Alpha Test Update: 200 Feedbacks and Counting!

April 22nd, 2012 Posted by Chris View Comments

It’s been a long while since our last Alpha Test update. In the meantime, invites started to pour out generously, we got more testers, more feedback – and more things to do. Our task board now looks like a hedgehog after a stroll through the “post-it” factory. That’s why, even if you haven’t heard from us in a while, don’t worry! We’re still here, hard at work, pumped up and excited. We just didn’t have time to bring things up to speed, hence – the article you’re reading now.

First of all, thanks for all the great work you’ve done testing the alpha version. So far we received over 200 feedback messages from our alpha users. And while some of you wrote just to say you like the system (thanks!), and some wrote just to say “adsfasdf”, the vast majority of e-mails contained valuable ideas and bug reports.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About StormDriver, Collective Intelligence, Internet Trends, Open Web Layer, Releases, Social Trends, Working at StormDriver, technology |

Do we really live in the age of Social Networks?

March 26th, 2012 Posted by Chris View Comments

Today, I’m going to write something you’d least expect from anyone working on a system that has “social” somewhere in its description. I’m going to say that social networks are really not as big or influential as we make them to be.

They’ve been media darlings for half a decade now, and some people even go as far as saying that we live in the age of Social Media. Is it true? Let’s start our little crash course in perspective with some hard numbers. Because that’s what big apps like to throw around – numbers, numbers, and more numbers (all of them self-reported, of course).

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Collective Intelligence, Content Discovery, Internet Trends, Social Browsing, Social Trends, Uncategorized |

StormDriver at the London Web Summit

March 22nd, 2012 Posted by Chris View Comments

This Monday a part of our team went over to the UK to attend the London Web Summit. Our mission? Pitch the hell out of StormDriver in front of investors, industry insiders and other startups. And pitch we did, until we could barely speak.

It’s been the first time we have shown our system to the public, with a full hands-on demo. The result was very encouraging. It was great to see how people react to StormDriver, and how many of them thought it’s something new and interesting. Before the end of the show, our pockets were already filled with business cards.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,
Posted in About StormDriver, Internet Trends |

Imitation of life

February 22nd, 2012 Posted by Chris View Comments

Nothing brings tears of joy to a developer’s eyes like his baby being compared to some of the most interesting projects out there. Recently, the Italian version of Wired wrote an article comparing the features of Italian Volunia with some other star-ups, that pursue the direction of innovative social interactions. As a result, we ended up on the same list as Trap!t, WhoIsLive, Chime.in and some major old social platforms, like Twitter and Facebook. It’s always nice to be noticed.

Volunia’s launch made me think it’s strange how many new systems try to discover some kind of new, involving interaction that could happen in the web. That’s probably because real Internet users showed us they are ready to do more and share more. They want to get involved in new kinds of activities.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About StormDriver, Applications, Collective Intelligence, Content Discovery, Design and Layout, Internet Trends, Open Web Layer, Social Browsing, Social Trends, Uncategorized, Working at StormDriver, technology |

Alpha Test Update: Achievements and more

February 2nd, 2012 Posted by Chris View Comments

In the last article, I told you a bit about our new Sources functionality. It was a serious change, that impacts most of the system’s components, but that’s not everything we’ve prepared for our next Alpha release.

I guess the title already told you what I’m going to reveal now. Achievements are the next feature we implemented in StormDriver, and I’d like to tell you both “how” and “why”.

Achievemets

It came to us recently, that we have all the ingredients necessary to create a great achievement system.  We have an established point mechanic. We have streams and notifications that let you know whenever something interesting happens globally or among your friends. We keep track of everything users do through StormDriver for the sake of various algorithms and statistics. We realized, that introducing achievements would be a logical next step.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About StormDriver, Content Discovery, Design and Layout, Games, Internet Trends, Releases, Social Browsing, Social Trends, Uncategorized, Working at StormDriver, technology |

Alpha Test Update: “Sources” are coming!

January 31st, 2012 Posted by Chris View Comments

It’s been more than a month since the last alpha version of StormDriver landed on test servers. Since then, a lot of people have been asking us on Facebook and in StormDriver to expand our ongoing Alpha tests. We want you to know we really appreciate this feedback. We’d love to open up to the public right now, but the list of planned changes, fixes and updates is still quite long – and we’re not a huge team.

Regardless, we are all doing our best, and this month we successfully created a new version of the system, that’s being internally tested right now. It’s probably one of the most important releases in a long while, as it brings big and bold changes, including “Sources”, a concept we have thought about for quite some time now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About StormDriver, Content Discovery, Design and Layout, Internet Trends, Releases, Social Browsing, Social Trends, Working at StormDriver, technology |

How web anonymity drives innovation

January 23rd, 2012 Posted by Chris View Comments

There are times, when research data challenge the common assumptions.

Three months ago, we wrote a short piece about the prismatic personality concept, and how it clashes with real name policies of most social networks. Both Google+ and Facebook were notorious in their attempts to drive away users that preferred nicknames to their actual names, and they went as far as banning prolific artists, journalists with established pen names, and human rights activists that tried to protect their families. We thought it’s not only wrong, but also very counterproductive.

Back then, our article was only a speculation based on a gut feeling, some analysis, and an interesting speech by Chris Poole at the SXSW conference. But recently, real numbers cropped up to support the case, and that’s why we decided to revisit the topic.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Collective Intelligence, Content Discovery, Internet Trends, Social Browsing, Social Trends, Uncategorized, technology |

CES 2012: “Social” still on the offensive

January 10th, 2012 Posted by Chris View Comments

There’s only one thing I could write about today. The annual madness of CES is here, with a flurry of quirky gadgets, pompous keynotes, and with some top people in the industry, including Steve Balmer and Kaz Hirai.

As you can imagine, most developers on our team watched the CES coverage with interest. Apart from some strange moments, like Bill Gates busting dance moves in a weird remix, and some crazy gadgets like the guitar conversion for iPad, we were eager to know what 2012 will look like according to the companies that shape the technology world, like Microsoft, Google and Sony.

One thing that’s very easy to spot is that the social aspect of technology is still very important for each one of these companies.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Collective Intelligence, Internet Trends, Social Browsing, Social Trends, technology |

Alpha Test Update: New Year’s Resolutions

January 5th, 2012 Posted by Chris View Comments

A new year is a time for two things: annual summaries of pretty much everything (from Google’s great Zeitgeist to articles like “2011 in competitive curling”), and for some new year’s resolutions. An interesting survey by Harris Interactive shows, that in 2012 one of the top resolutions of internet users is to… “share less via social media”. It even beats “being kinder to others”!

While it might sound strange, I’m really excited by the results. Why? It just shows that people are tired of updating their social accounts constantly. After several years, the formula is getting old. First we had a fine art of writing letters, then we had long telephone calls, then e-mails, then instant messaging, social networks – people are social by nature, but they are constantly looking for new ways to stay social. Sharing your party photos on FB was a new thing years ago, but it doesn’t have the appeal it used to have. Some even feel forced to do it simply because that’s what’s expected of them. And that might be the reason behind this mysteriously popular resolution.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncategorized |

Driving the people-content convergence

December 16th, 2011 Posted by Chris View Comments

There’s probably more than a hundred popular books and scientific works about why social networks became so popular. Some say it’s because they offer an accessible way to fulfill our basic social desires, like staying connected with friends and relatives, gaining somebody’s attention, gossiping and satisfying our curiosity. Others point to the value of networking and honing real human relations in a digital age.

You could say that metric tons of printed paper can’t be wrong, but I think you could say just as much in a single sentence.

Social Networks are popular because we like the experiences they provide.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in About StormDriver, Collective Intelligence, Content Discovery, Design and Layout, Open Web Layer, Social Browsing, Social Trends, StormDriver Stream, Uncategorized, Working at StormDriver, technology |

« Older Entries