Building Profilactic

New feature: Commenting

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Roland) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:07:00 +0000

We have added the ability to comment on items in every lifestream. We expanded the existing Reply to functionality, so you can continue to post your comments to Twitter. We will add support for other services in the near future. You can comment on your own lifestream as well.

As always, please let us know what you think by posting a comment or e-mailing us at feedback at profilactic dot com.

Profilactic adds support sites suggested by our new European friend

noreply@blogger.com (Eric Roland) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:52:00 +0000

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for 4 new sites thanks to a possible new venture in Europe.

Viviti
Netlog
Garage TV
Garage TV (BE)

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 190. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Reply to Twitter posts in Profilactic

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:44:00 +0000

Wanted to let everyone know that we've add a new feature to Profilactic. You can now reply to other users' Twitter posts from within Profilactic.

To do it, just go to someone else's (it doesn't work on your own Twitter posts) lifestream page or your Friends' Lifestream page and look for a Twitter post.

After the post, you will see the Twitter reply icon. Click that and then you will be able to reply inline. See the screenshots below for more info.

Step 1: Click one of the reply icons

Step 2: Type your message and click "Reply"

As always, let us know what you think by posting a comment.

Auto-embed QIK videos

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:52:00 +0000

I recently got access to the upcoming Windows Mobile version of QIK (thanks to Jane Fu from QIK) and have been playing with it a lot using my Moto Q9h.

In order to get the most out of QIK in Profilactic, we made a small update so that your QIK videos are auto-embedded in your lifestream.

So instead of seeing a small thumbnail and a link to the video, you will be able to interact with the video from within your lifestream page.

It's a small change, but one that we think makes using QIK even better. Check out my lifestream (or scobleizer's) to see it in action.

Pushed out a couple of changes this morning

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:18:00 +0000

Just wanted to let everyone know that we pushed out a few changes to the Profilactic site this morning.

The most noticeable change is the addition of favicons in our Ping.fm "Post something" window. So, after you post your status, we will show you the "success" icon and the list of sites it was submitted to. I find this very handy since I often forget which sites I have configured in Ping.fm. If you have short-term memory loss like me, you'll love this feature... wait, what feature?

We also fixed a couple of minor bugs. The biggest one having to do with your profile avatar. We now scale the image automatically rather than failing and blowing away all of your profile changes.

Anyone having trouble with the "Set up my lifestream" page?

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 18:59:00 +0000

We have had a couple of reports of problems with the "Set up my lifestream" page on the Mac. If you're having a problem with that page, please head over to the thread on Get Satisfaction and let us know. Thanks.

We sort of suck at e-mail

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:32:00 +0000

In our haste to get the word out about our new features, we made a couple of mistakes in our e-mail message.

First, we sent the e-mail to people who had deleted their account. Yeah, we know -- really lame. We sincerely apologize for that.

Second, we didn't include the link and/or instructions to unsubscribe from the alert mails. Again, lame and we're sorry.

We will make sure that this kind of stuff doesn't happen again. It had been about 9 months since we sent an e-mail update, so we were a little rusty, I guess.

BTW, if you ever want to change your e-mail preferences, head over to My tools > Account settings.

Profilactic gets Digg love

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:25:00 +0000

We sent out an e-mail blast to our members overnight announcing our super-cool, new integration of Ping.fm.

This morning, there are, not one, but two stories about Profilactic on Digg.

So if you have a couple of spare diggs lying around, check out these two stories:

1. Profilactic Update | Now U Can Post To 14 Social Svcs

2. Profilactic Update | healthylemons example for news show

Video: See "Post something" in action

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:38:00 +0000

If you want to see the new "Post something" feature in action (and hear what I sound like with a cold), check out the video below. It was shot on my Flip video camera in 1 take, so you know it's going to be good!

Ping.fm adds 3 more services

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:24:00 +0000

The new "Post something" feature on Profilactic just keeps getting better thanks to the guys over at Ping.fm.

They have just added support for 3 new services: Plurk, Mashable and Xanga.

That means that you can now post to 14 different social services from within Profilactic using Ping.fm.

Updated support for StumbleUpon

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:35:00 +0000

Wanted to let everyone know that we have updated our support for StumbleUpon to include RSS. See, SU was site #67 here on Profilactic. At the time we originally added them, they didn't support RSS.

After reading missangelyss' blog post about Profilactic, I realized it was time to add their RSS feeds.

If you already have StumbleUpon in your Profilactic lifestream, go to "My Tools > Set up my lifestream" to remove then re-add it. This will make sure you get the latest support for StumbleUpon RSS.

Profilactic adds support for Amazon reviews (#186)

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:23:00 +0000

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for user-submitted reviews on Amazon. So if you're one of those people who reads *and* writes reviews about what you read, then you're in luck. We also plan on adding Wishlist items soon.

Thanks to Sonja Foust for suggesting it through our Get Satisfaction page. If you have any site suggestions, please post them there.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 186. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

[UPDATE: We had to limit the data that we show from the Amazon reviews feed. Amazon puts TABLEs and other funky stuff in their RSS feed. In order to keep the lifestream pages looking good, we are only displaying the rating and the book title with a link to the review for now.]

Profilactic adds support for Loudervoice (#185)

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:49:00 +0000

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for user-generated review site Loudervoice.

Thanks to Baxter Tocher for suggesting it.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 185. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Post content from within Profilactic

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:52:00 +0000

We are very pleased to announce that we have partnered with Ping.fm to allow our members to post content to 11 social services from within Profilactic.

If you're not familiar with Ping.fm, what makes their service super cool is that you can post to all 11 of those social services *at the same time*. So if you want your Twitter friends and your Facebook friends and your LinkedIn connections to know that you're "sitting in my car at the Atlantic Ocean with my napping son reading Harvard Business Review and eating cotton candy," you can do it with our "Post something" tool powered by Ping.fm.

The list of services currently supported are: Bebo, Blogger, Facebook, hi5, Jaiku, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, MySpace, Pownce, Tumblr and Twitter.

Here is a screenshot of what you'll see after you set up your Ping.fm account and click the "Post something" button on your own lifestream page:

In the next week or so, we will be adding a few more options such as the ability to reply to the Twitter posts in your Friends' Lifestream. However, we think this first phase is still pretty badass.

Ping.fm is still in beta; however, they have given us 1,000 beta codes to use. So if you wanna get your post on, head over to Ping.fm and use the beta code "profilactic."

As always, please let us know what you think by posting a comment or e-mailing us at feedback at profilactic dot com.

Updated support for Bebo

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:49:00 +0000

Wanted to let everyone know that we have updated our support for Bebo in Profilactic. Your Bebo blog will now import into your Profilactic lifestream. Unfortunately, Bebo doesn't support RSS for other content like Photos. However, if when they do, we'll add that, too.

Profilactic adds support for Plurk (#183)

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:50:00 +0000

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for Plurk. With all of the problems that Twitter has been having, we figured it doesn't hurt to support other services that display your current status.

Thanks to Graham Smith for suggesting it.

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 183. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for Netvibes (#182)

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Thu, 29 May 2008 02:12:00 +0000

Just wanted to let everyone know that Profilactic has added support for Netvibes. Honestly, I already thought we supported Netvibes, but it turns out we didn't. When you support 182 sites, you can lose track, I guess.

Thanks to Felix Fischer for reminding us about Netvibes support and then mentioning that FriendFeed supports it just to make sure we got the message :)

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 182. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

Profilactic adds support for TwitPic (#181)

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:50:00 +0000

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

This brings the total number of sites that Profilactic supports to 181. Of course, you can still add unlimited custom sites.

The new Aggregated Media logo

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Fri, 23 May 2008 21:36:00 +0000

As we mentioned earlier, we used 99designs.com to "crowdsource" a logo for our LLC Aggregated Media. We're in the process of raising money for Aggregated Media, so we need a better logo than the one we were using.

After a week, we ended up with over 60 designs from a bunch of talented designers. We ended up narrowing it down to 5 final designs before choosing the logo below:

The logo was designed by Ink who has done a lot of great logos through 99designs.com.

We're in the process of building out our Aggregated Media site; however, you can see the logo in action on our placeholder page.

Help us design Aggregated Media's logo

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Thu, 15 May 2008 19:51:00 +0000

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)

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:21:00 +0000

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"

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:25:00 +0000

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)

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Sun, 04 May 2008 17:21:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:16:00 +0000

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)

noreply@blogger.com (sMoRTy71) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:32:00 +0000

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.