Ben's dashboard

Ben replied on November 25, 2008 19:16 to the problem "SocialThing is OFF?" in Socialthing:

Hmm, maybe I wasn't as clear as I should have been. By private beta users, I meant you all. You're currently in a private beta (you might recall you had to acquire an invite code).

Ben replied on November 24, 2008 21:33 to the question "T-Mobile G1 Phone link or app?" in Socialthing:

Hey deantobias,

That sounds like a great idea. We'd love to make an app for the iPhone as well, along with a lot of other great ideas in our queue. I can tell you that if it happens it won't be for awhile >.<

This post explains why: http://bit.ly/qfS3

We're cranking away constantly on a better user experience for everyone, and that unfortunately means we have to hold off on some of the features we really want to be doing.

Ben replied on November 24, 2008 21:26 to the problem "SocialThing is OFF?" in Socialthing:

Hey Joe, Brian, and Justin. Sorry for the lack of communication on our part. As you all may or may not know, we've been acquired by AOL. Since then, we've collaboratively laid out what we believe is the best plan of action for both AOL and Socialthing.

Currently, we're rebuilding (I know, yet again) our backend server and the way it works so that we can handle the millions of users that AOL will be bringing us. We have to provide the same level of service to all those users as we've tried to do for our faithful private beta users thus far. That's a couple orders of -magnitude- more users than we currently support.

With all -that- said, keep in mind we haven't grown our team at all since the acquisition. It's still Matt Galligan, Tim Shundo, Joel Longtine, Wade Simmons, and myself. That's not very many people. We're looking to expand our team come the new year, and the current goal is, that at that point, we'll re-allocate our resources to make room for the upkeep and the revamping of socialthing.com.

Again, sorry for the lack of communication. We've got a lot on our plates, -and- we're trying to keep those plates spinning and balanced on top of those pointy little sticks like they use in the magic shows.

Wish us luck in our endeavors!

Ben set one of Ben's replies as an official response to "SocialThing is OFF?" in Socialthing

Ben replied on July 18, 2008 18:02 to the question "Where'd the "official answer" button go post-submittal?" in Get Satisfaction:

Right, so I think what we're all realizing is that there are two issues here:

1) If not logged in, there will be inconsistency, as the "employee" posting options are for employees and not the public.
Possible solution: I agree that having two buttons ("Login", and "Login and Post Reply") is a welcome compromise. As UX goes, it gives greater flexibility without the inconvenience of multiple clicks (with ajax loading in-between).

2) The other issue is that there is a pre-post checkbox and a post-post (yeah, I went there) -link- that both mark the post as "This answers the question, put it at the top". The checkbox doesn't appear if you're not logged in (expected, unless the "Login"/"Login and Post Reply" is implemented: it -should- appear after "Login" for employees). The link, however, -should appear- after you post, since you are now logged in and recognized as an employee.

Hope that helps.

Ben replied on July 18, 2008 00:17 to the question "Where'd the "official answer" button go post-submittal?" in Get Satisfaction:

Hmm, well I don't actually have an example right now, but I think I understand more of the issue. When I initially posted my response on http://getsatisfaction.com/socialthin... I was logged out. I quickly realized that that post had no option for "this solves the problem", so I deleted it and reposted while logged in. Is it possible that being not logged in initially had something to do with it?

Ben asked a question in Get Satisfaction on July 17, 2008 23:50:

Where'd the "official answer" button go post-submittal?

It seems we lost the ability to check a reply as "Put this at the top of the page as an official answer" once the post has been submitted. Was that intentional?

Ben set one of Ben's replies as an official response to "Pownce and Facebook Epic Fail" in Socialthing

Ben replied on July 17, 2008 23:47 to the problem "Pownce and Facebook Epic Fail" in Socialthing:

Art: "epic fail"? Come on, a description of such proportions should assuredly deserve a much larger, much more catastrophic anomaly than this, no? :) Just kidding, but not really.... but seriously.

Facebook: Facebook is currently converting from the old method of authentication to a much more streamlined version called Facebook Connect. With this transition comes the obligatory issues that intermittently affect those services that use the current Facebook authentication mechanism, hence the "reauthentication" errors. With that comes the inability to post your status to Facebook if you are thusly "unauthenticated".

Pownce: Pownce has unfortunately been all over the place with stability in the API. Only just recently did we once again start fetching reliable updates from your and your friends' Pownce activity streams. This instability persists intermittently with posting a note to the Pownce API.

Sorry if there's a bunch of jargon in there. I tried to keep it to a minimum.

Issues are hopefully settling down soon. Unfortunately, a comfort phrase such as "rest assured, we're trying as hard as we can", while comforting, doesn't really apply here, as the issues you're facing originate from the external services and not socialthing itself. We are working on more clearly explaining errors and whether those errors happened on socialthing or on an external service we work with. The difficulty comes in keeping such explanations clear and free of technical jargon that would serve only to confuse the user.

On that note:

Art, rest assured we're trying as hard as we can.

Ben replied on July 09, 2008 18:18 to the question "Unhide that update notifier thingy" in Socialthing:

<cliche>There's no such thing as a silly question</cliche>, but nonetheless, I'm glad you figured it out on your own. We're trying to keep what could quickly become a big confusing mess of an interface as clean and understandable as possible. Don't hesitate to ask about something that is even a little bit confusing.

Ben replied on June 27, 2008 21:06 to the question "Why can't I see direct messages?" in Socialthing:

Twitter has reduced the rate limit to 20 requests per user per hour, for those concerned.

Ben set one of Ben's replies as an official response to "Privacy problem with Facebook" in Socialthing

Ben replied on June 19, 2008 22:43 to the question "Privacy problem with Facebook" in Socialthing:

Yes, Manogr. We pay very close attention to privacy at Socialthing. You should never be able to see the activities of a friend of a friend that is not already connected to you somewhere. If you do happen to notice something like that, please let us know, because it is not intended!

Ben replied on June 16, 2008 21:44 to the question "How do I set a person's name in 2.0?" in Socialthing:

Well, yes.. but, temporarily only. We're working on this feature as we speak and should be back soon.

Ben set one of Ben's replies as an official response to "How do I set a person's name in 2.0?" in Socialthing

Ben replied on June 16, 2008 20:29 to the question "How do I set a person's name in 2.0?" in Socialthing:

Sorry to inform you that this is one of the very few (temporary) regressions in the transition from v1.0 to v2.0. This feature will be back in st! soon, though in a different and hopefully more user-friendly form.

Ben set one of Ben's replies as an official response to "Limited profile included in "Facebook friends"?" in Socialthing

Ben replied on June 13, 2008 15:58 to the question "Limited profile included in "Facebook friends"?" in Socialthing:

Actually, because of the way Facebook doesn't provide any permission levels/details whatsoever (lame), we have to retrieve activities such as the ones you're talking about -from- other accounts. That is, if I am a limited friend (better not be), then Socialthing pulls any activities from my friends that -I- can see. So if I can't see your status messages on Facebook itself, then I can't see them through the API from my account's point-of-view.

Now, all this is negated if you decide to publish your stuff on your public profile as opposed to friends.

The one I'm questioning myself, is the "Show with friends on any service". I'll have to look back into how we handle that, and I'll post my results here.

Ben set one of Ben's replies as an official response to "Expand flickr photos with a click" in Socialthing

Ben replied on June 11, 2008 16:45 to the idea "Expand flickr photos with a click" in Socialthing:

Awesome idea... Already in the works, will also allow you to favorite individual photos and comment on them (where commenting is available through the provider's API).