Blog
November 2008Friend and Following feature improvements are live
Zannelers! In order to tidy up the Zannel interface and prepare for some really cool things we have in the pipeline, we’ve made some improvements to the friend and following features.
Firstly, you can now change the alert and feed settings for each friend or person you are following. You can choose if you want their posts displayed in your feed, or if you want to get alerts and if so, what kind.
These detailed alert settings are a great way to control what shows up in your feed. For example, if you are following the user “FlowerPower” and they go on a crazy posting spree with hundreds of daisies, you now have a tool to dial them down. Go to their following settings and turn off the alert and feed options so their flower pictures no longer bury you.
Another big change you’ll notice is that your friends tab in the top navigation bar has been absorbed by the following tab. Fear not Zannelers, your friends are still there! Just click the following tab and you’ll see all your friends listed with their own special friend icons to separate them from the users you are following. You can even sort the list just to show your friends. Since the posts of your friends and people you are following all appear in your feed, we thought it made sense to manage them all from one place.
It might also behoove us (we love the word behoove!) to revisit the difference between what it means to follow someone vs. being a friend. Here are a few important distinctions:
- Following: When you find someone whose posts you think are cool, you can follow him or her. Their new posts will appear in your feed. It’s an easy way to keep track of what you are interested in.
- Friends: Many people want to keep their posts private, or only allow messaging and comments from people they trust. If you’re somebody’s friend, you’re saying you trust each other enough to be sharing posts and communication.
We’re really excited about these enhancements, and have a lot more in store in the coming months, including improving how you find things on Zannel. But we want to hear from you! Let us know what you think and send us a note with your thoughts:
Posted by George on 11.19.08 | Permalink |
Memphis BarCamp Contest Winners
Zannel has been always about empowering you — the community of vibrant users, bloggers, photographers, technology enthusiasts, musicians and artists — to be able to show what’s going on in your life.
Case in point, we recently teamed up with the folks at BarCamp Memphis to help their campers capture, record and display updates of their day at BarCamp by using their mobile devices and personalized Zannel channels.
We increased the fun by adding a little friendly competition between the campers and we’re happy to announce the winners of the “This One Day, At BarCamp” Contest.
First Place goes to Carolyn Bahn
Carolyn will receive a Flip Camera - Thanks to Carolyn for providing the widest variety of posts, from text to media!
Second Place goes to Beth Sanders and Mitch Canter!
This one was a hard one, and with two great Zannelers, why choose just one! Beth gave great updates as well as media (the photo above was from her Zannel channel!) Mitch’s mix of both text and video updates really gave life to watching BarCamp Memphis evolve thought the day. Both Beth and Mitch are receiving cool Mimiobot USB Flash Drives.
Third Place goes to Michael Rowe!
After a whopping 142 text updates to his Zannel channel, Michael provided blow-by-blow coverage of the day as well as commentary and questions for the BarCamp Memphis crowd. Michael gets his hands on a Zannel t-shirt and loads of Zannel stickers!
Posted by Kelly on 11.18.08 | Permalink |
Improvements with friends & following coming soon
Zannelers, in a few days we’re going to be releasing some improvements to the friend and following features. You’ll notice some interface changes, as well as a bunch of cool new features including the ability to control who shows up in your feed and what kinds of alerts you get for individual users. The biggest interface change you’ll notice is that your friends and followers will all be consolidated in one “following” tab in the top navigation bar.
When the changes go live, we’ll post another notice in the heads up bar, and here in the blog, so be sure to click through to read more details about the new features.
Posted by George on 11.12.08 | Permalink |
