Emre Sokullu
Mar 12
Building and fostering a community requires a lot of creativity. That's why our new slogan for our valuable group owners is "tap into your divine side"... We thought Greek mythology is a cool way of expressing the creativity - so ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, please meet our new home page. 

And here is some of our early concept work:


The concept is still in its infancy. More to come...
1 comment
Emre Sokullu
Mar 05
So what is the best pricing method on Earth for storage?... The answer is "pay for what you use". Our competitors charge you for $10 per 10GB - at minimum. We're here to announce you that we're changing the rules of this game with a new model, where you pay per GB, and you pay less for each unit. We call this "tiered pricing" and this is how it works:

Storage Tier

Bandwidth Tier

Pricing

First 10GB

First 100GB Data Transfer

Free

Next 1TB

Next 10TB Data Transfer

$0.90 per GB of storage and 10GB of data transfer

Next 4TB

Next 40TB Data Transfer

$0.85 per GB of storage and 10GB of data transfer

Next 15TB

Next 150TB Data Transfer

$0.80 per GB of storage and 10GB of data transfer

Storage Used

Data Transfer

$0.75 per GB of storage and 10GB of data transfer

So as you can see, you start with paying $0.90 per GB, not even a dollar, and as you use more, you pay less, going down until $0.75 per GB. We are also increasing the amount of free storage that we provide from 3GB to 10GB.

These are by far the best prices on the market. And in regards to that, we should thank our team for their efficient work.

Please note that the new pricing will be applied to all our networks starting from Mar 10, 2010. When we first announced our pricing structure, we gave our old networks a grace period of 6 months and didn't charge them for their past use of storage. But that period will now expire, also starting with Mar 10. The good news is, our unique subscription functionality allows you to keep running your group, still without paying, by offloading some of your costs to your users. More information on that will be available soon too.

What's new?
  1. Your site is now up to 6x faster. Our engineers are trying to make sure that your pages load in less than 5 seconds in most of the times and in most of the geographies. Of course this is still a work in progress, and even though we have made a significant leap already, we expect to lower the wait times to 3 seconds - always and from anywhere in the world.
  2. For the sake of usability, we have replaced operational boxes (those small links that used to get you to create content) with operational buttons - which we think, are much more attractive and visible. They are also simpler, because with one click, you get to more functionality. This should increase the overall activity within your networks.
  3. Extensibility. We have not just improved our API, which lets you create awesome widgets and 3rd party services around your social networks, but also introduced a truly innovative technology, called Views. Views is the only solution in the market, which lets you modify the backend of your social network in the cloud. Now you can choose what to pull from our databases and what to show to your members & visitors.
What's in the pipeline?

Great stuff! Expect more improvements in the Chat and Map modules, also we'll be introducing a toolbar, which you will love, which will be totally unobtrusive.
7 comments
Emre Sokullu
Feb 10
This graph illustrates it well: (click to enlarge)


1 comment
Emre Sokullu
Feb 05
Folks, first of all, we want to apologize for some unusual kinks and glitches that we had this week. We know it's awful and we know how important this platform is for you to keep connected with your community.

The good news is, this was painful but this is also just a beginning of a new very positive era at GROU.PS

Also thanks to small unobtrusive ads we've put in the right sidebar of our new groups, we've expanded our team to 15. Now we're much bigger, and we'll be able to better serve your needs.

Please excuse our new team members while they start working on this big and complex platform.

Now we have a new Director and Release Engineer whose sole task is going to be to keep the things stable.

Here is our new team: http://grou.ps/groudotps/wiki/20466

And here are some more photos from our office:




Thanks to you all for your understanding and patience...

Every great things start with some pain... Like new babies who are born every single day...
4 comments
Emre Sokullu
Jan 26
1) Disk crash yesterday. No panic, backups are restored. But some groups might experience missing images (especially if uploaded recently) We're working on to recover the missing images, we'll keep you updated.
2) Template editing temporarily disabled while we work on these issues.

Thanks for your understanding.
11 comments
mephIStO
Jan 21
We have implemented Facebook share option to Grou.ps. Now integrate with Facebook more! When you upload content to your group, you will be able to publish that contents in your Facebook account. This implementation is alive in Blogs, Photos, Videos and Calendar modules. Sharing is so easy, just enter group with your Facebook account and check the Share on Facebook option. Allow for once and start sharing. That is all. 

Add Google Gadgets in extra blocks! We have retouched and added Google Gadgets option to Add New Block. You can control standard blocks, google gadgets and your own HTML boxes. 



Have fun.
3 comments
mephIStO
Jan 19
We need to help earthquake victims in Haiti. From now on, for a limited time we will only show donation ads on our ad zones. Do whatever you can, we make an impact.

Thanks
1 comment
Emre Sokullu
Jan 17
We've noticed that our memcache servers were all down for an unknown reason, for the last couple of hours. As a result, you might have noticed some slowness in our servers, because the lack of memcache creates too much load on our database servers.

The problem has been detected and we have rebooted our memcache servers, so your pages should get back to full speed again. Have a great Sunday!
8 comments
mephIStO
Jan 15
Hi folks here are the latest changes in platform;

1) New navigation bar is added. You can see an effect by navigating the photos and also it is possible to grab and scroll, like Acrobat reader. (See the big box in right side)



2)Session problems have been fixed. Your account will not logout automatically anymore. 

3) Videos and blogs module pages changed. We have re-designed the member's info and start showing with avatar. Here is a videos page example. 



4) Calendar issues fixed and is showing repeated events (how many week, month or year) in moderation section now.

5) You can share your videos with your Facebook account too. Just upload/share it in group then publish it in Facebook. ;) (moderation is not working now and you have login with your facebook account) 

6)  Also your attendance will be shown in your Facebook account if you want. (moderation is not working now and you have to login with your facebook account)

Thanks

0 comments
Emre Sokullu
Jan 01
You can now access your videos, files, photos hosted on Amazon. The problem is fixed.

Happy uploading in the new year!
2 comments
Emre Sokullu
Dec 30
Folks, there are some glitches in the Amazon side, that's why some of your images and videos may not appear. Patience please... Thanks,
5 comments
mephIStO
Dec 30
Hi Folks,

We have published an extraordinary and user-friend implementation last week. Elastic Modules. You do not have to use the simple Grou.ps interfaces anymore.  Do-it-yourself social groupware Grou.ps gives you chance to design your content on your own. With these elastic modules, your group's all details can be changed and communities will be excited. 

To change your module view go to admin panel and you will see there Views section. In this section, you will see all  modules (except, home, groups and wiki). These screenshots will tell us more.

Here is a links module :




Also you can edit your sign in and sign up pages (Authentication Views) and attract your members ;)




Do you want more detailed homepage in videos? Elastic modules is for you ;)



More elasticity is giving you more powerful and attractive social network. None of social network platforms give you this customization tool, except GROU.PS. Because we believe in freedom and your creativity. 

5 comments
Emre Sokullu
Dec 22
At around 3am Pacific time. Due to a temporary disk problem with our file server.
1 comment
mephIStO
Dec 09
Login with your iPhone! We have released mobile version of Grou.ps and following your group's activities and latest news are very easy, simple and useful now. 

You can update your status, add comments, like or catch up the actions and do it from your iPhone in everywhere. So you will not miss anything from your community. In mobile version our new newsfeed is shown and you can switch to classic Grou.ps version (or mobile version too) bottom of page. For now it is not possible to join a group, you have to login your existing groups. 
We will  add new and special features for iPhone users in mid term.



4 comments
mephIStO
Dec 09
Every social network will be more involved and engaged with our new feature. Grou.ps improved the Newsfeed block, in homepage, and added new buttons that help you to be more socialized in your group. Now you can use like button or add comment to an action. 

We have re-designed and improved it as an action stream of the site. So your group's feed will be more socialized and great part of your homepage, besides you have a total micro-blogging and lifestream block. 



You can update your status from your profile page also. Walls are in same design, please check your profile page and you are going to see it. When you update your status -from your wall or newsfeed it does not matter-, it will be shown in newsfeed. 

To sum up, you have a great feature that brings together life stream services and we will improve it  with our collabarotive vision.

Attachment and sharing options are in our pipeline. We will keep you updated.

2 comments
Emre Sokullu
Nov 23
Number 1 rule of usability: never assume. Your members may not be as experienced and geek as you are, and it's very natural that they are not familiar with your site like you. So, first things first, start with welcoming them by giving them some sort of an orientation around your site. BelAmi0, a social network for gay men (no link, due to adult explicit material) does it very well. Here's a screenshot from their site.



As you can see, the second link their menu is "New Member Orientation" - and here's the content:

Before you get started, here are a few things you will want to make sure you do:

Review the Conditions of Membership on the main menu.

On your “My Page” post a profile picture or image right away. Edit your Profile Questions - make sure you have answered all of the questions and that they are correct.

Visit the member (by country) area and make sure you are a member of the country you are from. While there post a comment on the wall to your fellow countrymen.

Then BE ACTIVE! Make a comment, invite a friend to be on your friends list, post a photo or video leave a message on someone’s wall – these are all ways to obtain activity credit and assure the administration that you will be an active member here at Belami0.

Clearly: calls users to action. Congratulations jamie
2 comments
mephIStO
Nov 19
We had an hour long downtime due to a private network issue with Softlayer, our datacenter provider. Apologies for this inconvenience, we are back now.

Thanks
1 comment
mephIStO
Nov 19
Hi folks,

As you know web services have lots of costs and most of them are about multimedia content like storage, bandwidth etc. We provide you a lot of tools, collaboration and communication opportunity. Our platform grows day by day, so we are trying to keep it stable and engaged. 

This blog entry is about our new premium service about ads. After now, new groups will see an advertisement block under the operation box, which shows add, remove etc. buttons in top right column. To remove the ads, you will buy 10 credits from PayPal and pay in Premium Service section. 10 credits is for 1 month, for example if you want to remove it 3 months you have to have 30 credits. Also we remove "sponsors" block too, that is shown in administration panel.

We did not put any ads our old groups, but all the adult groups have this ad block because their storage costs are higher. Also all the groups, which are founded after 18th November 2009, are going to see ads and have to buy credits to remove them.

Thanks and cheers.
2 comments