Building Profilactic

Help us design Aggregated Media's logo

2008-05-15T15:51:00.003-04:00

As you may or may not know, Profilactic.com is a prototype of the larger social media platform we are creating with our LLC Aggregated Media.

We are in desperate need of a logo for AM, so we decided to go the crowdsourcing route and launch a design contest at 99designs.com.

Please take a look at the entries and let us know what you think. Of course, you can also feel free to whip up a badass logo of your own and submit it.

The contest runs through May 22nd.

Profilactic adds support for kirtsy (#179) & iReport (#180)

2008-05-12T16:21:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for kirtsy and iReport.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 180. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic mashups are now "lifestreams"

2008-05-08T10:25:00.002-04:00

We've been working on Profilactic for approximately two years now. When we first got started, there was no such thing as "lifestreaming" or "social media aggregation." In fact, the first term/buzzword I remember getting thrown around was Marc Canter's use of "digital lifestyle aggregator."

We chose to call our aggregation feature a "mashup" because we were taking all of these various feeds and mashing them together. Clever, huh?

Anyway, fast forward two years. "Lifestreaming" has become the accepted term for what we called "mashups." In order to avoid confusion in what we're offering, we have changed our "mashups" to "lifestreams." Obviously not Earth-shattering news; however, I wanted to give a little background on where the original name came from and why we changed it.

Right now, we are still using "mashup" in our URLs. Over time, we will be changing those to "lifestream." Of course, when we make that change, we will make sure we set up redirects so that all of the old "mashup" links will still work.

So what do you think? Are we total sellouts for adopting the latest buzzword? Or does it clarify what we're offering? Leave a comment and let us know.

Profilactic adds support for brightkite (#178)

2008-05-04T13:21:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for the new location-based social network brightkite.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 178. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

You can check out my brightkite page here.

Read Write Web takes random shots at Profilactic

2008-04-29T17:16:00.007-04:00

I met Marshall Kirkpatrick at SXSWi this year. He was a very cool, approachable guy. We had a nice chat during the Frog Design party. And I generally like the stuff he writes.

However, today, he wrote something that just doesn't make a lot of sense. Of course, the fact that it is about Profilactic will make my comments seem like sour grapes; however, I trust anyone reading this can be objective and evaluate the comments from both of us.

Marshall decides to do a "this" vs. "that" post where he discusses services that take two different approaches to the same problem.

He starts off with aggregation and puts FriendFeed head-to-head with Profilactic under a section labeled "Long Tail vs. User Experience." His premise is that FriendFeed has chosen to focus on the user experience by supporting fewer sites than we do and that we're ignoring the user experience by going after the long tail and supporting more.

The problem is that he never connects the dots as to why focusing on fewer sites makes FF a better experience. Nor does he explore why supporting more sites makes the user experience worse.

His argument is that no one really uses services like Muxtape or Toluu, so why support them?

From a resource or efficiency perspective, that would be a valid argument. Why support 177 when most users use the same list of 10-15 sites? I get that.

However, he is arguing that supporting these sites somehow hurts the user experience. If people really don't use those sites, what is the harm in having them in the list? Sure, you have to look past them when you choose your sites, but is it really that big of a deal?

Here's what he said about it:

"What's not to love about Profilactic's support for super-awesome services like music mix sharing service Muxtape and the RSS community Toluu? That's awesome. Except not very many people use those services. In the mean time, I don't want to use Profilactic and neither do most of my friends. I could use it without them but that's not as much fun as using FriendFeed.

It seems to me that Profilactic has sacrificed user experience for long tail support. That's a sacrifice that probably won't serve them well. None the less, we wish them the best."

Of course, in the middle of not really making his point about user experience versus the long tail, Marshall adds the random shot of "In the mean time, I don't want to use Profilactic and neither do most of my friends. I could use it without them but that's not as much fun as using FriendFeed."

OK, so why doesn't he use Profilactic? The name? The user experience? He doesn't say. To me, that's just poorly reasoned and written.

Don't get me wrong, if you want to criticize us, knock yourself out. We can take it. However, back your statements up.

I generally don't like to call people out; however, bloggers with an audience and influence the size of Marshall's should try a little harder than that.

The way it is written now comes off like a Journalism 101 compare-and-contrast assignment gone awry.

And, again, feel free to chalk my comments up to sour grapes...

Profilactic adds support for Muxtape (#177)

2008-04-28T23:32:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for everyone's favorite mixtape site Muxtape.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 177. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

You can groove on my hair metal Muxtape here.

Profilactic on Get Satisfaction

2008-04-25T11:04:00.003-04:00

We've added Profilactic to people-powered customer service site Get Satisfaction. So if you have a question, bug or other issue with our site, please post it there. This will allow your question to help other people who had the same issue or might have been wondering the same thing.

Profilactic lifestreaming Wordpress plugin

2008-04-19T19:35:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned last month, Anish Patel, one of our hardcore Profilactic members, has created a Profilactic Wordpress plugin. The plugin puts a Lifestream tab in your Wordpress blog and pulls in items from your Profilactic mashup. It is very cool.

You can see the plugin in action on Anish's site.

If you add the plugin to your blog, send us the link so we can check it out.

Thanks again to Anish for all of his hard work on this. We really appreciate it.

Profilactic adds support for moonrise (#175)

2008-04-18T18:13:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for online photo mood ring moonrise.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 175. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for Popurls (#174)

2008-04-15T16:51:00.001-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for recommendation aggregator Popurls.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 174. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

New feature: Auto Clippings

2008-04-15T11:23:00.004-04:00

Wanted to give everyone a heads up on a new feature that we'll be rolling out in the next couple of weeks. It is called Auto Clippings and it goes a little something like this...

If you are already using a bookmarking service like del.icio.us or blinklist to track items about you (which is what our Clippings feature lets you do), you can tell us which tag you use for those items (like "me" or "shawnmorton") and we'll start clipping those items automatically.

Here is what the page will look like:

See the full-size screenshot

Also, want to give a shout out to Jason Falls and Stef Lewandowski for both suggesting the Auto Clippings feature to me during our trip to SXSWi in March.

As always, let us know what you think of the idea by posting a comment or shooting us an e-mail at feedback at profilactic dot com.

[UPDATE:] Forgot to mention the services that we're launching with. We're going to support ClaimID, del.icio.us, Furl, ma.gnolia and blinklist at launch.

Profilactic adds support for Clipmarks (#173)

2008-04-09T15:25:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for Clipmarks. Clipmarks does an awesome job with RSS support, so you will be able to aggregate your clips, your pops and your comments into your Profilactic Mashup.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 173. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic hits the big time

2008-04-07T11:56:00.004-04:00

There are some key milestones in any site's life cycle that get the team behind those sites excited. Getting funding and/or getting acquired are near the top of the list. Not far behind those two is getting blocked by the IT departments of major corporations.

Today, an e-mail arrived at the Profilactic lair that showed that Profilactic.com is now blocked from employees of AT&T. Don't know if that's because they're the "new" AT&T or not. Apparently, the old AT&T didn't care.

See the larger screenshot

We proudly join pr0n sites and other social networks including Facebook and MySpace on AT&T's blocked list.

Profilactic adds support for Yokway (#172)

2008-04-05T19:30:00.005-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for Yokway.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 172. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for Lifestream.fm (#171)

2008-04-05T19:30:00.003-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for rival lifestreaming service Lifestream.fm.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 171. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for Trendrr (#170)

2008-04-01T22:50:00.001-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for Trendrr.com.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 170. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for 6 more music sites

2008-03-31T20:34:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for 6 more music services: MOG, finetune, iJigg, mystrands, JamBase and Jamglue.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 169. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Sites that support our "auto friend" feature

2008-03-31T09:54:00.003-04:00

With the release of Version 3 back in early March, we added a new feature on Profilactic that we referred to internally as "auto friend." Basically, if a site you add on Profilactic has a feed of your friends' content from that site, we'll automatically pull it in to your Friends' Mashup. No need for any of those friends to have a Profilactic account.

Of course, as with any of your friends' feeds, you can toggle any of the "auto friend" feeds on and off from the Manage friends' mashup page (select My Tools > Manage friends' mashup from the site header). This lets you tune your Friends' Mashup so you only get the content you want.

I realized recently that we a) haven't done a great job of getting the word out about the feature and b) haven't listed the sites that use it.

Sites that we automatically pull your friends' updates from:

1. Blinklist
2. Blippr
3. Delicious
4. digg
5. Facebook (very, very soon)
6. Flickr
7. Ma.gnolia
8. Propeller
9. Technorati
10. toluu
11. Twitter
12. Vox

We're going to be adding more as they become available. Look for FriendFeed support very soon.

If there is a site that offers a feed of your friends' content that we missed, drop us a comment. It was tough going back through 160+ sites to get them all.

Profilactic adds support for Twine (#163)

2008-03-31T09:27:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for Twine.com. Twine is still in private beta, but those that are "in" can get started in Profilactic.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 163. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for toluu (#162)

2008-03-29T09:43:00.004-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for toluu.com. toluu is still in private beta, so there may be a few hiccups early on; however, it looks like a very cool service.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 162. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for Rapleaf (#161)

2008-03-28T20:48:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for reputation management site Rapleaf.com. Thanks to Sonja Foust for the not-so-subtle suggestion.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 161. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for Corkd (#160)

2008-03-27T22:35:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for the wine enthusiast's social network Corkd.com. Thanks to Sonja Foust for the suggestion.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 160. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Like Profilactic? Tell us why

2008-03-26T22:08:00.002-04:00

We are working on a new video element for the home page where we'll show quick how-to videos about our features and share member testimonials about what they like about Profilactic.

If you'd like to share your thoughts on Profilactic, grab your webcam or Flip Video camera and shoot a short clip that answers the question, "What do you like about Profilactic?." We'll compile them all into a video that we'll feature on the home page.

You can throw your finished videos in our drop.io/profilacticvideo dropbox or upload them to the web. We prefer Vimeo because they allow users to download the original video file and they don't stick a logo on the videos.

So who's ready for their close-up?

BTW, if you're not down with shooting a video, you can always tell us what you like about Profilactic in the comments of this post. Thx.

Del.icio.us feeds are back

2008-03-26T22:03:00.002-04:00

We had been having issues with our del.icio.us feeds over the past few days. Just wanted to let everyone know that those issues are resolved. All del.icio.us feeds should be working again.

If anyone is still having a problem with them, please let us know at feedback at profilactic dot com.

Profilactic adds support for Scribd (#158) and Plazes (#159)

2008-03-25T19:53:00.003-04:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for two more sites: Scribd and Plazes.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 159. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.