Posted February 22nd, 2009
We recently pushed out a few new features and enhancements and thought we’d call them out here on our blog. Some highlights are:
• More Sharing Tools – You can now share with non-users via email, and post your favorite pages to Facebook and MySpace.
• Improved Site Performance – Many of our high traffic pages now load much faster
• Longer Edit Window – You can now edit your descriptions, reviews and vines for up to a year.
• All Page Types Support Media – ‘Nuff Said
• Improved Search – No longer need to include diacritics (accents, umlauts) in searches. For example, searching for “chloe” now returns the brand Chloé
And as always we’ve tried to fix a few lingering bugs that you guys have pointed out in your feedback. Hope these changes improve your SwingVine experience.
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Posted February 12th, 2009
Now that SwingVine is “Open”, we wanted to follow-up on our last post by sharing and reflecting more broadly on our vision. Fans have always played a part in the success of new products. But whereas conventional word of mouth used to be the tool for individuals to popularize their favorite products, fans have more leverage than ever before through new channels such as blogs, social networks, YouTube, and review sites. SwingVine takes this to the next level. Whether it’s a favorite pair of jeans, energy drink, or song, the site lets fans broadcast their voice in a new way that integrates and amplifies previously existing channels.
As you might expect, the site lets you create pages for content you care about and load these pages chock-full of relevant information, multimedia, and user opinions. The site then surfaces this content to others based on popularity. What’s unique, though, is the ability to then follow friends and other influentials on the site, earn a reputation that increases your influence, and create “vines” connecting content together to drive awareness of your favorite things through communal and contextual ties. For example, an M.I.A. fan can add a vine between the page for Slumdog Millionaire and the page for the artist, describing her involvement in the movie soundtrack to build interest in the artist among those checking out the “in” movie. This information is thus fed not only to that fan’s followers but to those interested in the film, allowing the fan to broaden her reach.
Is this crazy? We hope we’re combining the power of word of mouth, blogging, social networks, online video, and user reviews into a fun and effective promotion vehicle for fans, but we’d love to hear your thoughts. Fans have always been important but with SwingVine, they’re at the center of it all.
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Posted February 11th, 2009
You may have noticed that we recently released a new version of the site that has transitioned SwingVine into “Open Beta” status. What does that mean exactly? Glad you asked…
• SwingVine is open to the public – Anyone can now come to SwingVine and discover something new, even without signing in. You’ll still need to create an account and sign-in to contribute on the site and interact socially (add pages, create vines, share with friends) but all you’ll need to do to browse the site is show up. Enjoy.
• Redesigned Personalized Notifications – You gave us a ton of feedback on our “Personalized Notifications” feature. We listened. Next time you sign-in you’ll notice a redesigned notifications layout that makes it easier to read through messages from friends and discover new stuff.
• More Content – With this release you should see a large expansion of our Movies catalog. And of course if we don’t already have something you like, go ahead and create it. It’s your site, and judging from all the great content you’ve added so far it’s in good hands.
• Enhanced Privacy Features – We’ve added some extra privacy features, such as only using initials for last names when non-friends view your content in public spaces.
This is a pretty big milestone for us, so now is a good time to thank all of our “Alpha” and “Private Beta” users whose feedback and contributions have gotten the site to where it is today. We thought you guys deserved some recognition, so keep an eye out for special “badges” on your profiles. Thanks for your support.
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Posted February 9th, 2009
Killerstartups just gave SwingVine its first review. The post is fairly positive overall and is spot on in terms of resonating with our emphasis on social discovery. Here’s the
review. Thanks KillerStartups!
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Posted December 4th, 2008
You can now discover new content on SwingVine through friends and other users who share your taste. In addition to vines, we hope this provides another effective way to discover new music, movies, books, fashion, drinks, and foods. Here’s a complete list of the features:
• Follow friends to see updates on content they’re discovering and related activities. Read updates on the site or via regular emails
• View and share collections of content you and your friends have enjoyed in the past or want to try out in the future
• Message and comment on your friends’ profiles or on interesting vines and reviews by other users in the community
• Invite friends from Hotmail, Yahoo! or GMail address books
• Streamlined visuals for browsing hot content
Although most of this release is about new features, we hope that the last bullet helps address some of the most common feedback we got two months ago by visually clarifying the initial experience on the site.
If you already have an account, give the new features a spin and let us know what you think. If not, just request an account using the link at
http://www.swingvine.com and we’ll set you up ASAP. Have fun & happy holidays!
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Posted October 13th, 2008
We thought it’d be fun to share some initial user feedback we’ve received to help us kick start an ongoing dialog with our users. Here are some excerpts from positive and critical feedback so far.
“Swingvine is cool! … Super work!” – Anonymous
“Looks clean. Kinda like an entertainment wiki.” – Eric
“(They) should make an iPhone app … I’d be on it all day” – Anonymous
“It’s a pretty good idea… How about pre-creating some content in there that’s totally relevant?” – Tom Wang
“Fancy site you got there. I like the big images and media links, entirely appropriate since I’m browsing media and ‘learning’ about it, as opposed to browsing … inventory or using it as a reference like Wikipedia.” – Daniel Chuang
“Very cool overall. I would think about ways to hook into existing communities that represent the things I like… Hmm, I get really confused about what a Vine is.” – Garry Tan, Co-Founder of Posterous.com (a great site, BTW)
“It’s an interesting idea, for sure… I think it would be more useful if you can integrate (with other) sites that offer music and movies, etc… The rest of the interface isn’t bad. But at first glance, it’s not really clear to me what’s going on with each little summary on the main screen.” – Kyle Huang
“I didn’t know what to do at first when I landed…I like the reputation system, both for contributors and for the particular page of interest.” – Sherman Li
“One quick impression was that it was not obvious how I would add a new vine or item.” – Eric Veal (different Eric from above)
We couldn’t post all the feedback, but the above snippets seemed representative. Many users enjoyed the overall aesthetic of the site and liked the integration of multimedia along with the reputation system. At the same time, users made the following suggestions / critique.
• Some users found the initial site experience confusing. The purpose of the site was not always clear from browsing the home page or category pages
• Vines were a tough concept to grasp for many users
• There was general demand for more content on the site along with ways to integrate that content with other related services
• A few users thought a mobile or iPhone experience would be useful
We think all of these points are valid. Although we can’t address every issue at the same time, we will definitely keep these points in mind as we improve the site. We especially agree about the need to create a more understandable initial experience, so this will probably be one of the first things we tackle in the coming months.
Do you agree, disagree, or have your own opinions entirely about SwingVine? We’d love to hear your feedback – just add your comments to this post!
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Posted October 6th, 2008
Since our launch earlier last week, we’ve received a good bit of feedback via email. We enjoy listening to and responding to our users. To help us do this even better, we’ve created a Facebook page for SwingVine so you can also find us there. We hope that this makes communicating with us more convenient for many of our users who are also on Facebook.
You can visit our Facebook page using the link below. If you like SwingVine, become a fan!
http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/SwingVinecom/55943920328
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Posted October 1st, 2008
SwingVine is a website that helps you discover new content by connecting music, movies, fashion, and more. We call these connections “vines”, and they enable users to explore content in a way that we think is faster, more relevant and more fun.
At SwingVine we believe strongly in the power of the community. All of our users have the ability to add new content, create new vines and shape the website as they see fit. By adding your favorites and contributing vines you can help other users discover new content while building your own reputation as a knowledgable contributor within the community.
The site officially launched yesterday and we’re eager to hear what you think. Since sign-in’s are currently required, go to our home page (click the logo at the top left of this page) and click the “Ask for an account” link to get started. We’ll send out accounts as long as we have capacity.
Once you’ve played a bit with the site, share your thoughts by commenting on this post. Enjoy!
P.S. Thanks to all the pre-Beta users (you know who you are) who tested the site, provided feedback, and helped iron out the initial kinks. Yesterday’s launch wouldn’t have been possible without you! We hope you continue to have fun on SwingVine and look forward to your ongoing feedback.
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