Blog

Coming Soon: New Embed Widget

Joe Reger, Jr. — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:42:00 GMT

New embed widget coming soon. Cleaner look. Initially it'll have similar functionality to the current one. But since we've rebuilt from the ground up we'll be able to get a lot fancier with features moving forward.

Whole Bunch of New dNeero Features

Joe Reger, Jr. — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:58:00 GMT

Whew! That was a big one. Let's see what's new in this upgrade to dNeero.

1) New Your Account Page - The first thing you'll notice after you log in is a much-improved Your Account Page. Instead of having to click through to the Social People or Conversation Igniters tabs you can see a listing of conversations right after login.

2) Public Profiles - We've had profiles forever. But now they've got a lot more information on them. From the Your Account screen just after login you'll see a Public Profile link on the left hand side. It takes you to your public dNeero profile. Note the statistics about you. Note the Posting Venues listed. Note that the question you asked is included with each conversation.

3) Nicknames - You can now choose an optional nickname. If you do, you'll be known publicly as that nickname. I'm now "joereger" instead of "Joe Reger, Jr." We think we've caught most places that your real name might be out there but there may be a couple outstanding. Just let us know.

4) Social Influence Rating Algorithm - Huge upgrade to the algorithm that calculates SiR. In the past it included three or four things. Now we're including about fifteen. Many of those are human reviews and scores for posting venues, responses, user questions, etc. The main goal here is to reward those that produce high quality content that contributes to the blogosphere. Note that since it's a much larger calculation it'll take ten to fifteen days to get everybody a new ranking. In the meantime your profile will say "Not Calculated Yet."

5) SuperPanels - These are awesome. We're building panels of only the best bloggers in specific areas like Environmentalists, Early Tech Adopters, etc. You can apply and we'll review your blogs to make sure you fit before we let you in.

And a bunch of odds and ends. Let us know what you think!

Lance Armstrong Using Engagement Media and Trust

Joe Reger, Jr. — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:09:00 GMT

Lance Armstrong posted a TwitPic and a Tweet asking "Can I get a ruling from the twitterati? Y ellow or black hoods???"

For the non-cyclists out there, hoods are the things that stick off of the handlebars and attach the brakes/shifters. In the picture Lance has yellow hoods on.

First, this is a big share. Yellow hoods are extraordinarily rare. Not for public consumption. He's trusting his Twitter readers just by sharing that Shimano made a set in yellow for him.

Second, he goes a step further to ask the community for input. And he indicates that he trusts their opinion regarding the color of his hoods.

If he closes the loop and rides what his Twitter followers recommend it's a huge win for the community and for him. Any time a company or superstar trusts its users and then uses their feedback to change there is a loyalty built.

dNeero builds such campaigns for its customers. Companies ask questions, users respond and then we encourage our clients to prove to the users that they listened. Sometimes this is by mere acknowledgment. But it could also be by changing a product, adding on-air content, creating a blog post or changing a policy.

When companies trust their users everybody wins.

Welcome to the Inbox

Joe Reger, Jr. — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:43:00 GMT

It appears to be a small change... an Inbox. This replaces the Support Issue infrastructure we had. It's more robust and general, allowing you to chat with us about things less imposing sounding than Issues. You'll also notice that we've made the first page after login more useful with links for Igniters and Social People.

EULA Updated

Joe Reger, Jr. — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:23:00 GMT

You've probably already noticed that we've updated the EULA and Terms of Service. We've learned a lot running conversation campaigns over the last year. Some areas we thought would be issues aren't. And many areas we didn't think of are. If you're a dNeero participant who abides by the general usage plan of the system you probably won't experience much or any difference in the way you use dNeero. If you're gaming the system, crashing conversations and generally being a non-contributing member of the social media world you'll notice that we're putting you on notice. It's in everybody's best interests that the quality of blog posts increases. This helps us attract paying customers. Because they pay for the whole party. And they want high quality conversations. We launched dPolice a while back to clean things up. This EULA change gives dPolice some more teeth to go after those who abuse good users of dNeero. Those abusing the system are a small subset of the total user base. But they eat a lot of resources and diminish what everybody else does.

Running Smoothly

Joe Reger, Jr. — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:57:00 GMT

Looks like servers have been running smoothly and without interruption for the last 24 hours. WoOT! And we still haven't even brought the two new database servers online. Let us know if you experience any issues.

Server Move Today

Joe Reger, Jr. — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:11:00 GMT

The plan is to move the servers to another part of the datacenter today so there'll be some downtime. We need more rack space and this is the way to get it. Of course, if we're down you aren't seeing this message. Update: Today's server work was done with no downtime. We'll move the servers to a new rack next week or the week after.

Red/Green Issues?

Joe Reger, Jr. — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:09:00 GMT

Reports of red/green impression box issues. We've released some new code with debugging statements in it to more fully understand if there's an issue. The problem we're having is that we've gone out and joined a number of conversations in Facebook and on the web and impressions are registering properly in all of them. Not saying there aren't issues... but it's something we haven't seen yet. Thanks for the heads up from the people who've reported it.

dNeero at Trevelino/Keller's Social Status Event

Joe Reger, Jr. — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:03:00 GMT

Thanks to Trevelino/Keller for having dNeero participate in its Social Status event. TK brought out 40-50 people interested in social media. Five companies got 10 minutes each to describe how they'd help fictional client Zoo Atlanta. And then some Q&A.

I was excited to see so much interest in social media in Atlanta... on a Wednesday morning. Made me think back to meetings ten years ago where nobody knew what a blog was... and I was selling blog software. Not cool. But today people get it and want it.

Along with dNeero there were representatives from The Content Factor, Search Discovery, Vitrue and Luckyfish.

Paul McKeon from The Content Factor wins the quick blogger award by posting about the event. He also wins the Best Actor award for his enactment of Winston the Warthog and reminded me of our BrightLane radio spot featuring Winston Churchill (second audio link on the post.)

The goal of TK's format was to illustrate their Social Status approach to social media. They evaluate your company's current position in the space and then look to leverage some of the many tools available to make an impact. I appreciated their desire to make the event practical by focusing the participants on a fictional client. This cut through much of the typical "dNeero is awesome" stuff that you get in more traditional formats. It helped us all get more of a conversation going.

Enjoyed it. Look forward to more events like this.

Server Issues

Joe Reger, Jr. — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 10:01:00 GMT

As many of you have noticed, we've had some server issues lately. Many apologies for this. We have six servers running the site and there as a quirky configuration issue with them. We think we're generally on the correct path again but history dictates that things explode again in short order :)

Some reports of impression red/green boxes not reporting correctly. The underlying data is still correct... just the display is acting somewhat wonky right now. If you're using the Facebook app, click Refresh above your red/green boxes to see if it'll correct itself. If you're using the dNeero.com website, go to http://www.dneero.com/blogger/bloggercompletedsurveys.jsp and you'll see the refresh button.

dNeero Welcomes Client WIN Products

Joe Reger, Jr. — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:06:00 GMT

Welcome to new client WIN Products who's using dNeero to reach out to the blogosphere with a conversation about sports detergents. WIN has a very unique product that gets smells out of synthetic fabrics. Did you realize that traditional detergents don't work well with synthetics?

dNeero Welcomes Client VisualTalking

Joe Reger, Jr. — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 10:04:00 GMT

Welcome to dNeero client VisualTalking who has run a series of conversations to talk about its new service with users. We'll be reporting on the outcomes from the campaign shortly but suffice it to say that it was a fruitful learning experience.

dNeero Welcomes Client Delta Community Credit Union

Joe Reger, Jr. — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 10:08:00 GMT

In trying economic times why not turn to a financial provider that's only responsible for helping its members, not a group of shareholders? DCCU starts a conversation using dNeero technology to educate and engage.

Press Release: dNeero Working with Trevelino/Keller

Joe Reger, Jr. — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:10:00 GMT

Press release went out today... we're working with Trevelino/Keller as part of their FirstGearTK offering. We're excited about the partnership and look forward to good things.

Some Degree of Paid Seeding is a Must

Joe Reger, Jr. — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:24:00 GMT

From ClickZ: "Face it, even if you become an expert at organic seeding, the competition is tough. Very rarely is a branded viral video going to take off organically. Some degree of paid seeding is a must if you want to rise above the clutter."

Article: Money & Credibility

Joe Reger, Jr. — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:01:00 GMT

The latest article was posted a couple days ago and deals with the issues of money and credibility within blog-for-pay models.

Bug Fix to Codes Visibility on Share It Page

Joe Reger, Jr. — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:14:00 GMT

For those of you who were having trouble seeing embed codes after joining a conversation, we've made a fix and you should be able to see them now. Apologies for the bug and thanks to everybody who reported it.

No Complaints on dPolice So Far

Joe Reger, Jr. — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:52:00 GMT

So far so good. We've flagged about 50 people for putting up obviously junk content. And nobody's complained. Which means that we're calling their bluff and they're not contesting it. If we had flagged people and they had complained then our criteria for flagging could have been wrong. We're terrified of shutting down legitimate content or censoring anybody... that's not how we roll. But we will continue, as we have in the past, to increase the quality of the content in the system. Early indications are that the flagging system is getting people to stop junk postings. It's not that it was a huge problem. But the junk postings are what potential customers focus on... as they should... we're asking them to pay for people to engage their brand with their friends. If people aren't doing that then the model breaks down for everybody.

Change to Impression Scoring Coming Soon: Limit Per Time Period

Joe Reger, Jr. — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:07:00 GMT

There was a code launch today. For a few hours clicks on a person's answers acted differently on the front-end than they had in the past. (I've since changed the UI back to, more or less, the way it was before.) People complained that maybe they'd have to click into profiles to read conversations and that this would be a burden.

I do understand. But potential customers get what's up and they don't like it. It's clear that they don't want to pay for junk clicks. A small subset of users aren't reading each other's answers which is what an impression should count for. Instead, they're trading clicks and in a rapidfire manner are generating impressions for many users' conversations.

So I'll soon implement something that makes it so that you can click as much as you want but only one impression is recorded per sixty seconds per web visitor. When a click doesn't count I'll display a warning on screen to that effect. Maybe 60 seconds isn't the right time period... maybe it's 2 minutes... maybe it's 20 seconds. In this way we'll be able to argue that people are actually reading the answers and that clicking purely for impressions isn't happening.

We know that people are actually reading the answers because we email a lot of folks and we check web traffic stats. But we can't prove it clearly and the quick-clickers are very obvious about their activity on Facebook groups... which is what potential customers find very quickly. Thanks Search box.

Right now we can't prove people aren't quick-clicking and it's hurting our ability to sell. Companies are saying "well, I don't want to pay cash for people to quickly click and ignore." As much as we argue that this is a small percentage of users and that the holistic result is great exposure, the risk of junk clicks spooks them.

Most people use the system on blogs and in Facebook without trading clicks with their friends. Clicking-without-reading is hurting most users as they're lumped into a category of people essentially gaming the system. Clicks alone were never the intention... reading of the conversation and true involvement was. I thought that clicks was a good proxy but maybe not.

In the short term I didn't want to enforce it because the dollar amounts were low and we were young so I decided that it'd be best not to be a hardass about it. But maybe that was short-sighted.

Us getting sales is good for everybody. We're talking to companies about multi-dollar opportunities and series of conversations. We can only foot the bill personally for so much longer. I'm not naive enough to believe that anybody really cares right now whether we go bankrupt, but I do think that people would like to be part of something that grows, takes on new partners and starts to generate some real cash. Getting there means increasing the quality of the system as a whole... from the way impressions are counted to the ways that people can interact.

One big change today, apparently overlooked in the terror exhibited when a small group thought they'd actually have to, you know, read conversations, is that answers are now editable. Something that's been requested for many months but was herculean to implement.

Quality's going up. Changes to impression scoring coming soon.

Content Flagging and dPolice Launched

Joe Reger, Jr. — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:13:00 GMT

We've just launched the notion of content flagging. You won't get flagged for having a particular opinion. But you will get flagged for junk postings, hate postings (which we haven't seen), etc. The conversation igniter can flag content but nothing happens until dPolice (dNeero's Content Police) check it out. In grey areas we'll side with bloggers. The goal is to increase the quality of the content created in the conversations. Junk posters can no longer hide! Let us know what your experience is.