One of the things we’ve always liked about you—yes, you!—is just how engaged and involved you are, within the Mixx community and society at large.

The TweetMixx Channel, Aid for Haiti, is a fantastic example, and has been incredibly popular as the place to get the latest news and information on recovery and reconstruction efforts after the recent earthquake in Haiti. A lot of Mixxers have even used the Aid for Haiti Channel to make donations directly to the Red Cross.

And now we’re proud to announce that the Demi & Ashton Foundation has launched a TweetMixx Channel where you can find out more about Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s campaign to eradicate child sex slavery throughout the world, see what the change makers are saying, and discover ways to help.

We hope you’ll go check out both of these important Channels, and as always, let us know what you think.

And in case we haven’t said it enough lately, we love having you in the Mixx!

The Mixx Team

]]> http://blog.mixx.com/2010/01/28/want-to-get-involved-get-into-tweetmixx/feed/ http://blog.mixx.com/2010/01/21/aid-for-haiti/ http://blog.mixx.com/2010/01/21/aid-for-haiti/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:46:40 +0000 Kori http://blog.mixx.com/?p=515 Like everyone around the world, our thoughts have been with the people of Haiti as they try to recover from this unimaginably tragic situation. While we have personally donated to the relief efforts, we also wanted to do something more than sit idly by, or merely ask for donations. This weekend, Mixx was invited to “Crisis Camp” in Washington, DC where a bunch of geeks got together and gave their time and energy to help in any way they could. People worked on interactive digital maps of Haiti for smartphones that would help relief groups while others developed a Craigslist style site enabling groups to exchange supplies and other assistance in Haiti.

We were awed by this outpouring and began our own project. Today we are publishing TweetMixx For Haiti. This is a channel that pulls together the latest and most relevant information, including content with headline summaries, hosted photos and videos all into one place. The channel comes with a fully skinned widget that can easily be picked up and added to any web site or blog.

There are three tabs on the channel:

• Insiders: These are the most relevant Government and Non-Government twitter accounts. Organizations include the Marine Corps and the Red Cross as well as Haiti outreach groups.
• Chatter: This is simply the latest activity about the crisis in Haiti on Twitter.
• Links: We are following the shortened URLs out to the content, determining if that content is relevant and bringing you the links and summaries back to the page.  If we have the legal right to give you the content in full on the page (YouTube embedded photos, twitpics, etc), then the content is available right there.

To help spread this information-sharing and update site, we’re doing a promotion to help get the word out. You can help! Just click the “Get the Widget” button and place it on your blog. For every widget placed on a site Mixx (and our Founder) will make a donation.  For every widget picked up and placed on a site, Mixx will donate $5 to the Red Cross Haiti Relief efforts*. Our founder will match that donation dollar for dollar so each widget generates $10 in donations! All you have to do is send a screenshot or a link to the widget on your site to feedback@mixx.com.

*Due to the constraints of being a small start-up, donations and matching will be capped at $5k.

First, on TweetMixx, you will notice a new home page and channel directory, highlighting our great partners who have signed up for TweetMixx channels.  Second, you are now able to follow a channel on twitter–getting the channel updates pushed to wherever you get your tweets.

Over on the Mixx side, two updates as well.  Since we started Mixx we have always handled our tags in a “normalized” way. Meaning if you tagged something “Barack Obama” we have converted it to “barackobama.” Moving forward (and retroactively as we fix our millions of tags) our tags will not be normalized. This will enable easier usability and readability throughout the site.  Second, we have made a small addition to our terms of use.

As always, we’re open to feedback on our new updates!

~The Mixx Team

We are super excited to announce that the National Hockey League just added a TweetMixx Channel so hockey fans can now get all of the best NHL and team content in one place—no more skating around the Twitterverse to find it.

Just go to NHL.com fans section and click on the NHL TweetMixx Channel. In addition to the latest news you’ll find:

• A “Chatter” tab that keeps track of what NHL fans are talking about
• A “Links” tab with the most up-to-date links that match your list of search terms
• Unwrapped, abbreviated links with text, video and photos, so you don’t have to navigate away from the NHL Tweetmixx channel
• A widget that makes it easy to share the NHL TweetMixx Channel with other websites, your Facebook page (coming soon), MySpace page, blogs and more!  You can pick up the widget right off the NHL TweetMixx channel.  Its a must-have for any hockey blog.

Real hockey fans want to know what’s going on now (Ovechkin’s knee? Anyone? Anyone?), and the new NHL TweetMixx is the place to get the latest news.

Check it out now, and, as always, let us know what you think. Unless you’re pretty sure that hockey is a sport only played in Russia and Canada and can’t resist telling us so. We’d rather spare you the embarrassment and have you just not mention it.

Kidding! We love you, hockey fans or not and we’re always ready to listen to your thoughts and suggestions.

Now get the puck over there and check it out!

Love,

The Mixx Team

First, we gave you comments.

Then, we gave you nested comments.

Now, we give you multi-level comments! Woo hoo! While doing some research with our Mixxers, we heard one request loud and clear: given the active level of commenting our Mixxers do, you all felt that we needed to do a better job of tracking who said what to whom! So, after much analysis, debate, design, measurement, and quite a few beers, today we launch multi-level comments.

As always, we’d love your feedback on how we’ve done.

In addition to this, because we’re never just happy giving you one improvement, for those of you who are both Mixx and TweetMixx users, you will notice something different about TweetMixx this morning. With this upgrade, TweetMixx is now displaying photo and video thumbnails when the associated tweets have them.

Enjoy!

~The Mixx Team

You may have noticed this morning that we did a quick update. In addition to doing more optimization work and laying some groundwork for future updates, we made a slight tweak to the voting buttons.

You’ll notice now that we’ve increased the size of the “vote for” button to be a nice, big can’t-resist-the-urge-to-click-it target. This should make it easier for you to recommend with a vote in favor of the great content you find on Mixx.

We reorganized the “vote against” button to sit with our “Report This” functionality.  According to our research, historically, less than 1% of the down votes cast on our site were on items that weren’t later removed as violations of our terms of use.  Therefore, we have tied the two together in a nice, easy manner.

Don’t worry, you can absolutely still vote against something and not report it as spam if that’s what you are looking for.

Our next update will contain two user-requested features that have been asked for for quite some time, so stay tuned!

~The Mixx Team

But a teensy problem with everyone joining the party is that they are bringing tons of wonderful, exciting, useful, new, curious, strange, odd and oh-dear-god-how-did-that-get-in-here hostess gifts.  And because so many of these gifts are now wrapped up in cute little packages without so much a tag hanging to show what might be inside, you never know whether you are going to get something “cute” or something “oh-dear-god-how-did-that-get-in-here.”

Basically, its getting harder and harder to find the good stuff on twitter–the stuff that’s relevant to you. And because the Mixx purpose has always been to help you find the content that matters to you–whether that’s stories, videos, or photos, we thought “who better than us to tidy up this little mess?”  And so we launch today what we humbly believe to be the most useful product the Twitterverse has ever seen: Tweetmixx!

As you might guess from the name, Tweetmixx blends the best of Twitter and Mixx to give you:

• A better way to search across twitter for content that is of most interest to you.  No need to follow 10,000 people in hopes of finding the best content about the Beatles.  Just enter “Beatles” in as an interest and we’ll find the best content being shared!
• A Shortcut to just the links your friends are sending.  We all have those friends that tweet great links that get lost among their AWESOME weekends and their mommy problems.  Cut out the clutter and get just those links using the YourFriends view.
• Automatic unpacking of all those itty bitty URLs into useful headlines and descriptions.
• An all-in-one Twitter dashboard that replaces having to go to one place to tweet, another to do saved searches, another to see your friends’ links, another to check out hot topics, and yet another to see the most popular content on twitter!  Whew–see how we like to save you time?

In short, Tweetmixx turns Twitter into a content recommendation site, even if you don’t follow anyone.

We could go on and on, extolling the benefits of Tweetmixx, but we think it might be better for you to head over there and give it a try–we’re pretty sure that you are going to love it as much as we do.

As always, we want to hear what you think, so please send your Feedback. If you can’t fit it into 140 characters, that’s ok.  We’ll let you run on–especially if you’re telling us how much you love, love, love it!

So what are you waiting for, go check it out:  www.tweetmixx.com

~The Mixx Team

It’s been a while since we last did some updates. Well, we’re back and we’re in the mood to share. Actually, we’re in the mood for you to share.

Judging by our usage patterns, we know that right now our Mixxers mostly share with other Mixxers.  Every once in a while, a Mixx share goes out to a non-Mixxer, but not that often.  We think we know why—because when you share to a non-Mixxer, you share a link to a link to the article/photo/video you want your friend to see. And that’s a lot of links!

Wouldn’t it be great if you could use ONE share functionality to send the cool stuff you find (and submit) on Mixx to all your friends—whether they be on Mixx or not? Now you can.

Starting today, when you send a share to non-Mixxers, they will get a modified version of our share email. First, we made it purdy. Second, the primary link in the email will go directly to the source site—in other words, bypassing the Mixx page. Third, the email will also contain other goodies, like more stuff you’ve submitted, stuff related to the thing you’ve shared, and a wee little upsell to join Mixx. The upsell just casually mentions that you are enjoying your time on Mixx and they might, too.

It’s our hope that making your life a tad easier (having to just share things once) will encourage you to share more and expose more people to the wonderfulness of Mixx. We know the people you would share with are cool because, hey, they know you!

To help on the encouragement front, we’ll be giving a slice of karma for each share to a non-Mixxer and hand out an award to the Top Sharer for the day in the Mixx Lounge.

A couple of other notes:

• Shares to Mixxers will still have the link right to the Mixx page so they can comment and vote on your share as easily as they do today.
• The share email to Mixxers hasn’t yet been prettified, but that’s coming shortly.
• Non-Mixxers can now use the Mixx share functionality (with limits) so that your submissions can be shared far and wide!

That’s it for now. As always, please feel free to hit us up at feedback at mixx dot com if you have any questions.

~Mixx HQ

Early tomorrow morning, from approximately 4AM ET to 7AM ET, we will be undergoing a fairly large optimization of our primary database.  The end goal of this outage is to measurable improve the performance and speed of the Mixx experience.  While we generally like to keep our weekly installs a mere blip that goes mostly unnoticed, when we have an outage of this duration, we want to make sure all our Mixxers are up to speed on the reasons behind it.

Two other improvements in this install:

1.  A shout-out to Raghu, one of our engineers, who has spent the last month or so cleaning up various errors that have been reported to us by our Mixxers. Thanks to his hard work, you will run into the Mopping Baby screen even less often than you already are!

2. A small update to our Terms of Use has been made in the commenting section.

On top of this, we have a few other goodies coming in the next week.

Thanks and Happy Mixxing!

~Mixx HQ

As always, thank you for your patience and understanding. Everyone goes through growing pains at one time or another. These are certainly some of ours.

Sincerely
~The Mixx Team.