Our Biggest Site Changes since Inception

Posted September 7th, 2009

We’ve listened carefully to feedback from users like you over the last few months to better understand where SwingVine excels and where it doesn’t.

One pattern emerged: Users were interested in SwingVine’s promise of helping them discover new entertainment, media, and other content, but there were some major hurdles getting in the way. In response, we’ve been working hard to knock down these obstacles and just rolled out our biggest site upgrade since our private Beta.

Key changes are as follows.

New interface: We’ve redesigned our entire user experience so that first time users can immediately understand how to use SwingVine and veterans can get at what they’re looking for more effectively. From layout to color to interactivity, we’ve tweaked every pixel to make the site more engaging, effective and fun.

More content, more often: Swingbot, our fearless automaton, can now grab all types of interesting music, movies, tech topics, etc. from across the web. This automated capability complements user contributions so that you can browse the most relevant content on the web, no matter where it comes from.

News, external reviews, buy links: Links to news and reviews on other sites are now available on SwingVine to help you learn more about topics as you browse. You can even purchase some content in the music and books categories through Amazon.

Facebook Connect: With Facebook Connect, you can now share and contribute on the site without registering a completely new account.

Easier reviews & comments: Users liked the ability to opine and converse on SwingVine, so we’ve made this even easier. You can now leave a review or a comment on any topic with one click.

Vines are now “related pages”: Many first time users got very confused by the lingo, so we renamed “vines” to “related pages” and adjusted the interface as well. Some of you have already let us know that you’ll miss the old terminology, but we hope these changes will increase ease of use over the long term.

 

From visuals to the nitty-gritty behind the scenes, we’ve recast many aspects of SwingVine to make it a better way to stay connected to the latest & greatest content in your areas of interest. We hope that you find the improvements useful and we look forward to your ongoing feedback.