spoutgirl
Posts 211
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7/11/2006 2:24 PM
posted awhile ago
WooHoo
What do you all think of the new features here on Spout??
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pippin06
Posts 446
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7/11/2006 3:07 PM
posted awhile ago
Re: WooHoo
Crazy, exciting, beautiful, user-friendly, interesting...these are just a few of the words that pop into my head, but they're good features so far...!
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davisfreeberg
Posts 112
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7/12/2006 11:35 AM
posted awhile ago
Re: WooHoo
It's pretty exciting to see Spout already go through a major update especially given how young the site is. My first impression is that the main page looks much cleaner and has a nice feel to it. I'm not sure if the fonts changed on the About, People and Films sections, but I'm really digging whatever the font was that you used. Overall I'd say it's an improvement over Spout 1.0?
One thing I do miss though is seeing the tag clouds of other users. I've actually gone back and forth on this because on one level I try to tag a film with whatever subjects that it deals with, but on the other hand I don't necessarily want to see tags like Heroin Addiction thrust at me unless I'm actually searching for a film like the basketball diaries or requiem for a dream. On another level I really enjoy searching through the public tag clouds for terms that I might also like to use or for interesting categories for films that I might like. I'm not sure what the right solution is, but I definetely have mixed feelings about the tag clouds being less prominent.
I think I'd also like to see Spout expand the films getting attention section to more then just two fields (maybe make it customizable for the user) This has been by far one of my favorite features of the site and I've noticed that once a film gets added to the overall community that people start tagging and commenting on it. It's almost like the recent activity is a strange way to create an instant group or conversation with whoever is using the site right then.
I noticed a technical glitch on the presentation of the web address on user profiles. It looks like it's inserting random spaces to the URL's, but the URL is still valid. You can check out my profile to get a sense of what I'm talking about here.
Finally, for whatever reason the new Spout changes reminded me a bit of Microsoft's Live experiement that they are working on right now. I'm not sure why, but it made me wonder how hard it would be to let users customize their MySpout page with blog, email and other RSS feeds. I think that supporting the film blog is a great start, but the more that you can convince a user to go to the service on a daily basis, the better the interaction that we'll see. These are only my initial thoughts without playing with a lot of the features, so I'll write more once I can play around with it a bit longer and get a better sense of what's new and old.
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spoutgirl
Posts 211
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7/12/2006 2:00 PM
posted awhile ago
Re: WooHoo
Hi Davis,
Thanks for all the wonderful feedback!
So, the technical glitch you mentioned about the spacing, that's actually a solution to another glitch. We are working with our development team to come up with a better solution to this problem. You will probably notice a change sometime in the next week or two.
Thanks for reporting it though, it certainly sparked some conversations around here!
Jen
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davisfreeberg
Posts 112
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7/13/2006 1:36 AM
posted awhile ago
Re: WooHoo
Dealing with funky code can be a real pain sometimes. It's pretty funny that the spacing is actually linked to another troubleshooting item. I just noticed my favorite improvement so far though. When you send messages to people you can use the enter key for spacing now. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong before. It's a subtle improvement, but definetely a nice glitch to have fixed.
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davisfreeberg
Posts 112
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7/13/2006 2:24 AM
posted awhile ago
Re: WooHoo
Just noticed the blinking user online grapic. Very neat. I can't remember if we had something like this before, but I like the pinging, it reminds me of a lighthouse.
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davisfreeberg
Posts 112
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7/13/2006 2:28 AM
posted awhile ago
Re: WooHoo
Whoa, you guys calculate the number of days I've wasted watching TV. I'm not sure if I should be excited by this or if I should be ashamed, either way this is a very nice addition.
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paul
Posts 247
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7/13/2006 10:21 AM
posted awhile ago
Re: WooHoo
I've been thinking about what you said earlier, Davis, regarding more films and Tags on the Me page. Technically, they would appear under "My films," which is where they're located now. But you bring up the point that films and tags in particular are really a window into this whole community behind the Me page.
We've always talked about how Spout puts a film at the hub of human interaction on the site. So it makes since they would bubble up on your Me page. But tags are another thing. They're kind of a petri dish we're watching. At SXSW this year there was a lively panel discussion on tags. Are they for refinding? Are they for self-expression? If the same tags aren't used as a common vocabulary, are they worthless? Some experts have developed staunch opinions on tags, which seems strange considering how comparatively recent they are.
I think Spout's actually altering the nature of tags a bit. By making them prominent, we've boosted the volume on self-expression and lowered the priority on re-finding. My opinion is a tag is a word. It can be used to describe, to categorize, to express, to react, whatever. I think people use them all of those ways on Spout. I'm complex, so any given day I could be drawn to romance or romance-sucks or romance-gone-wrong or romantilating. I take your point as tags are the most efficient way to glance over the human complexity happening around films at any given moment. Duely noted. We'll be tooling that one around a bit here.
As far as customization goes, we've always had it as a goal to make Spout as customizable as possible. I've used the analogy before that we're constructing a chair. Right now we're tweaking it to get the legs, arms, back, and seat right. Then we'll figure out which parts people want to adjust to fit them (customize). And, most important of all, figure out where it makes the most sense to locate the knob so people intuitively can adjust their chair. Yes, the analogy is corny. Especially considering we're in West Michigan and furniture culture is a little amped up here (the upside is you'll often find Eames at a garage sale), but the gist is we're being cautious not to go the way of some other community sites. Sites that are so customizable it's like plopping down into the cockpit of an F-14. An F-14 with pictures of scantily clad women holding beers.
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Jenn
Posts 61
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7/16/2006 12:30 AM
posted awhile ago
Re: WooHoo
I like how the group conversation lists now show when the last post was made. Sometimes when I saw a group active, I would find I had to root around to see what exactly was new.
I also like the "on-line now" feature.
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wonga
Posts 59
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6/23/2007 8:45 PM
posted awhile ago
Movie Lists
i'm wondering whether there's a limit to lists on a person's page? i seem to remember lots of lists and now there's not so many. also, my page only shows 10, although i have more that that.
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