Don’t tell anyone, but there is way too much cool stuff stashed in the Mixx categories. At least that’s what our resident news junkies tell us—something about forgetting to check the news until it was no longer, well, news. We admit that we were too busy catching up on the latest celebrity gossip NASA research to pay much attention.

But, of course, they have a point. Timeliness has long been a problem with social news sites—Mixx included—and is a result of what also makes social news sites great: the voting process. In order for something to reach a lot of people, it has to get a decent number of votes and get kicked into “Popular” for a category, meaning it can take a while to get out in front. Breaking news, however, is something you want to know about while it’s still breaking (rather than once it’s been swept into the trashcan).

As Mixx is just shy of six months old, you’ll forgive our excitement and pride as we announce that we’ve come up with a brilliantly simple fix to a problem four years in the making: The Mixx “Breaking News” category. When a big story hits, any of our Super Mixxers can tag it as “Breaking.” You’ll find these stories on the right-hand side of both the “Popular” and “News” categories. You can also subscribe to “Breaking News” on YourMixx. Though we don’t expect it to happen often, if nothing appears in these spaces, don’t panic! Mixx is not broken; it’s just a slow news day.

Here’s how it works:

• Only Super Mixxers can tag a story as “Breaking.” If you haven’t achieved Super Mixxer status, just keep Mixxing: add great content, vote and comment—you’ll get there! (For more info, check out the Super Mixxer FAQ.)
• It takes two to Mixx a Breaking News story. Two Super Mixxers, that is.
• Only a limited number of stories can be in the Breaking News category at any one time, and only for a limited time.
• Once a Breaking News story gets enough votes, it will move over to “Popular,” and to any other category with which it was tagged (entertainment, politics, science, etc.).
• Right now, only text stories can be marked as “Breaking,” but we are working on this capability for photos and videos.

Oh, and we almost forgot to mention. If there is breaking news on a day, the Mixxer who submitted in the highest vote-getting bit of breaking news will get a brand new award: the News Hound award . You can check the Mixx Lounge daily to see who the News Hound with the biggest scoop was!

In addition to this big news, we’ve also made a couple of other tweaks:

• The response to the “On Deck” feature was amazing and many, many of you asked us to make it easier to get to. How’s one click? That’s right—instead of residing under “Recent,” we’ve given “On Deck” its own tab!
• Several Mixxers also asked for a way to see the top stories, photos and videos from the last day, so we’ve changed the time filter options on the “Popular” tab from “Day, Week, Ever” to “Now, Last Day, Last Week, Ever.”

Well, that’s all we have today, but there’s more coming soon. Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Use the Feedback link—you know we love hearing from you! Now excuse us while we go and pat ourselves on the back again!

Your Mixx Team

We’ll be doing an update to Mixx this morning! We’ve been tinkering with Mixx Mail. Why? Because we’re not fans of the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” (and not only because we once had our knuckles rapped for saying “ain’t”). So we’ve made a few upgrades and we think you’ll like what we’ve done.

No more trying to remember a MixxID or squinting at all your Mixx friends’ tiny little avatars. Now you can just start typing the name and Mixx Mail will automatically narrow the list until it finds the right Mixxer. Select the name and continue on to the next person on your list, or just click send. Pretty easy, no? NOTE: Please be sure that you’ve selected the correct MixxIDs, as we cannot be responsible if what you should have left in Vegas actually ends up being sent to everyone in the Group you set up for work. Just sayin’.

Several of you gave us some great ideas about interface changes, and a couple that we’ve incorporated (so far!) include:

• How we display who is in on the conversation, say for example, you, Richard Simmons, Jerry and Ricky. Any more Mixxers than that and it will say “Get back to work and stop watching talk show reruns.” Well, that or “between you and X+ people.”
• At the bottom of each message you’ll now find a “Return to Top of Message” link, a “Return to Inbox” link and a “Remove Me From This Conversation” link. There’s also a “Remove Me From This Conversation” link at the top of every message, in case, you know, you’re pretty sure you know how it’s going to turn out and don’t want to stay ‘til the end.
• You can now choose to only receive Mixx Mail from your friends—no more unwanted fan mail clogging up your box!

Now you can send a message to a friend while you’re on their profile page! Just click the Mixx Mail link and we’ll pop up a message box, pre-populated with that Mixxer’s name. Just think up a snazzy subject line, add a clever message and click “Send.”

New for Group Administrators

Are you the Group administrator? We’ve made a few upgrades that we think you’ll find very handy.

• Send broadcast messages to Group members directly from your Group page. This feature will act like the new Mixx messaging from a profile page (see above), with the addresses pre-populated. The big difference is that this is a one-way only communication.
• Get an RSS feed for your Group, as long as that Group is set to “public.”
• You’ll now get Abuse Reports on items that appear within your group and you’ll also have the ability to banish recidivists—that’s right: Repeat O-ffenders. (Raising Arizona? Anyone?)

So check it out and happier Mixx Mailing! We hope the changes make it easier to communicate with your fellow Mixxers and, as always, we expect to hear from you! Comments, questions, suggestions, expressions of your undying devotion (because you know you have ours), whatever you have, we want to hear it.

Your Mixx Team

We couldn’t be more pleased—or prouder—to announce that The New York Times has added a Mixx button to each and every page on their site!

We think it’s pretty cool to be recognized by one of the world’s premier news organizations, and it’s especially exciting for everyone who has worked so hard to make Mixx what it is today. And when we say “everyone,” we’re talking about you, too.

We’d like to thank New York Times and all of you for believing in us and for seeing that Mixx brings unique qualities to social media–like personalization, public and private groups and just a downright cool community!   So show them a little more love and head over to nytimes.com to start Mixxing!

You may have noticed us taking a little nap this afternoon. It was the time change, it really tired us out. Just kidding!  We actually had some bug fixes and performance fixes to roll out. You’ll now be able to Mixx quicker

Hi everyone, Jason here (Mixx’s User Interface Architect). I just wanted to make a quick mention that several members of Team Mixx will be at the annual South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX, later this week. I’ll be there along with our Design Rock Star Alex. We’ll be hanging out, checking out panels, drinking, and having a grand ol’ time (not necessarily in that order). We’ll also be handing out Mixx buttons and some sweet new stickers we just printed up.

I’ll also be representing Mixx on a panel Sunday afternoon (at 5pm!) entitled “Career Transitions: From DIY to Working for The Man”. Come on out and cheer me on!

So if you’re in the vicinity of Austin, the conference runs from Friday, March 7th through Tuesday, March 11th. Come track us down and get some free stuff!