We are so very honored—and humbled—to announce that Mashable has acquired blippr. Not only does Mashable advocate for the very social media we represent, they were even the first to write about us early last year, when we entered private beta. To join the Mashable family and work with the likes of Pete Cashmore, Adam Hirsch, Adam Ostrow, and the rest of their talented team on a daily basis is a true honor.
It may seem a strange pairing—a blog and micro-review service such as our own—but we are excited about the possibilities that lie before us, both immediately and long-term. With Mashable’s authors writing detailed pieces and how-tos about the very apps you can now review on blippr, we find a complement to the short-form content our loyal users add while Mashable finds a complement to the long-form content they have provided since Pete Cashmore started blogging about his passion for the web back in 2006.
There are many exciting things to come from both of us in the next few months as this relationship takes form. One thing we can also say to our users is this: don’t worry. blippr will very much continue on being blippr, with micro-reviews and personal recommendations of media at its core. Mashable wholeheartedly believes in aiding us on our mission to be the easiest way to discuss, discover, and organize media. On we go.
Onward and Upward,
the blippr team (Chris and JC)
We’ve recently made a bunch of improvements to blippr for mobile users - try pulling up blippr on your iPhone, iPod touch, Android G1, relatively new Blackberry (older Blackberry Browsers don’t look that great yet), or other smartphone. We’ve rolled out a mobile-optimized version of the site, and if you visit from a smartphone, you’ll get a sweet little micro version of your favorite microreview service (m.blippr.com works too, for the purists).
Let us know what you think!
As you may have already noticed, we just released a fresh new look. Beyond the sexier exterior (or “sexterior” as we like to call it) though, you’ll find quite a few more changes than those just skin deep. “Why,” you ask? Because as we used blippr and looked at how you, our trusted users, were using the service, we found that there were some areas we could hone. There was some fat we could trim.
So, now you can use blippr without feeling bad about those extra calories! Here are some highlights:
“How about dem apps?!”
Lists have gone missing. Don’t worry.
- Instead of numerous lists and having all these loose locations to store your stuff, you now have one place to save all your stuff
- Just click “save” anywhere near a title and you can mark it in my queue, to blip later, want to own, favorite, or assign a custom marker you designate; think Delicious for your media
- You can now browse your apps, books, games, movies, and music by multiple tags (try action comedies, for example)
- We hope these changes simplify how you organize your media moving forward
Your home is a little sparser, but a tad tidier, too.
- Adding a blip and updating your status are two distinct, easily accessible actions on your home once you’ve signed in
- Your home page’s feeds are improved so you’ll only see what your friends are doing on blippr, not their friends, too
- You’ll find only a few sub-links on your homepage—my stuff, my network, and settings—rather than the five that were there previously
- Rather than find your friends’ recent blips in your blipstream, just click “blips” on your homepage to see what they’ve been talking about
A few last things worth pointing out.
- Instead of having a left sidebar, navigation and sub-navigation is always, always on top of the page
- There are two nifty new views—compact and medium—to eliminate those nasty image loading times
- Yes, there are ads, but hopefully you find them relevant and non-intrusive (let us know if you think otherwise)
- Facebook connections have been turned off, but just for a little while we bring that app up to snuff with all these new changes… we are only one developer after all
“Good reviews come in small packages.”
Regarding the new slogan on the homepage, we must give credit to whom it’s due. Thank you @mikelee1989 for answering our question via Twitter!
More is coming soon.
Seriously. We aren’t kidding. Much more cool stuff is on its way sooner than you might think. We look forward to hearing what you think about and experience with our slimmer blippr. As always, feel free to DM us @blippr, give us feedback, or contact us directly.
Happy blipping!
Via Twitter:
Hey everyone, blippr to launch a redesign soon. How would you describe blippr in 5 words or less on our homepage. You will get the credit!
I’ve released a brand-spankin’ new Rails plugin, designed to serve as a means for providing dead-simple Jabber support for multi-app-server Rails apps. We’re using this in blippr internally already, but I figured it was useful enough to package up and unleash on the world at large.
Read more at http://github.com/cheald/jabberish/tree/master, or
script/plugin install git://github.com/cheald/jabberish.git
It’s released under the MIT license, and is still extremely new, so practical testing is quite welcome!
Blipping is addictive, no doubt about it. And reading blips is just as fun. But today we’re excited to announce that blippr has teamed up with 12seconds to making adding and finding micro-reviews even more fun. Like us, they’re all about brevity. So, given 12seconds’ video focus, and our review and recommendations focus, we thought it was the perfect pairing. As good as PB&J, or milk and cookies, or mac and cheese, or… you get the point.
As one of 12seconds’ first API partners, you will soon be able to go above and beyond adding just 160 characters to review your favorite (and least favorite) books, games, movies, and music—you’ll be able to add 12 seconds of video. Or, as we like to call them: vlips (video blips). For an invite to the 12seconds alpha, email blippr@12seconds.tv and they’ll be sure to send you one within the day.
As usual, if you have any questions, ideas, or issues, be sure to bring them up with us on Get Satisfaction or Twitter. To find out more about our 12seconds’ newly released API, read what they have to say about the exciting news, or visit 12seconds.tv/developers for more details.
We’ll be sure to let you know when vlipping is avilable to all. Look out for it this week. Happy blipping!
Update: Vlipping is live. Just look for the “record a video blip instead” link underneath the status bar of the blip form. And have a webcam ready, of course. Happy vlipping!
Thanks to Kim Komando and her awesome Show for covering blippr and honoring us with her Cool Site of the Day recognition.
I’d also like to thank Alan Henry of AppScout for a wonderful recent writeup of blippr. In fact, this is just another one of many kind blog posts about blippr by you, our users, who both see the value in—and add value to—blippr. We couldn’t do any of this without any of you.
Keep up the great blipping, everyone! And stay tuned for some more exciting news coming tomorrow.
A great article about Twitter, written by Adam Lashinsky, appeared today in Fortune’s online counterpart, CNNMoney.com. We’ll comment on the article’s content later perhaps, but primarily we would like to mention that blippr is mentioned. It’s only a sentence, sure—an incorrect one at that, given it says we offer restaurant reviews—but we’ll take the free press. We have no idea how this one came about, but hey, it’s Fortune! No complaining here.
Not only has it been an exciting few days for us in terms of press and everyone’s wonderful feedback, we also have the great pleasure of announcing that Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews has joined our advisory board. Given his extensive knowledge of the social media landscape (not to mention his jolly personality), we’re excited to have him join us in our mission to make blippr the best way for people to discuss, discover, and organize media with their friends, as well as make it a profitable, long-standing business. Both a blippr user and a savvy social media entrepreneur, we couldn’t be more pleased with our first official advisor to the blippr team.
Welcome Rodney!
Jaiku and Plurk integration! (Pownce is coming, too, but it’s a little trickier.)
Keep your eyes open for ‘em!
We’ve pushed a new build to address some of the hiccups folks were experiencing yesterday. Hope that clears up the majority of them, and as always, if you have issues, please do start a topic on Get Satisfaction, and we’ll get to it ASAP!
Check out the latest NextWeb post about blippr from TheNextWeb when you get a chance. Read either Chris’s or Jonathan’s comments in the post for clarity on the “cons” Joop has listed, though. We’re all about DataPortability (of course).
