% of it's profits to charities...they were making a mint by all accounts and didn't have to do that. However even when they negotiated & sold to Disney, they insisted that the donation program continue. That is applause worthy in my book, and something to aspire to. Even in the face of the biggest pay day for the Club Penguin team they might ever obtain they stuck to their principles and goals.

Bravo.

Once we get to where the entire team (not just two full time & two part time employees) can be supported by the FunAdvice business, we plan on doing even more. However, I'm excited that soon we'll be taking our first big step towards our amitious goal of helping worthy non profits reach people and raising awareness for their missions.

Why do we have a funadvice blog?

You tell me, if you read this: is it worthwhile for us to do this? Or not?

We're all on macs now

So the site is doing well. However, it's an odd feeling: all the principals of the site (Ericson, me, and Widhadh) are now on Macs. Yep, not a PC or Windoze box anywhere in site.

Odd that. So for bug reports on Windoze, I'll have to fire up a secondary computer to check it out, if it's platform specific.

OR ask Dara, Harish, or Adam to check it out (our trusty & faithful employees). :)

It's a funny feeling, being on a Mac.

Downtime last night: big server migration

Just to let anybody who reads this know, we had a lot of downtime last night, because we migrated servers (again). This time, we put in place a two server setup, one for the database and one for the web related stuff, which helps us scale.

Next time, if we need another server, it'll be child's play to add another box to the front end to help with growth.

A year ago, I wouldn't have believed we'd get to 1.2 million visitors a month, but that's where we're at now. It's an exciting place and we still haven't put together what I'd describe as our vision for what FunAdvice could become.

So, don't panic, we're back now. And it should be faster than ever. :) Let us know if you have any questions, comments, or recommendations, we'd love to hear them.

Friend feed launched, a million unique visitors, and more

So we crossed the million visitors mark more than a month ago, which means, the total number of people (including repeats) that visit the site. Which was cool.

However, as of this morning, we crossed the million unique visitor mark. Very, very cool. That means, one million unique people (unless they visit from home + work + cell phone, etc) visited FunAdvice over the last 30 days. Wow.

This week (Mon - Wednesday) we've averaged 40K unique visitors per day, which is very cool, as that continues our run rate of 15% or so monthly growth that we've had for more than 13 months.

Now, on to the new feature mentions:
1) Friend feed - this has all your friends activites, photos, profile comments, photo ratings, answers, questions and new friendships listed on your profile page. I'm excited about it, and I think it's one of our coolest new features in a long time.

2) Better friend management. When you add somebody as a friend, you go on their friend list, and they go on yours. You can set to "must approve" which enables you to decide who becomes your friend, and who doesn't.

There is list of 20+ enhancements to the features in the queue already, and even more growth and infrastructure related work to be done as the site continues it's rampant increase in members and activity.

Thanks everybody, I truly never imagined almost five years ago that FunAdvice would reach this place. And to be honest, I firmly believe our product will be ten times better in the year ahead, as we continue to improve the features, functionality, and overall experience.

Don't panic: update in progress

Sometimes, we can't time things perfectly. For example: our update that's in progress. I apologize for any frustration, annoyance, or disappointment for our site being down this morning, however, it's for a good cause.

The update in progress has a number of exciting, wonderful, and for us, ground breaking enhancements.

All this & we had more than 42K visitors yesterday ;)

Pirate rap song video for halloween

I think the title says it all. Original rap song, original music, special effects, and more. Check out our halloween pirate captain rap song and let us know what you think.

Argh, do ye be a pirate now? Happy halloween.

And we're finally at the beach ;)

If you noticed we were down this morning, it's because we finally went to the beach. Serverbeach, that is. The network issues, the downtime, and the annoying time outs should be largely solved now that we have a higher quality hosting company powering the site.

Given that our stellar engineers just did a crazy, massive update & migration, do let us know if you see anything odd.

Enjoy the zippier performance, too ;)

Rejected for Launch Pad 2007 Conference: does traffic matter?

I just found out we were rejected for the Launchpad 2007 Conference. Darn.

One wonders, though: did traffic weigh into the decision? I'm curious, largely because this month, we're forecasting over 1 million visitors, and still, no paid advertising :)

Perhaps it's my ego talking, but I find it hard to believe that we didn't have the highest amount of traffic of any company applying that didn't have outside funding.

Oh, well. We'll find out the final list of companies in a week or two, and then I can at least smile when I see if FunAdvice is bigger than all of them :)

First ever commercial for funadvice

You'll just have to guess who the actors are ;)

Take a read through this question and then post your answer. We'd love your feedback.

Five days into the new design

It's been only five days since our new design, but we've learned a few things:

1) People take time to learn the layout of a site (we're sorry for such a massive change, with little advance warning)
2) 99.9% of the comments have been positive (thank you! that means a lot to us)
3) No matter how much time you allocate to doing something, it'll always take longer.

We have some really cool features that we wanted to include but didn't make it due to our scheduled launch date.

So, the design is going to stay as is for a while. BUT, we'll be adding more features over the next few months that I think will continue to improve on the "fun" in FunAdvice.

Last...did you see our press release? Check it out, it tells more of our story than we've ever shared in one place before.

Massive upgrade in the works...back in 20 min

We have our biggest upgrade in a year launching now...we'll be back in 20 minutes or less. Thanks!

Going green, how do we start?

Getting more environmentally friendly has been on my mind for a long time now. Just this morning, I read about Discovery Channel buying a pro green blog site, and that reminded me: going green isn't just about keeping the earth sustainable, it's also good business these days.

However, while my inclination is to "go green & get eco friendly" I must confess that we're not entirely sure what we should do to start.

If you have any ideas, let us know by commenting or posting some questions on the site proper. Thanks!

Rating photos just got more fun

The last release of photo upgrades went well, and then we took it a small step further: ratings are at the top of the main photo page, and when you rate a photo, you get automatically pointed at the next photo on the site.

Now, I realize I'm not a great photographer, but I think this photo is awesome: jellyfish at monterey bay aquarium. Of course, their color, the water, and the lighting they use in that tank make it easy for just about anybody to take a great jellyfish picture.

How about you? I know you've taken some great photos, have you uploaded them to your gallery yet? As always, comments, questions, and suggestions on our upgrade very welcome.

New Photos features are live: just an FYI, we're not flickr ;)

This morning, we released a big upgrade to the section of site dedicated to photos: your photos, specifically. There are still some bugs, tweaks, and improvements to be made, but we're sure that you will be excited about the enhancements.

First, take a look at the new picture page:
Geotrax train set pic from Christmas time, even though I uploaded this it was my wife who took it. Notice the new features: thumbnails of other photos from your album, tags below the photo (add some if you like, especially if there aren't any!), and also the ability to rate & comment on the photo.

All in all a pretty big improvement, however, the UI still needs some work.

Now, take a look at the new thumbnail page:
thedude's photos...yes, it's me who writes the blog, in case you didn't know. The seperation of the larger browse from the main picture page is a big step forward as well, now you can see all the thumbnails (with pagination at the bottom if they have more) of a particular person's pictures, instead of loading a lot of very small thumbnails on a single page.

As I mentioned in the title of the post, we're not Flickr. Not even close :) However as you can see, we are serious about photos, just as we are about questions. The vision we have for the site is really a juxtaposition of a few larger services in a new, different, and fundamentally revolutionary way.

Stay tuned, you'll be glad you did. Tags: funadvice, flickr, yahooanswers, photos and tags.

Groups feature is now live!

My group isn't very interesting but does give you an idea of what the feature does. If you look at esconsult1's group you'll see some really cool pictures of Miami.

And so far, the most active group has been krazy_drama_queen's group which is just awesome.

What do you think about the feature? Easy to use, easy to get started? Later one, we'll add the ability to rename groups, and browse groups by popularity, activity, and topic, so that you can find a group you'd like to hang out in easier.

For us, groups are just another way for people to get together with their friends and talk about what they like. You can easily add all your friends to the group, make it private, or manage the members of your personal group (eg, remove people who you don't want to hang out, aren't in the same club, school, college, offic, etc). The groups feature is one we've had on our minds for a while, and it's exciting for us to see it live.

As always, please send us your feedback, as we love getting ideas, tipcs, and suggestions from you.

The British are coming!

Sometimes, I can't resist a cheesy joke. Did you know that as of yesterday, FunAdvice became the only truly multinational question & answer site?

Thanks to our ever talented developer, FunAdvice UK soft launched yesterday. We're incredibly excited, and plan on making the experience even more UK centric over time.

FunAdvice search results page upgraded

Over the weekend, our programmer (hi Eric) spent his holiday making a better search engine for the site. Now you can search posts, users, and images, all in one shot.

Take a look at this search, the user names, and the photos. Not bad, if we do say so ourselves (pat, pat, pat). Can you guess which other large question & answer site has such search results?


I'll give you a clue: none of them do. We're the first :) And, I must say, even with our small library of images, the results are pretty fun.

Let us know what you think, as always we love your feedback!

A brand new FunAdvice in the works

Few people know this, but in April, 2006, our designer came up with the look & feel you see on FunAdvice.com today.

However, because FunAdvice is a hobby for us (we all have day jobs) it took us until September to relaunch the site with the new design, new features & functionality.

Well, today, I was looking at a mock up of a new page design from December, and didn't realize until today that we've had that redesign for almost four months now. Since last time, it took five months to go from new design to relaunch, that means we must be about a month away from launching the design's we're working on.

It involves a lot of discussion & analysis of what people are doing on the site, what you like / dislike about what we're doing, and how we can make the site better for those that enjoy it the most. Redesign is a tricky process.

And, we have a list of things we'd like to enable you to do. Add comments to photos, rate photos, do more than just see yourself in your area:
members in cupertino of which, I'm the only one (lol) despite there being loads of people on the site from nearby areas such as San Jose, San Mateo, etc.

So for the "geo" page as we call it, we want to see who else is near, what they're interested in, what photos they might have added. We think it's a "good" idea. What about you?

Are there any "must have" features we're missing from the site? Would you like to preview the beta version in two weeks to see what it's like? Let us know by using our contact form if you're interested.

New feature: Chat Room

As you might have noticed this morning we added a little feature: the chat room.

If you're a registered user, your logged in status will be added to the total in the top bar next to the "post crush" link. Click it & see who's available to chat. Click here to try out the funadvice chat feature.

In the last few months, we've seen a lot of people exchanging instant messeges, etc, so thought this would be a fun way to help people keep in touch & get to know each other, without having to worry about giving away their email address (many times, people have come back even a year or two later & asked their IM information be deleted from our site, due to privacy concerns).

Happy chatting.